DEV Community: Tithi

Virtual Hackathon Experience @ Hack the Mountains- last year

Tithi — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 15:26:29 +0000

Here, I state my experience faced during last year's hack the mountain hackathon.

To be very fair, it is one of the very few large scale hackathons which allow hybrid mode participation, thus being extremely exclusive, even for people who might have issues travelling to the actual venue & enjoy the benefits.

Being a student who had absolutely no permission from home to venture out of the state for a hackathon,(abba nahi manenge) this was the perfect opportunity to experience a MLH hosted hackathon (believe me, mlh hosted ones are of a different level, you should not be missing out on it anyway, it will be some of the best hours of your lifetime if you are interested in building soft+hardware), at the comfort of my home.

Every year, it offers generous prizes for both offline & online tracks, for which, it has always been a joy to participate in.

The schedule is closely followed, & there are quizzes & fun competitions in between held in discord. If you are online & happen to top one of those mini challenges, you will get your well deserved prize surely-as a past winner, can completely guarantee that!

Apart from all these, the discord can turn out to be a pandora's box; as you can interact with sponsors, & connect with people dropping their deets in the introduction channel (you can do so as well, it doesnt cost a bit to enhance your connections, aint it?)

Who knows, you can bag some extra bingo just by interacting with people? (Just do it, dont shy away!) I mean, I tried this out & I found it quite helpful (way to get hundreds of views on your profile hehehe)

On an overall, this is an opportunity that you cant miss, especially if you are an aspiring tech enthusiast.

A comprehensive list of resources

Tithi — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 19:39:19 +0000

“Building For Everyone” - Accessibility Campaign

Key event resources

Web Content

Firebase Event Content

Android Event Content

Google Maps Platform Event Content

Flutter Event Content

Introduction to Angular Course

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1w1q3fL4pmj9k1FrJ3Pe91EPub2_h4jF

https://angular.dev/tutorials/first-app

https://angular.dev/

Assistant Event Content

Github field day selection answers

Tithi — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 18:18:00 +0000

Write a short elevator pitch for yourself.
*
• Your home town, education, technical or personal interests!
• How have the experiences around you shaped you as a person ?

[The maximum character count is 1200]

Tithi is an artist, designer, and content creator based in Kolkata, India. She has attended professional classes for art and craft, honing her skills in graphic design. Her work has been recognized, & her posters have gained attention on various platforms, even inspiring others to create award-winning pieces. Currently, she is focusing on building a tech community at her college from the scratch & growing other smaller communities. She has served as the design lead for local communities, showcasing her leadership skills and ability to create impactful designs.

She has learnt to communicate effectively, share ideas, collaborate with people, share enthusiasm & experience with others, thus helping herself from being an absolute introvert to someone who is readily available for folks to contact for help & information.

Fun fact- she is also called "The Omnipresent" for being present in almost every tech conference in Kolkata, helping out the organising team in one way or the other.

Describe your community briefly.
*
• What is your community about?
• What role do you play in the community?
• How have the community members benefited by being a part of it? What activities have you undertaken to ensure their active participation?
• Links to websites and past events will be a plus!

[The maximum character count is 2400]

I represent Google Developer Student Clubs from my college. Google Developer Student Clubs are university based community groups for students around the world & students from all undergraduate or graduate programs with an interest in growing as a developer are welcome. Here, they grow their knowledge in a peer-to-peer learning environment and build solutions for local businesses and their community.

I am the founding lead for the GDSC chapter in my college, having laid the foundation in 2023. I regulate and organize sessions, campaigns for students to take part in. Apart from organizational duties, I do design creatives & coached folks as a mentor.

I brought two major campaigns to the club, which familiarised folks with the usage of the google cloud platform. Over 160 people completed it. Apart from that, I have also tried to offer the folks a chance to further explore other communities, programmes & technologies, helping them get exposure & experience from the same. Some links to check out the same:

https://dev.to/bridgesgap/postman-student-leader-a-complete-guide-5ge4

https://dev.to/gdscbbit/30-days-of-google-cloud-a-review-59o

https://dev.to/bridgesgap/gen-ai-study-jams-a-review-35dc

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/unnati-shaw-27498a272_cncf-cnh-kubernetes-activity-7203231976068194304-pNxt?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7175787985576038400?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7175787985576038400%29

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7127659128528809985?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7127659128528809985%29

https://x.com/TithiBose7/status/1780331182015570032?t=LcpDwco3A5kws5WCMwumTw&s=19

How will attending the GitHub Field Day and meeting other student community leaders impact you and your community?
*
• What learnings do you expect to take away from this event?
• Bullet points will be great here!

[The maximum character count is 600]

Github Field day, I believe, has one of the most curated set of participants from the entire country (& beyond, who knows?) which ensures quality networking with leaders & shapers of the future!

I believe each student leader is unique, & we could have a talk on how the community landscape in different regions work, how the leads manage to run their communities, exchange ideas, get feedback, & gain insights on the same.

If there are speakers, would love to listen to & connect with to them, have healthy conversations, leaving my introvert version aside!

Lastly, enjoy the course of the day!

Gen AI Study Jams- a review

Tithi — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 18:14:19 +0000

This was a new type of study jam introduced by Google Developer Student Clubs in India to upskill students with the usage of AI, making them comfortable with using AI with their projects via Google Cloud Platform, commonly referred to as GCP.

Initially not in the list of the campaign schedule, this was introduced as a means to educate the students about the latest gemini models & how to implement them via GCP. It was a month long campaign, which covered 9 modules which was comparatively easier than the last campaign on GCP.

Here, I account the full story of how it became possible in GDSC BBIT.

We initially received hints of the campaign in march 2024, by our regional manager. then in april 2024, we had to register our interest for conducting the particular campaign, which, as a lead, was one of the first ones to do. Once that was over, we received the enrollment forms & the codes, & garnered the participants. Getting participants were comparatively easier this time, as the news of the previous study jam had spread like wildfire & this time, the people who didn't take part last time were more enthusiastic about this.

We had exams in the meanwhile, & we decided to take advantage of that. Different classes had different slots of the exams, & we designed doubt clearing/mentoring sessions in such a way that one could finish their exams & come to the mentoring session in campus the same day & get the job done without any major delay. So far, we hosted some events for the same, feel free to check them out in the given links:

See Gen AI Study Session at Google Developer Student Clubs Budge Budge Institute of Technology - Kolkata, India

In-person Event - Gen AI Study Session

gdsc.community.dev

See Gen AI Study Sessions at Google Developer Student Clubs Budge Budge Institute of Technology - Kolkata, India

In-person Event - Gen AI Study Sessions

gdsc.community.dev

On an average, 25-35 people came for mentoring, given that there was an exam going on & 100+ people were registered for that event. we also entertained people who missed the deadline & could not be a part of the campaign but were willing to put down their efforts to get educated on the groundwork. we guided them to venture into other cloudskillsboost programs by google cloud, notably the arcade, which is open to all students, professionals alike.

As a part of the campaign, I also felt the need to have a dedicated session on the topic, so I had it here:

See Build with AI at Google Developer Student Clubs Budge Budge Institute of Technology - Kolkata, India

Virtual Event - Step into the world of innovation with the Build with AI event. It’s your ultimate destination for delving deep into state-of-the-art AI tools and seamlessly incorporating them into your projects.

gdsc.community.dev

our initiative was warmly welcomed by students & professors alike, & fortunately, we crossed the ultimate milestone of getting at least 80 students to complete the campaign within a whole week. It was a tough competition, but at least, everyone got to learn something, which was the main goal of the campaign in the first place.

A month later, we had the opportunity of delivering the prizes to the qualified pupils who had worked hard to make this campaign a success.

See Arcade is arcading! at Google Developer Student Clubs Budge Budge Institute of Technology - Kolkata, India

Virtual Event - test

gdsc.community.dev

30 Days of Google Cloud- a review

Tithi — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 17:51:25 +0000

30 days of Google Cloud is a program primarily run by Google Developer Student Clubs as a way to introduce students into the realm of Cloud Computing via the Google Cloud Platform, commonly referred to as the GCP.

Here, tracks/milestones are given which are to be completed within a given timeframe to be eligible for certain prizes. All the work should be done via the cloudskillsboost platform in order to achieve the milestones, which consists of labs, courses videos, quizzes, etc.

Every year, the syllabus is different, & the program name may also vary, like being called as Cloud Study Jams. Previously, there used to be a lot of seats, but these days, things are pretty limited & a bit harder.

Here, I am sharing my experience as a GDSC Lead organizing Cloud Study Jams for the first time in my college campus.

Registration process
Before people could participate join the program, they are required to fill out an interest form to register their keenness.
Note that crucial information is usually taken using this form & one should fill it carefully to avoid complications during the entire campaign. Since these days, seats are pretty limited, would say that filling forms ASAP maximizes chances of getting accepted.

Approval process
The data team then cross checks each individual application, filtering out the incorrect & inapplicable ones. Note that the GDSCs do not influence the selection process once the data is sent from the latter. Eligibility criteria varies from program to program, so pay heed to the guidelines before jumping to conclusions.

Campaign period
This is the actual time period for carrying out the tasks of the campaign. mails are sent out by the GDSC regional team to the eligible participants, & sometimes, a leaderboard might also be included in the mix to make things more competitive, especially when the number of approved folks for a campaign is more than the number of rewardable slots. Generally help is available from the organizing GDSC, in the forms of specially curated speaker sessions, resource list, offline doubt clearing sessions. Note that it is upto the particular GDSC if they want to conduct a session or mentoring session, as I have seen many unable to do so due to issues/conflicting schedules. Make the most out of this by joining the community groups, asking questions(don't spam anyway), facilitate helping others & yourself in the turn by the means of networking. Alternatively, you are at your free will to join sessions from one GDSC & complete the campaigns from another.

How did it go down at GDSC BBIT

Since it was the first time students were exposed to such a campaign, we were quite sceptical about how it would fare anyway, given that it was of a comparatively tougher level for the pupils to face-but a challenge is a challenge, & we cant let that fear be cemented deep in our minds for long.

After the registrations were over, the main challenge of getting the students started with stuff begun. Since we were a relatively new club & students initially didn't want to approach us, we decided to take our help to them. We took online as well as offline doubt clearing sessions, ranging from classrooms to canteens, & our only motto was to get the students to understand about the importance of skilling up. Thus, from the rocky road that we had, garnering experiences, toiling hard, we finally managed to get 100+ students at least complete the campaign, thus making it a grand success.

Postman Student Leader-A complete guide

Tithi — Sat, 22 Jun 2024 17:50:35 +0000

It was in June 2024 when I received the mail:

In this blog, I will guide you the way to become a postman student leader. Note that it was written before the program got revamped.

First step

You will have to complete the postman student expert module compulsorily to be able to apply for being a postman student leader. It is an easy course, requiring no prerequisite knowledge, can be completed at an average of 2 hrs. All the documentation & instructions has been given in the course, you just have to follow it carefully & earn your credential.

Link to enroll in the program-

Student Expert | Postman Student Program

Join thousands of students globally to start your API learning journey and boost your software development career with Postman Student Programs. Get access to exclusive API certifications from Postman, join a vibrant student API developer community, participate in events and get an opportunity to become a Postman Student Leader on your campus.

postman.com

Once you complete this, you have to apply for the student leader using the same email id that you used for getting the student expert badge.

Once you do so, you will have the option of filling up a form to apply for being the postman student leader of your institution.
Note that if they are several people applying for the same, only the one having the best profile/answers given on the application program will be selected for the same. If they fail to meet certain standards discussed later, they will be disqualified & the next eligible candidate will be considered. Generally, students are accepted provided they have at least 1 year left for their graduation.

I also have the answers of my application written in a seperate blog, feel free to check it out as well. It takes anywhere around a month or a two to get news about the selection criteria.

Once you get selected, You will be assigned a postmanaut or a senior postman official, who will be the point of contact for you & the student leader team. You will have to host an event with a specified number of people, preferably offline within 1 month of receiving the selection mail with the some crucial details to cement your application. If you prefer to host your event online, you can avail a dedicated postman zoom link to record your event, as recording the full session is mandatory for an online event.

There is generally a minimum number of people required to call the offline event a success, & the best part is that you can choose to host giveaways for your audience if the requirements are meant, in the form of prizes or raffles. Tip- try to get at least a decent amount of people, like 20-30 for the least amount. the more the attendees, the grander the giveaways can be!

For the session, you will be provided a poster kit, a session doc where you have to link all the valuable forms of data that you might need for your session, looked over by the postmanaut; & a presentation kit. you are free to use your own creativity on the presentation & the poster keeping in mind that the overall brand guidelines are properly followed during the process. Prepare accordingly, get a venue & participants, & there you go, hosting the session!

For the aftermath, don't forget to click photos (the more the merrier) & submit attendee details, photos, registrations, attendance, & feedback form details along with a complete event report to the postmanaut for verification. It will take a few days for the postmanaut to verify that & once it gets done, you will get the official onboarding mail as a Postman Student Leader!

Hope that this guide helps you to understand the programme well, & you liked this lil blog :D

Push India Ambassador program- a review

Tithi — Sun, 24 Mar 2024 15:15:37 +0000

This is the review of the second cohort of Push Ambassador program in India, & is based on personal experiences.

What's it?

The Push Ambassador India Program is a community initiative designed to grow the presence and foster a dynamic community of web3 enthusiasts across India.
More info- check out their 1st blog regarding it

Application

The application process goes well, with some basic questions aimed at knowing your type of work & how creative you are (yes, that counts!)
Following the application & the scrutiny, you might get an assignment to be done within a stipulated deadline, which, in my case, was drafting a brand new blog about how I came across the programs & all- Check them out here

Selection

Once you get selected, you will be notified via official mails about it, & asked to complete some onboarding formalities.
Then, you would have to join the chillest onboarding call. Congratulations!

What to do?

The program is designed in epochs. one epoch lasts 60 days, & you have to score a certain number of points to stay active. There are different points for different tasks, you can feel free to choose whichever task you might deem worthy of doing & yes, you are allowed to collab with others to finish certain tasks!

About the tasks- there are a lot to choose from- be it designing graphics, making videos about specific topics, writing blogs (yea, been there, done it), getting partnership with other companies for possible collaboration, promoting new features of push protocol, taking part in push's open source projects, building stuff with push, improving the ambassador program, holding push centric workshops, bringing awareness, making memes- there is a lot to choose from!

Each task need to get reviewed before you can earn points, & it might be the case where your submissions might be suggested for improvements before you are finally awarded the points. However, refrain from solely doing tasks for points, as quality matters over quantity, & do not overdo yourself just for the sake of grinding a leaderboard.

If you think this program is not what you are looking for, you can drop out anytime. Nothing's mandatory, you are free to do what you like the most & how you wanna contribute in your own way; is totally up to you. Nobody's going to ring you up if you do absolutely nothing; it is a voluntary role & the push fam is generous enough to consider your issues, if you have any. (Kudos to them!)

The crew is friendly, & you won't have problems with them, I swear. But, I won't suggest taking advantage of that.

My experience

I had the opportunity to get selected as an ambassador (Top 30 within the hundreds of applications) for the 2nd cohort. my journey had been smooth, crafting blogs and designing creatives, promoting push protocol via different social media platforms.

What I liked the most about this programme is the fact that it allows complete freedom about the domain you wanna work on, without any additional deadline pressure, suitable for people with high workload. Getting points was very easy, and had the opportunity to work as a part of the team, contributing significantly to the ecosystem.

Journey of Token gated group chat in Push?

Tithi — Sat, 23 Mar 2024 20:41:13 +0000

Token gated group chats were scheduled to launch in November, continuing propagation.

Native web3 token gated groups chats allow DAOs, NFT communities to enable group chat access or sending message based on if the wallet has their tokens or NFTs or even custom functions as per the user's preferences.
This allows communities to be created that for the first time can integrate chat directly on their frontend with just 3-4 lines of code and enables direct, verified interaction with their DAO members
It also enables communities to come with their own game theories to enable interaction between community and the team / creating rewards program / creating direct interface to allow feedback (ie: 10 tokens to join but 1000 token to send a message will mean only holders that have skin in the game are able to converse) and does other really cool things, all without going out of the frontend.

Currently, 3 formats are supported:

Creating token gating from frontend
Creating token gating from backend
UI Component for react

What's new?

Web3 username protocol Unstoppable Domains had launched a new group chat feature,allowing username owners to form group chats that are badge-gated, meaning that only wallet accounts with particular characteristics are allowed to participate in the chat.

The feature was created using Push Protocol- Opening gated group chats for 3.8m+ users of unstoppable!

Token-gated Groups on UD will enable any UD user to join an existing Group or create their own. There's 400+ Groups already live, including Polygon Labs and blockchain.

For teams, DAOs, and protocols – leverage token-gated Group Chats to segment and engage with your communities in all-new ways.

Postman Student Leader answers(January 2024 )

Tithi — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 20:10:04 +0000

Please list student communities that you are part of, and in what capacity. As part of the Student Leader program, you will get support in building and participating in student communities. Knowing your current experiences in this area will help us better understand your starting point. (255 word limit)

I am the founding GDSC Lead of my college,built from the scratch, & have hosted all the sessions for it, which now has over 200 members. I volunteer for community events, & even be a speaker in some. More details can be found in my LinkedIn profile.

How would you explain APIs to your grandparents in 2 minutes? Explain what APIs are in a video under 2-minutes You don’t need to edit the video, make a presentation or add sound effects. Just record a video explaining APIs in simple words with your mobile phone or webcam and share the link here. (You can upload it to Google Drive or YouTube and keep it unlisted, make sure video is accessible via a link, or use a video service like Loom)

Here is a transcript of the video answer which I submitted.

Imagine that you want to order chocolates from paris, & you don't know french. There's a translator available, & you take their help which is just like using an application programming interface i.e. API.
They allow you to easily communicate your order to the cashier, which can be imagined as the computer, who understands the request, all thanks to the translator, & sends the order via the translator, relating to a GET request.
API can be a helper that lets different systems communicate with each other easily without the user needing to know all the technical details. It takes your request, translates it, brings the answer, just like the example told before.

What is your favorite Postman feature and why? What is the feature you love the most in Postman and how does it help you in your day-to-day life?

The Documentation is neat, while the Markdown brings some spice to the otherwise long lines of prose. Simulation of API endpoints with a mock server is a lovable feature, as it is a banger when I don't prefer not to run my requests against real data.

How would you promote API literacy among students on your campus? Our Goal is to promote API Literacy. As Postman Student Leader you will be helping us make your campus API Literate. Give us some examples of how you would promote APIs among students.

There are a number of ways in which I can do that:
-By hosting sessions. I recently helped a few of my friends earn the postman student expert badge.
-By crafting detailed blogs about how to use postman APIs in daily coding, aimed exclusively for students.

Hyper Scalable Chats-Push Protocol Updates

Tithi — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 22:38:45 +0000

What's it?

Basically, web3 messaging which just got a massive upgrade!
On an overall, Push Chat makes messaging in web3 as seamless as it is in web2. One feature the Push Devs have been working on extensively within Push Chat is Push Group Chat, armed with the ability to host conversations with multiple members. Whether you're chatting in public groups, enjoying more private discussions, or joining token-gated communities, Push Group Chat makes connecting with others simple and secure.

Scaling up means bringing it to a larger scale, innit?

Push is levelling up its scalability and increasing group limits into the thousands.
Yeah, you read that correctly.

Group Chat platforms have always struggled with the number of participants a single group could accommodate. This limitation has hindered the potential for large-scale user interactions and hence restricted how Group Chats can be used to connect with a broader audience.

It's dubbed as to being "hyper scalable" in reference to Push Group Chat’s newfound ability to handle significantly larger group sizes, transcending its prior limitations, signifying a major development for web3-native user interactions , empowering users to engage in more extensive and inclusive group conversations like never before.

Push Group Chat has made a big change in how people can talk to each other in groups. Now, you can have more people in your public and private groups than ever before. Public groups can have up to 25,000 people, and private groups can have up to 5,000 people. That’s a lot of people! This means you can have more fun and more conversations with more people in web3.

How is that possible?

Push Chat pioneers a decentralised approach, ensuring end-to-end encryption and placing control back into the hands of users, through transformational advancements at both the architectural and encryption levels.
Before, the Push team was encrypting messages using the private keys of all group members. Now, they’re dynamically generating session keys and encrypted secrets after pivotal group state changes.

Metamask Snaps-How to use it with Push Protocol

Tithi — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 21:50:30 +0000

What's it?

The Push Snap is a MetaMask wallet enhancement that allows you to receive real-time notification alerts of your favourite web3 applications directly in your MetaMask wallet. In other words, Metamask snaps opens up the possibility of receiving notifications right on metamask and is a key driving factor in making notifications more open.

How to get Started?

Installation: Click on 'Add to MetaMask' button shown below. This initiates the process of adding the Push Snap to your MetaMask wallet. The link to access this- https://snaps.metamask.io/snap/npm/pushprotocol/snap/

Setting-Up Push Snap: Once installed, you should be prompted to visit Push dapp, i.e., https://app.push.org Visit the dApp to proceed with next steps. https://app.push.org/snap is the best place to start for users to install the snap

Adding your Address: Once connected to the dapp, the Snap will require confirmation to add your address. Adding of address in the Snap means enabling your wallet to receive notifications. If you have not yet signed into metamask, you will be prompted to do so.

Opt-In to Channels: Once address is added, simply click on Get Started. This takes you to https://app.push.org wherein you can opt-in to any of your favorite channels to receive real-time notifications.

What I like about it-

support for quite a number of chains.

GDSC Solution Challenge Bootcamp 2k24-Kolkata edition

Tithi — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 21:05:27 +0000

GDSC India launched their first ever Regional bootCamp series this year, & here is a rundown of what happened in it.

selection criteria

selection was made on the basis of your responses on a google form, which asked about the technical aspects of your projects & how is it relevant to the goals which the solution challenge aims to serve.
didn't need to be a complete project while submitting for the bootcamp-even the figma prototype files would be enough to convince that your project is good enough to be considered for guidance at the bootcamp.
u also had to explain in what domains u require help, & in what aspects, & ur application would be reviewed accordingly.

event access

It was an invite only event, which meant that people without the invite mails would not be allowed to enter the venue premises. Registration started at 8am, followed by an opening ceremony, speaker session & a tea break. Following that, the attendee were divided into rooms of their respective assigned mentors.

The first mentoring session was of nearly 3 hours, with each mentor catering to 3-7 teams. There were 2-3 mentoring sessions, & at the end, people were also free to contact whichever mentor they wanted. All the operations were carried out by the GDSC SNU team along with some volunteers, with the main PoC being Nikita Gandhi, regional lead, GDSC India.

the day turned out to be quite a day full of learning, networking & working on projects, with no mention of swags.