How I got selected as an Outreachy intern with Public Lab

Manasa — Thu, 27 May 2021 13:50:35 +0000

This summer, I've been selected as an Outreachy intern to work with Public Lab. This article is to share my experience of getting selected to the program as well as some tips for future applicants.

What is Outreachy? How to apply?
Outreachy is a 3 month long Open Source program for people traditionally underrepresented in the technology industry.

The application process consists of two steps:
Initial application – applicants are asked to provide some basic details, confirm their time commitment, and answer 4 essay questions. Results of this are announced after a few weeks and the selected applicants move into the contribution period.
Contribution period & Final application – during this period, applicants select an organization and project and make contributions to it. Applicants are also required to make a project proposal containing the project implementation details and a project execution timeline for the 3 months.

Interns selected for the program work on their project for 3 months under the guidance of mentors and are paid a stipend of $6000.

More details can be found at https://www.outreachy.org/

My journey with Open Source and Public Lab
My first exposure to Open Source was through Hacktoberfest. It helped me understand the basics of version control and how Open Source projects worked in general.

Subsequently, I was selected as a fellow in the MLH Open Source program where I worked on the codebase of dev.to. Through this fellowship, I learned Ruby on Rails, how to read and understand large codebases, how to do test-driven development, and most importantly, how to pair-program to fix bugs!

In January, I started looking at organizations that had participated in the previous rounds of Outreachy. Since I was familiar with RoR, I wanted to go with an organization having that as its primary tech stack. Public Lab seemed to have some interesting projects so I decided to go with that(one of the best decisions!). The community was extremely welcoming and helped newcomers get started with their first issues and PRs. Contributing to Public Lab was an enjoyable process since the project was really interesting and the mentors readily helped whenever I was stuck. Soon, I had 15+ merged PRs and 20+ issues created.

Once my initial application was selected, I started focussing on my proposal. After making several drafts and implementing the suggestions of mentors, I could finally come up with a good proposal.

On May 17th, I was selected as an Outreachy intern! 🎉

Some tips to get selected for Outreachy

Select your project carefully – different people choose the project they’re applying to based on different criteria. Some people prefer projects having a familiar tech stack whereas others give priority to the organization rather than the tech stack.
I selected the project ‘Tag and Topic System Enhancement’ since I was contributing to Public Lab for the past 3 months and had some familiarity with the tech stack (Ruby on Rails).
Find out what suits you best and select a project accordingly.
Start early – this helps you get a headstart over other applicants! I started contributing to Public Lab in January, two months before the official contribution period started. This gave me time to understand the codebase and make a lot of contributions.
Make a strong proposal – this is as important as your contributions. It is important to understand your project tasks thoroughly and come up with a timeline for them.

That’s it for now!
Hope this article helps you when you’re applying. Good Luck!

My Experience working for DEV in the MLH Fellowship

Manasa — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 17:45:40 +0000

This fall, I was selected for the Open Source track of the MLH Fellowship. This article is to share my experience of getting into the Fellowship, and the work I’ve done with DEV during the Fellowship.

What is the MLH Fellowship?

The MLH Fellowship is a 12-week internship alternative for aspiring software engineers. There are three tracks that aspiring developers can apply to

Open Source – where fellows contribute to large Open Source projects which are used by thousands of companies across the world.
Explorer – where fellows build personal projects by participating in a series of hackathon sprints.
Externship – where fellows solve real-world software engineering problems by collaborating on projects from real companies & government partners.

Head over to https://fellowship.mlh.io/ for more details.

Getting selected for the Fellowship

I came to know about the Fellowship from a senior in college and being an Open Source enthusiast, I wanted to apply to it immediately. The application was a long one and asked applicants to write about their work experience, projects done, interests and the motivation behind becoming an MLH Fellow.
After my application was shortlisted, I had two interviews. The first one was an informal one whereas the second one was a technical interview where I was asked to explain the code sample submitted along with the application. I was also asked questions based on my project.
The next morning, I got an email from the Fellowship team saying I was selected for the Open Source track! 🎉🎉

My Experience working for DEV

On the first day of the fellowship, we were divided into pods with around 10 people and a pod leader. We had two pod meetings every week where we would discuss our progress, have show-and-tells and also have some fun activities!

The third week of the Fellowship was the most anticipated one. That was when we were going to get our Open Source projects! I was assigned DEV since my preferred tech stack was Ruby on Rails which was the backend framework of DEV.

The next few days were spent on going through the codebase and understanding the different functionalities.
Myself and the other developers working for DEV had weekly sync meetings with Ben, Christina and our mentor Chris where we would discuss the work done so far and set targets for the next week.

During the orientation session with the project maintainers, I was asked to develop the Podcast Ownership feature. Podcasts are an important feature of DEV but there was no concept of podcast owners.
During the course of the fellowship, I made two major pull requests

Building a join table that maps podcasts and users who own the podcasts - https://github.com/forem/forem/pull/11410
Adding a feature for admins to add users as owners of a podcast - https://github.com/forem/forem/pull/11728

By working for DEV, I learnt how to read and understand large codebases, how to write rspec tests and most importantly how to pair-program to fix bugs!
The project maintainers and my mentor Chris, were extremely helpful and gave suggestions which helped me improve my code quality.

Final thoughts

I would like to thank Swift and the entire MLH team for this amazing opportunity. This Fellowship was a great learning experience for me and I highly recommend it to anyone who’s passionate about contributing to Open Source! 😃

DEV Community: Manasa

How I got selected as an Outreachy intern with Public Lab

My Experience working for DEV in the MLH Fellowship