DEV Community: Mridul Bhandari

IBM Cloud Bootcamp for Africa Leadership University

Mridul Bhandari — Fri, 20 Aug 2021 15:10:17 +0000

As part of supporting the University relations team, @ibm MEA Developer Advocates conducted a bootcamp for university students in Africa.

This bootcamp was targeted towards student developers who were interested in learning about @ibmcloud and how they could get started on their IBM journey.

The prerequisites for the bootcamp were to sign up for an IBM Cloud Account and Twilio Account.

The first session was conducted by IBM Developer Advocates Mohammad Ali Khan & Asna Javed and, it was hosted by John Matogo who is the Global University Programs Leader for Africa. The agenda was as follows -
i. What is IBM Cloud?
ii. What kind of services are there on IBM Cloud?
iii. Brief introduction and overview of Watson Assistant
iv. What are the Foundational building blocks of Watson Assistant
v. Creating our first Intents

The recording of this session is available on Crowdcast

The second session was conducted by IBM Developer Advocate Mohammad Ali Khan & IBM Client Software Developer Tosin Amuda. In this session, the focus was to dive deep into the workings of Watson Assistant and learn how you can properly use Intents, Entities and Dialog flow to create a robust chatbot of your own. The agenda was as follows -
i. How to create Entities, Dialog Node for Watson Assistant Chatbot
ii. How to structure a Dialog Node
iii. Learn to integrate Intents, Entities onto a dialog node
iv. Explore some advance features of Watson Assistant

The recording of this session is available on Crowdcast

The third session was conducted by IBM Developer Advocates @mridulrb & @kif01 . The focus of this session was to extend Watson Assistant chatbot’s capabilities by connecting it to WhatsApp using Twilio. The agenda was as follows -
i. Recap of Watson Assistant
ii. What is Twilio
iii. How to integrate Watson Assistant with WhatsApp
iv. Chatbot Assignment Project

The recording of this session is available on Crowdcast

At the end of the bootcamp, attendees were introduced to
IBM Developer resources. Many of the attendees showed positive feedback and appreciation for the bootcamp.

Survey: ibm.biz/BdfeHQ
IBM Cloud Sign-up link: ibm.biz/bootcamp-alu
Meetup page: meetup.com/IBM-Cloud-MEA/events/

Integrating IBM Watson Assistant with WhatsApp

Mridul Bhandari — Thu, 19 Aug 2021 19:17:44 +0000

Chatbots are everywhere these days, and most businesses aim to use them to increase productivity and provide a better customer experience. In this tutorial, @kif01 & I demonstrate how to extend a Watson Assistant chatbot’s capabilities by connecting it to WhatsApp using Twilio. We will be using Twilio’s sandbox to show how this integration works.

In this tutorial, we are assuming that you already know what Watson Assistant is and how it works. We will be only focusing on the integration part with WhatsApp. However, if you haven't used Watson before then you can get started here.

Go to your Watson Assistant service in IBM Cloud. Let's first add a dialog skill to our Assistant. Go to this GitHub Repo and download it. It has the dialog skill that we will be using for our assistant. Once it's downloaded, import the skill in the Assistant.
Under Integrations on the right side, choose WhatsApp with Twilio.
Choose WhatsApp with Twilio and then click Create.
Now here we will need to set the Account SID and Auth token that we can get from Twilio. Go to your Twilio account (if you don't an account, you can create one here) and copy your Account SID and Auth token that are in the home dashboard. (Click on Show to reveal the token).
Go back to your Watson Assistant and fill Account SID and Auth token with the values that you got from Twilio.

Click Sync Account and wait for it till it shows Synced. Once it's synced you will see a webhook URL generated in the WhatsApp Webhook field. Copy this URL and go back to Twilio.
Now we need to set up and configure our Twilio sandbox to integrate it with Watson Assistant. In your Twilio Account, click on the icon that represents all products and services (it's below the home icon) on the left side go to Programmable Messaging from the expanded menu and select Try WhatsApp under the Try it out section.

We will be using this testing sandbox for our integration. Send the given code/message to the number provided by Twilio from your WhatsApp.

Click here to send the message to given number or Scan this QR Code.

Once it's done, you should see Message Received on Twilio like this image.

This means that now your phone number is connected to this Twilio-WhatsApp sandbox.
Click Next. The second step is to set a template in case you're working with a One-Way Message case like appointment reminders, order notification and verification codes. So, in these cases, only the service is talking to the user. We are not interested in this step for this tutorial so you can click Next to move to the 3rd step which is Two-Way Messaging where both the user and the service can send messages which results in a conversation. The service triggers a 24-hour conversation window in which the conversation can take place. Send a reply to the message that you received on WhatsApp and click Next: Configure Your Sandbox.
Paste the webhook URL that you have from Watson Assistant into the When a message comes in field. You should see your number in the sandbox participants and others can enter this sandbox by sending the code mentioned to the sandbox WhatsApp number (In the below image the code is join design-thumb). Once you're done click save.
All is set. Now the Assistant is integrated with WhatsApp through Twilio. From your device, send a WhatsApp message to the WhatsApp sandbox number and you will receive the assistant's response.

In this tutorial, you were able to successfully integrate your Watson Assistant with WhatsApp through Twilio. Since this is a tutorial, we were using WhatsApp-Twilio sandbox to show you how this integration work. If you want to use WhatsApp-Twilio with the Assistant for a real use case, then you will need to have a premium Twilio Account, a Facebook Business Manager ID and apply for permission. You can find more information about this here.

How to measure contributions & finance open source projects?

Mridul Bhandari — Mon, 17 May 2021 12:27:22 +0000

Why measure anything?

Data, when utilized carefully, can help you settle on better choices as an open-source maintainer.

With more data, you can:

· See how users react to new features

· Find out where new users come from

· Recognize, and conclude whether to help, an out of the box use case or feature

· Evaluate your projects bugs

· See how your project is utilized

· Fund-raise through sponsorships

Prominence isn't all that matters. Everyone gets into open source for various reasons. If your objective as an open-source maintainer is to flaunt your work, be straightforward about your code, measurements may not be imperative to you.

If you are keen on understanding your project on a more profound level, read on for approaches to examine your project's activity.

Revelation

Before anyone can utilize or contribute back to your project, they need to realize it exists. Ask yourself: are people discovering this project?

If your project is on GitHub, you can see the number of individuals land on your project and where they come from. From your project’s page, click "Insights", and then "Traffic". On this page, you can see:

Total page views: Tells you how frequently your project was seen

Total unique visitors: Tells you the number of views on your project

Referring sites: Tells you where visitors came from. This measurement can help you sort out where to reach out to your crowd and whether your marketing efforts are working.

Popular content: Tells you where guests go on your project, separated by page views and unique visitors.

GitHub stars can likewise help give a basic measure of popularity. While GitHub stars don't really correspond to downloads and utilization, they can disclose to you the number of individuals considering your work.

Usage

On GitHub, go to the "Traffic" page. where you can see the clone graph to see how frequently your repository has been cloned on a given day, separated by all out clones and unique cloners.

If the usage is low as compared to the views on your project, there are two points to consider:

Your churn is very high
You are targeting the wrong crowd

Maintenance

Developers are finding your project and they're utilizing it. The following inquiry you'll need to pose to yourself is: are individuals contributing back to this task?

It's never too soon to think about contributors. Without others contributing, you are placing yourself into an undesirable circumstance where your project is well known (numerous individuals use it) however not supported (insufficient maintainer time to fulfill need).

Maintenance requires an inflow of new contributors, as former contributors will eventually proceed to different things.

Measurements that you may need to routinely follow include:

· Total count of contributors and number of commits: Tells you the number of contributors you have, and the activity. On GitHub, you can see this under "Insights" - > "Contributors." Right now, this chart just commits on the default branch. It also helps you see if you are getting new contributors and if they return. Occasional contributors have lower commits. Without new and active contributors, your project can become dormant.

· Number of open issues and Pull requests: If these numbers get excessively high, you may require help with issue triaging and code checkup.

· Number of opened issues and opened pull requests: Opened issues implies someone thinks often about your project to open an issue. If the number increments after some time, it means people are keen on your project.

· Category of Contributions: Contributions can be of various types such as commits, grammatical fixes, fixes for bugs or replying to issues.

Financial Support

Apart from individual developers, projects fund-raise from organizations, people, or others to support continuous work. Corporate funding may go towards paying current contributors, taking care of the expenses of running projects, (for example, production & deployment charges), or putting into new highlights or thoughts. As open source's fame builds, finding funding for projects is as still under trial, but there are a couple of options available.

· Fund-raise for your work through crowdfunding efforts or sponsorships
Discovering sponsorships functions admirably on the off chance that you have a solid crowd or your project is well known.

· Make an income stream
Building upon your project, you might have the option to charge for business support.

· Apply for grants
Some product establishments and organizations offer awards for open source work.

If you are interested in creating a 3D model of your GitHub contribution graph, you can go here → https://skyline.github.com/

On June 8, The Digital Developer Conference: Data & AI will provide a free opportunity for developers to learn industry-recognized data and AI skills from IBM experts, partners, and the worldwide community—featuring hands-on experiences, IBM client stories, essentials and best practices, latest trends, and more. Sign-up here → ibm.biz/devcon-ai

Looking to use your open source skills to build #TechforGood? Join a community of problem solvers to fight back some of the world’s most pressing challenges for a chance to win $200K and support to deploy your project to a community that needs it the most! Answer the call at → http://callforcode.org

Follow us on Meetup to join us in the upcoming relevant workshops and webinars

Contributing to Open-Source - What's in it for you?

Mridul Bhandari — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 22:37:01 +0000

Contributing to Open Source

Committing to open-source can be frightening and a bit overwhelming. Maybe you're a Code Newbie or possibly you've been coding for a while, however you haven't found a task you felt open to adding to.

There are various reasons to commit to OSS (open-source software). Let's see what inspires developers to contribute.

To start with, there are a great deal of developers who believe that code ought to be open. They're the enthusiasts who want to improve the world, and it drives them to contribute code. The drive to share one's knowledge can be an incredible motivator.

Second, Open Source gives you an incredible beginning. Novices may begin by fixing minor things, for example, a bug in a library, sending a pull request, or in any event, composing a piece of documentation. Notwithstanding, amateur developers can likewise figure out how to compose "clean code" – code that is lucid and viable – while adding to open-source projects. At the point when developers understand that their code is presented to the world, it makes them center around making that code straightforward and uphold. Software engineers stick to commonly acknowledged standards inside a group, which incorporate standards for indents, descriptions of methods and classes, variable names, and following the don't-repeat-yourself rule. More or less, when adding to free projects you're obliged to adjust to the standards of a task.

Third, you find the opportunity to be important for a functioning open-source community where you can meet similar individuals and supporters. Besides, in case you're a freelancer and effectively add to open-source projects, you increment your odds of being seen by expected businesses.

The primary reason why developers go to free of charge projects is to be identified, to hone their programming abilities, and to become essential for the community. Let's see what needs to be considered before you begin contributing.

Starting an Open-Source Project

As a rule, you should open source your project when you feel comfortable having others view, and give criticism on your work.

Regardless of which stage you choose to open source your project, each task should incorporate the accompanying documentation:

· Open-source license
· README
· Contributing guidelines
· Code of conduct

As a maintainer, these segments will assist you with conveying assumptions, oversee commitments, and secure everybody's rights (counting your own). They essentially increment your odds of having a positive encounter.

If your project is on GitHub, placing these records in your root folder with the suggested filenames will assist GitHub with understanding and consequently surfacing them to your pursuers.

Composing a README

READMEs accomplish more than explaining how to utilize your project. They clarify why your project is relevant, and how your users & contributors can utilize & manage it.

In your README, attempt to respond to the accompanying inquiries:

· What does this project do?
· What purpose does this project serve?
· How to get started?
· Where would I be able to get more assistance, if required?

You can utilize your README to address different inquiries, similar to how you handle commitments, what the objectives are, and rules about licenses and attribution. In the event that you would prefer not to acknowledge commitments, or your project isn't yet prepared, record this data.

Here and there, individuals try not to compose a README on the grounds that they feel like the project is incomplete, or they don't need commitments. These excellent motivations to keep in touch with one.

At the point when you incorporate a README file in the root folder, GitHub will show it on the main page.

Composing your contributing rules

A CONTRIBUTING record advises contributors on how to participate. For instance, you may write steps for:

· Instructions to document a bug report (Create issue and pull request templates)
· Step by step instructions to recommend another element
· Step by step instructions to set up your environment and run tests

Further, a CONTRIBUTING document is a chance to convey your assumptions for commitments, for example,

· The sorts of commitments you're searching for
· Your guide or vision for the project
· How contributors can to (or can not) connect with you

Utilizing a warm, agreeable tone and offering explicit recommendations for commitments, (for example, composing documentation, or making a pull request) can go far in making newcomers to feel invited and eager to participate.

In the primitive phases of your project, your CONTRIBUTING document can be straightforward. You have to disclose how to report bugs or record issues, and any specialized prerequisites (like tests) to make a commitment.

Over the long run, you may add other every now and again posed inquiries to your CONTRIBUTING document. Recording this data implies less individuals will ask you similar inquiries again and again.

Contributing to other projects

If your goal is to learn how to collaborate with others or understand how open source works, consider contributing to an existing project. Start with a project that you already use and love. Contributing to a project can be as simple as fixing typos or updating documentation.

Looking to use #TechforGood? Join a community of problem solvers to fight back some of the world’s most pressing challenges and win up to $200K!

Answer the call on → http://callforcode.org

Follow us on Meetup to join us in the upcoming relevant workshops and webinars.

What is Open Source, and why is it important?

Mridul Bhandari — Tue, 09 Mar 2021 17:00:12 +0000

About

Open Source has been a buzz word for a few years. With IBM’s acquisition of Red Hat and initiatives like the Call for Code Global Challenges, Google & Microsoft open-sourcing it’s various projects, the investment and development in open-source projects has been rising exponentially. Seeing all this news around Open Source, there are a few questions which arise in our minds, like what exactly is "Open Source", why is there so much activity around it and how does it all work. In this blog, we will try to answer these questions.

Open Source, as the name suggests, is freely or widely available source code which can be modified or redistributed. It has a license called an open-source license which is part of the open-source software movement. It supports the usage of partial or the complete software.

The Open Source model is based on dispersed or decentralized development to promote open participation. Developers devote their time and skills to write, improve and document the code for further development. This leads to improvement and expansion of the project and allows anyone to access and revamp the code. Contributing to prominent Open Source projects leads to the collaboration of like minded developers who enhance the development of these projects like Kubernetes, Node.js & Hyperledger.

Availability

There are over millions of Open Source Projects available. Due to the plethora of options, it can be a bit challenging to find proper access to impactful projects. Here is a list of sources where you can access some popular Open Source Projects looking for contributions:

Utilization & Derivative Work

Since, a majority of the internet was built on open-source technology, you are most likely already utilizing open-source projects. Linux based Operating Systems and your code in GitHub are all examples. A large number of developers utilize open-source projects as building blocks for their projects.

Using open source: Pros and Cons

Advantages

There are lot of advantages of utilizing open-source technology.

The initial cost is zero or negligible. You can start by retrieving the code from a verified portal. Lot of developers, who are working on their projects can save up on costs and time by utilizing open-source projects.
Open-source projects are used by many developers as a result they are constantly being worked on by contributors which results in quick responses to bugs. This makes open-source projects highly reliable.
Continuous evolution due to open accessibility provides an added advantage of longevity of open-source projects. Risk of proprietary software companies shutting down is a common fear for many developers as this would lead to loss of support and updates. Lot of enterprises work with open-source. For example - Red Hat and IBM work together to make open source projects like Kubernetes Enterprise ready like Red Hat OpenShift.
Research has shown that open-source projects are more secure compared to as to proprietary software. This is due to the fact that developers are constantly working on bugs found by users whereas the same process for commercial software could take weeks or months.
Flexibility is the backbone of open source. Developers can freely modify the code conveniently as allowed by the license for the project. Proprietary software has limitations & user agreements that are not adjustable.

Disadvantages

With many benefits of open-source projects, there are also some disadvantages.

As the focus of open-source projects is on developers, these projects are built and documented for technical purposes. Therefore, they are not very user friendly and can be tough for people from non-technical backgrounds to play around with.
As lots of developers are working on OS projects, not all of them have noble intentions. Some out of spite or hostile intentions can tamper with the project, which can lead to catastrophes for users who would have to deal with issues like insecure code, malware, trojans, bugs etc.
Open-Source Developers can lose interest in a project due to lack of support and projects can be discontinued.

Use Open-Source Software Wisely

Developers are surrounded by open-source projects. As we already seen lot of advantages of using open-source projects. In this section, we will see how to use them wisely.

Do not replicate blindly. Tech is updated every fortnight, with these constant changes the replicated code in between the projects can be hard to keep track and update. This leads to unwanted bugs and loss of time in fixing these bugs.
Use reliable projects. Some projects attract more traction as compared to others. This can be attributed to the following facts – it’s backed by a big-name company, large number of contributors or quality & applicability of the project.
Verify the license. Lot of developers face issue as they sign up for projects and face legal consequences as they missed the fine print.
Update daily. As mentioned above, OS projects are updated frequently, for it to work as expected, we need to update the OS components in your project.

The upcoming blogs will focus on Open Source Guide, Open Source Education and my experience participating in the Hacktoberfest 2020 Challenge. Meanwhile you can learn how to Get Started with contributing to Open Source Projects.

On March 29th 2021, @fawazsiddiqi and I will be hosting a webinar on Your Quick Guide To Open Source Development and Software Development Trends. In this webinar, we will talk about open-source development, the hype for open source development, and how you can get started with becoming an open-source committer. We will discuss how you can become valuable in the open-source community, introduce you to the types of licenses for contributing projects, and how you can contribute to various other projects of interest. You can register here for this workshop.

Building a COVID-19 Virtual Banking Assistant

Mridul Bhandari — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 20:36:36 +0000

I just published a blog on Medium about Building a COVID-19 Virtual Banking Assistant. Link: https://link.medium.com/Socshzk0s8

Build an app using the Disaster Resiliency Starter Kit

Mridul Bhandari — Sun, 02 Aug 2020 15:58:42 +0000

I have published a blog on Medium sharing my experience of conducting a webinar with Here Technologies. Link: https://link.medium.com/dWMAtvD8e8