PALLAVI SHASTRY: We're here to share an amazing
Rails Girls Summer of Code experience.
It was an internship of about three months,
and we were the team Diasbits.
So Dias is the short form of the Open Source project
we picked up called Diaspora and 'bits,'
we were trying to be the tiny, teeny tiny bits of Diaspora
by contributing to Diaspora,
and that's how we picked up the name Diaspora.
So we are- I'm Pallavi.
I'm working as a developer in Bang the Table
and this is my coding partner Sakshi Jain.
She's a final year engineering student from Rajasthan.
And let's say more about Rails Girls.
Sakshi Jain: So we're here to share about the fun
we had during Rails Girls summer of code,
and so we'll be talking less technical and more,
sharing more of the fun.
So, Rails Girls- the aim of Rails Girls is to give
tools to women and a community so that they
understand technology and build it ideas.
So this they do by providing them
a great experience and making technology more approachable.
So let's see more about Rails Girls, here.
[VIDEO]
Girl: We want to give the girls a chance to build a web application from concept to code.
Boy: And we think it's important that the girls learn to see the web as a platform for
their ideas.
[indecipherable lecture & chatting]
Voice Over: It's really awesome to see you all here,
because I hope that you're actually going to start building web apps and services.
Boy: So we want to get the girls to destroy the world!
P.S.: So after connecting in a number of workshops and meet-ups,
so the Rails Girls organizers decided to take it to the next step
and that's how the Rails Girls Summer of Code was born.
So Rails Girls Summer of Code-
the main idea was to get women and girls into Open Source.
And it works very similar to Google Summer of Code
and Ruby Summer of Code, where students will be paid,
and the students are free to pick up any Open Source project work on.
And like the Google Summer of Code and the Ruby Summer of Code,
the idea of Rails Girls Summer of Code was to expand
the knowledge and skills by contributing to great Open Source Projects.
So you don't have to come up with a sophisticated code
by the end of your internship.
So there were about forty applications from about
one forty students from all over the world.
And few of them were outstandingly prepared,
few of them had their own support networks
from local community and coaches,
and few of them had their own personal stories.
And this
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was the teams that got selected from
different parts of the world, and we were the team from India.
So we were a team. So team consisted of participants,
coaches and mentors. So the participants were me and Sakshi.
It was a paired event. And coaches-
coaches are the people who you used to help us with all our doubts,
you know, help us whenever we get stuck with anything.
And mentors are the people who know in and out about the project we picked up.
So we picked up Diaspora and we had Diaspora developers as our mentors.
And these people were our coaches.
Arihant Godha, Neha, and Tejas Dinkar,
the guy who spoke about native extensions.
It was not only coding, the whole three months.
We had a lot of fun activities,
not only reporting or blogging about the work
we did or the coding we did.
We did have regular interactions,
hang-outs with our mentors, other teams,
and we met a lot of awesome people.
And we got a lot of goodies from all the sponsors.
And Sakshi will tell us more about the project.
S.J.: Yeah, so let's see about what projects did we actually work for.
We chose to work for Rails Girls App generator and Diaspora.
Initially we thought that we'd be working for Diaspora
for the whole three months, but Diaspora is a huge project,
and it was really difficult for us,
for us beginners to understand what actually Diaspora is,
and how we should contribute to it.
And it requires a lot of knowledge of Rails and other things.
So we chose, we started off with Rails Girls App generator.
This project also included our visits to Rails Girls events in Bangalore and
00:06:09.90?? .
So, what do we actually do in the Rails Girls events
is that we learn more about Rails,
and we get to meet a lot of people and we can meet our coaches,
we can ask any doubt we have in our mind.
And also there's a lot of chance to have nice pictures of Friday hug.
So during this project, what we did is-
Rails Girls App generator is about adding comments
targeted at Rails Girls students
and it removes more complicated stuff
like respond-to blocks and JSON stuff in controllers, et cetera.
So this project also includes a
JQ 00:06:58.37 ??
based website hosted on GitHub pages,
which gives pointers to the guides and other resources -
beginners, intermediate, et cetera.
So after finishing off with Rails Girls App generator,
which took us about a month to figure out what exactly has to be done,
and we learnt more about Rails, et cetera, then we switched on to Diaspora.
Diaspora is a legacy-aware decentralized social network,
which gives the user whole control of their data.
And it was touted by the media as a Facebook-killer.
So, why is it called as a Facebook-killer?
Because it is completely different
and it gives the user complete freedom and privacy.
So I should not speak much about Diaspora because I haven't contributed to it much.
Let's see- next slide.
Yeah. So before contributing to Diaspora,
we had some doubt in our mind as to what exactly
should we know about Diaspora,
and how should we even contribute to it?
So how- should we start reading
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books from starting to end,
or should we start learning all the languages:
Ruby, Javascript, et cetera.
So, this was the answer which was given to us by the Diaspora developer.
He said that, "Never try to learn everything up front,
that doesn't work. Better pick upa little task and learn what you need to solve it."
So this, we formed as a principle
and so now we use this concept whenever
we start contributing to any Open Source project.
Also, one important thing that what prior knowledge
should we have before making any contributions.
He said that git workflow is the most important thing,
and learn everything else as you go.
So this is a concept which helps you to save your time.
Just pick up one task and research about it and try to solve it.
If you have less time, that means you should not start
the reading whole of the languages.
It is good if you know everything, but,
if you have less time that means you set about a particular bug,
which you want to fix.
So we picked up some issues from Diaspora issue list,
and these were the few issues from the beginner's category,
and these are some of the issues:
Blocking people from the profile page, fix commenting,
comment still displayed after a fail posting, et cetera.
So let me explain to you about the blocking feature,
which we introduced into Diaspora.
So as you can see in the image,
first we had to design what,
where should the block icon be placed on the profile page in Diaspora.
So we went through a series of design steps.
As you can see, we had the block in the drop-down,
and then a little finishing was required.
Finally we came down to one design, which was accepted by most of the people.
So through all this we learned about how to communicate
in Open Source projects, what,
how to ask Diaspora developers how do they review, et cetera.
After fixing our design, then we,
what we did was, we had to figure out what exactly,
where exactly the code should be placed.
So we had to figure out which files will be effected.
So all this we could do with the help of Diaspora developers.
So, Pallavi, what did we learn?
P.S.: Rails, of course, and the Git workflow,
and we had this oh-my-god situations when we had much conflicts.
So, how do we branch out? How do we fix it?
And then how do we send a poll-request?
And how do developers review it? And how they comment?
The whole Git workflow basically, and working remotely.
So Sakshi's from Ajmer. I'm from Banglore.
So for the first few days, in the beginning,
it was difficult for us to communicate.
And also the developers are from Berlin,
and coach is luckily a developer from Banglore.
And most of the time it was through pinging
or email or IRC we could communicate with each other.
And not only fixing the bugs, we also,
it was a test in development.
So we learned a lot about RSPEC or 00:11:53.15?? and all that.
S.J.: The impact.
The impact is that we are standing here and speaking in front of you.
So the whole Rails Girls Summer of Code journey
had a great impact on our life and career.
So we know, like, what exactly we want to do now, and what is our destination.
Though we still have to learn a lot and,
it made us realize that we too have the capability
to implement our ideas and we got to meet a lot of
people from all over the world.
We understood the learning strategy of different people
from different countries. We realized that we too have the,
fortunately we too have the chance to make things,
to change the world and make things better, and happen.
Thank you!
Thank you to the coaches, to the mentors,
to the organizers of Rails Girls Summer of Code journey,
to the Garden City Ruby Conference organizers
for giving us this opportunity to speak here.
Thank you all.
P.S.: Any questions?
V.O.: We do have time for questions, yeah.
QUERANT: Just wanted to say, good job and all the rest.
P.S.: Thank you.
Anyone, any questions?
QUERANT: I just want to ask like, what are the
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challenges that you faced with this? I see a lot of-
I'm not engend- I'm gonna not engender women,
or something like that, but I see a lot of fresher sort you know,
people who are just doing their college
and are finding a real tough time basically
to learn technology and things.
Like how do you break that ice, how did you guys do it in specific?
P.S.: So, we do have that feeling, like,
we felt timid sometimes because we don't have
the required technical skills, but then once we got into it,
we eventually picked up. We slowly picked up.
And I think the best thing would be to just,
just don't feel timid, just pick up,
eventually you'll pick up everything.
S.J.: And yeah, the Rails Girls Summer of Code
organizers were so welcoming.
Anything you can ask them on IRC just ping them,
they'll give you an answer, you can research,
you can talk to your coaches.
So that's how we got to learn a lot of things.
QUERANT: OK, so I wanted to ask you,
have you followed up in your college
and have you told them about it?
What steps did you take to make people aware?
Because I did my GSub this summer and I've been trying to do stuff.
So what are you guys doing in college?
P.S.: Yes, we did have a similar talk in college,
we introduced the rest of the girls to this.
And I'm not very sure when it's gonna happen again,
but I make sure some of my juniors will take part.
QUERANT: All right, that's great.
P.S.: OK
QUERANT: Again, I love your confidence.
This was a great talk. So my question is,
the learnings that you've had in college,
how much was it applicable in this experience?
The useful stuff?
P.S.: Yeah, we got to know that we didn't learn anything,
and we have to start learning.
S.J.: Exactly.
QUERANT: So, finally, Emacs or Vin??
P.S.: Yeah, not so much. OK, he has a question.
QUERANT: What is the answer by the way?
QUERANT: So that was a good talk. Part of- slightly different question.
What are you personal plans to take this forward,
Rails Girls initiatives and the Rails Girls Summer of Code initiatives?
How you gonna take it forward, because I've seen in the past,
people come up here on stage, get there visibility,
get the limelight, get into the corporate bubble,
and disappear out of this.
S.J.: So we are standing here, that means we're inspiring students.
QUERANT: Right now. What are you all going to do?
S.J.: Yeah.
P.S.: OK, we're still contributing to Diaspora,
there are few peers left under review, and now we know,
we have a fair idea of how to contribute to Open Source,
so we'll pick up some other Open Source project.
I tried my hands on
00:16:56.77 ??
Yeah. Pretty much take it forward that way.
QUERANT: And one request.
Inspire others, please,
other girls especially to get onto the same boat here.
Well done, thanks.
P.S.: Thank you.
So we have a lot of time for questions.
QUERANT: I have a sister, who is going to
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this year. So do you have any statements for
what should I tell her to do or ask her to follow?
P.S.: So basically when we applied, they asked us to show sample codes.
So I think, this was not only specific to Ruby on Rails,
any web framework, anything that is related to web.
I mean, there were other teams who were working on JavaScript.
So if she's interesting, ask her to have some sample codes,
so that'll help her to get into.
And compared to Google Summer of Code and Ruby Summer of Code,
this wasn't so competitive.
I mean, I think it was the first time.
S.J.: Yeah, it was.
P.S.: And only a few of them knew it.
So it should be easy to get into it.
V.O.: We do have time for more questions.
QUERENT: I don't actually have a question,
but I have a piece of advice. In India, right now,
we have a good amount of Ruby developers male
to which we look forward and we plan to be more helpful,
we get some inspiration from them, but there's no female developers,
as such, where the new community which is coming in to,
they look forward to any female that can inspire them.
So I advise you guys to equally be active in social media,
so that it creates a word out of it, and it takes that,
it takes forward from there, onwards.
P.S.: OK.
QUERANT: I like your introduction, but then, you know,
I like the confidence with which you guys are standing there,
not that you're girls or guys standing there,
but even two guys standing there,
I would have been really happy to see two people
come up there and do the things they're doing.
I think there enough female developers that are kicking ass,
I think, you don't have to look beyond a girl who can kick ass.
But, good job because, it's just the confidence,
keep the confidence going, and all the rest.
P.S.: OK, thank you.
He has a question.
QUERANT: So a lot of people, including myself,
have a issue with confidence?
But did you did mention that you went through a period of feeling timid.
And I've actually worked with some juniors as well,
and I do see that as a problem.
Could you explain a little bit more of how
personally you can overcome your timidness,
or any stress level of learning so many things?
S.J.: So I should thank my parents, I think,
for introducing me into a school which was a kind of a great development...
so, should I name my school? It is Sophia Senior secondary school from Madrid,
and I'm really thankful to my teachers, you know,
their encouragement and their support, so I am here today.
QUERANT: Hello. My question is how did you come across Rails Girls
in the first place? As in how did you know it was there?
P.S.: OK, so, that's a nice question.
I was a part of an organization called Free Software ??
So they help students to get into Open Source pro-
I mean, you know, introduce them to Open Source and all that.
So I subscribed to their mailing list
and I happened to see this and I thought OK,
let me try, and then started coding in Ruby
and all that, and then applied for Rails Girls Summer of Code.
And it's the same thing with her, even she came,
she found out about Rails Girls Summer of Code through some mailing list.
S.J.: In my career of engineering I,
actually I was searching for some new language to learn about,
so I asked one coach, ??, he told me to start learning Ruby.
So I found it easy to understand at first. But though,
when you go in depth of Ruby, it is more complicated.
So it requires a lot of practice in implementation.
QUERANT: K, I've got one question for you.
So if you had one message to pass on to other women in technology
or other girls who are looking to get into technology, what would that be?
S.J.: That would be that if you want to apply for any program,
just go for it, don't think that
you don't have that much of technical background,
or you don't know these things, that you can't apply.
So it's better to just push yourself and you'll eventually learn.
P.S.: And also like just look for any of these women-centric programs.
You know they pay you money.
QUERANT: By the way there's also the normal ?? program.
P.S.: List of women-centric programs would be,
of course the Google Summer of Code is there,
the twenty-four students, and there's ?? outreach program for women and uh,
Ruby Summer of Code, and Rails Girls Summer of Code.
S.J.: And the Next Foundation.
P.S.: Yeah, the Next Foundation. Oh, yeah ?? is also there.
Thank you all.