FOSS MEC consists of a group of bright individuals from all different fields who came together to bring forward tech and Open Source Software at MEC. From people who are working on Government funded Machine Learning Projects to doing Summer of code with Google, to people having their own start-ups and Mentoring in Google Code-In, our club has become a hub of knowledge working for the common goal of bringing forth the importance of Open Source in our college, which is all happening by people volunteering.
As the most young club at MEC, only 6 months old, we have considerable achievments even though we are a quite young club. From teaching over 70 people to use Git and Github, and conducting an Ethical Hacking workshop by bring the renowned team Bi0s into the college, and taking over college projects to be done using Open Source, we have quite a few acheivements to boast about and we don't plan to stop.
So coming back to our point of this article. Last year when we began, we had no organised way to select people, we had to manually select the best people from over 200 tech oriented people. We needed determined people who were willing to work for this organisation with their heart and soul. We needed people who were passionate about learning and who were willing to volunteer for Open Source. We needed smart, young minds who were keen on learning and who were always looking for opportunities to move ahead.
This article is actually a tutorial for selecting a 10-20 able, working students from a pool of over 300 students. Don't worry if you aren't familiar with anything, if you are ready to work for Open Source, you'll have all the oppertunities in the world open for you and people ready to mentor and guide you to achieve it.
-
Good Placements? Working for Open Source will make your resume stand out when applying for a job. It'll without no doubt give a boost to your career.
-
Work during college? Working for Open Source organisation can sometimes even land you in a job. If you start contributing to Open Source Organisations, and if you're a good enough developer it can land you in a job, even before your final year. And you don't have to be programmer, if you're good with content writing and a good manager, it could also get you in.
-
Money? Have you heard of Google Summer of Code? Working for Open Source Organisation for a mere 60 days can get you a sum of Rs. 2,00,000. Over 1200 students participate out of which 600 students are from India and there had been GSoC Students from MEC in the past, working for reputed Organisations like Debian and Fedora, which FOSSMEC can get you in touch with. There had been a Ex-MECian, who participated in Google Summer of Code for all of his four years, and when the stipend was Rs 3,50,000. So just imagine four years!! That's 4 X 3,50,000 that's approximately Rs 14,00,000 from working a few months for different Open Source Organisation during college!!! So first year is not too early to start. Okay, so know the importance of Open Source now? Let's go!
Read more about Summer of Code
- Enroll in the task by adding your details to This sheet. For reference, we have added a sample task of how we expect the task to be done.
Follow through with this Small Tutorial
Caution: The instructions are very vague, and the task is excruciatingly hard for beginner, take your time, seek for help to complete it.(Warning: only Algorithmic questions will be valued) You'll have to do group discussions and work together as a team for finishing it. The people who complete this will be considered for entry into FOSS MEC and the top winner will get exciting FOSS MEC Prizes!
- It is best to follow this task on a Linux Machine, which already comes with Git Installed, it's best to install it first and then coming back to do this task. Always remember that this task is not to see who is first but to learn about various aspects of Open Source and Tech and also learn about one Programming Language of your choice along the line.
- Create a Github Account and fill in the details and set up Git on your local machine and configure it. Learn basic Github commands. (Linux preferred, but can be done on any operating system)
- Fork this repository onto your local machine. (This part of the task is given as a full on tutorial here)
- In the folder you've just forked create a folder with the folder name as your GitHub Username, as an addition for us to know who you are, create a
README.mdand add something about yourself and why you'd like to work for FOSS MEC and Open Source and a bit about yourself with your Class and section. And commit this file and give a Pull Request to our official Repository, add the link to the Pull Request in the Google Sheet.
-
For completing this part of the task, you should be required to have knowledge of at least one programming language and a HackerRank account. This task should be done simultaneously as you learn a language.
-
There are a set of problems which are given at https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/algorithms/warmup. Take your time and try to learn a language of your own choice by using any book, any online course and solve the set of problems. Remember it's not about who comes first, it is about what all you learn along the way. The questions will start from easy and will become very hard, you can complete as much as you want, but completing more will give you an edge over the competition. Start from
Warm Upsection in HackerRank and move up difficulty. -
Each time a challenge is solved, update in the Google Sheet in the
Link to your Submissionssection, add the link to your own submission. Remember the sheet is public and everyone can see your submissions. Also take the solved challenge and add it to a file in your own folder and commit and do a Pull Request to our main repo. The sample task can be seen in carrotss folder, who has tried the task.