As Outreachy required for students, when this program starts they should post blogs every two week, but no such requirements for mentors. However, as a Outreachy mentor, I plan to share what I am thinking during this time, and post what I’ve learnt by the end of some mile-stones.
I would like to record some notes and thinking in blog posts, but may not so frequency as weekly, maybe monthly. As for language, I prefer English for that, but some reason, I am not good at writing English essay, so that I may post some Chinese blog future.
Before start…
In 2015, I am a mentor of Google Summer of Code, and mentoring two students for a project that implement a OTR (Off-the-Record) for a web-based IM tool. So I am confidential to apply being a mentor in Outreachy.
Before, I am a GNOME Foundation member for more than five years, doing localization and promoting GNOME as well as other FOSS project and philosophy in China. Actually, I raised two idea for this round of Outreachy. One is building a full-function event website to replace GUADEC website, but I found a new project named open-event could cover; Another is adding OTR (Off-the-Record) encryption support for Empathy. This idea dead due to Empathy are no longer developing and the developer said he never implement OTR any more.
However, one day, I upgraded my system and GNOME 3.22 released in Debian Stretch. It is angered me that some crucial model of GNOME, such as gnome-control-center, are not fully translated, so I decided to do it by myself. Suddenly I realized that it should be a good opportunity for Outreachy interns. And if I raised this idea may helping Outreachy promoting in China. It should be a win-win idea!
I was working on Embedded Linux and worked in several training agent as a training mentor and evangelist before. Why I start mentoring a Outreachy project, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard, because that program will serve to organize and measure the best of my energy and skills, because that challenge is one that I am willing to accept, one I am unwilling to postpone, and one I intend to contribute to FOSS projects…
About the intern – Mandy Wang
November 8th, Mandy Wang was selected as a intern of Outreachy 13, working on “Enhance Chinese localization and update guidelines” which mentored by me.
Mandy Wang, who are the first intern that contact me at the beginning of this round Outreachy. She is enthusiastic about free software development and contribution. Before, she has experience at FOSS L10n by joining in OpenKeyChain project, Beijing GNU/Linux User Group and translating related articles and news.
As for this idea, enhance Chinese translation and update guideline, here is how she contributed for this idea. She did much more better than I expected, more than 300 entries of high quality translated as of today. What she translated will be committed to the next GNOME release. Furthermore, she not only works limit in this idea, but also works in other GNOME-related projects, such us bug reports and testing, she pushed me to tell her how to file bug, how to communicate with other team and how to apply Git permission. Amazingly, she also developed a countdown widget for Outreachy admin web during application just for ‘scratching her own itch’. In conclusion, I am very proud to mentoring her, not only for her astonishing contributions but also involves in GNOME community deeply, I believe she may become a good maintainer in the future.
Future…
For me, I would be involved in Google Summer of Code time by time, and as a GNOME Foundation member, I would love to be involved in Outreachy Program as a mentor, mentoring more and more students and girls into FOSS world. And I would love to promoting FOSS in China as usual. By working in Beijing GNU/Linux User Group, Fedora China and GNOME Foundation, I could make my contributions to these projects. And for Mandy, I suppose she could involved in Google Summer of Code, which was she failed in this year. Well then…I do love her so much!
I believe GNOME would receive more students/intern applications for their Google Summer of Code and Outreachy next year, and make GNOME great again!
Yes, There’s a road unveiled under my feet…