Outreachy Journey Started

This winter, I will be interning with Outreachy for Tekton on the project "Create Gitops Based Calendar with Tekton". under the mentorship of Christie Wilson. This post is about my journey from an IT professional to an Outreachy intern.

Motivation to apply to Outreachy

I came across “Outreachy" in 2018 when I was looking for an exciting opportunity to get started with open source projects & uplift my career. My boyfriend (now husband) advised me to apply for Outreachy. I didn't give much attention to it, but by the time I thought to apply, the 2018 winter deadline has already crossed. With a busy IT life, I completely forgot to apply for the summer 2019 intake as well. Later, when applications opened for winter 2019, I decided to give a shot. I never worked with the Opensource community or remotely either and in fact, I had no idea what Opensource is all about. I was excited about the fact that If I get selected I will be working with various contributors and probably I will have a chance to improve my skills. Hence, once I was selected as an Outreachy intern, I resigned from my company to work and learn trending skills by contributing to an open-source project. 

What made me chose the project?

I was working as a Linux administrator in my last organization and it had minimal exposure to writing code. Frankly, when I saw the projects from different organizations, I was quite confused to choose an appropriate project. However, I listed down every project and found out that Tekton is most apt for me as it matched some of my skills that I learnt in the past and had a lot of other skills that I wanted to learn. One more reason to select Tekton was that I got immense help from fellow community members to get started which was quite encouraging & friendly for a newbie.

Whom to ask questions if we are stuck?

As soon as I finalized the project, I joined their slack channel and started observing the communication between the community members. When I get any doubt, I posted in the #general channel and I always got a prompt response. Later I started asking questions to my mentor whenever I had doubt and she was always there to clarify my doubts. 

Stressed about the Outreachy and FOSS?

Don't be! It is a process of learning and getting better. I would say just do your part, don't overthink and you'll get through it. No one is perfect and so can't you, but the only thing we can do is keep working towards our goal. If the technology is new to you, get familiar with it and learn about it. One thing for sure to be kept in the mind that does not get demotivated even if you don't get selected for the first time, you'll be selected the next time. Never hesitate to contact the fellow community members as you'll get majority help from them.

There will be more updates in the next post. Be positive and happy learning!