A quick tip for the young and ambitious

Life, like surfing, is all about the wave selection and reading waves is a tough skill. If you are looking for the exponential wave to surf for career growth, then read on to unravel the mystery.

Have you ever pursued something difficult that seemed the logical thing to do to step up in your career, and then feeling motivated you went on to tackle the monster all by yourself, only to later find yourself almost crushed? If so, consider enrolling yourself in a mentorship program.

‘There are options in life. It’s not necessary that high achievements can only be garnered by choosing difficult options.’ – Dear Zindagi Movie

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Ten ways in which FOSSASIA ’17 helped me grow

The FOSSASIA OpenTechSummit is Asia’s leading Open Technology conference for developers, technologists, scientists, entrepreneurs and IT professionals to get together to showcase latest technologies, communicate, exchange ideas, learn from each other, and collaborate. This year the event took place from March 17th – 19th at the Science Centre Singapore. During the three days, the events not only introduced me to lots of new ideas but also gave me a fresh outlook on existing ones.

Beginner’s Guide: Attending OpenStack Summit

Wondering what’s in store for Boston Summit, May 8-11? Apart from attending dozens of sessions led by professionals in the industry, meeting a ton of new people, and taking home lots of great swag, you’ll certainly bring home a great deal of thoughts and become capable of contributing more efficiently. As per reports, around 50 – 60 percent OpenStack summit attendees are first-timers. Being a grantee of the travel support program and speaker at the previous OpenStack Summit, I hope this piece conveys my enriching journey and distances you from feeling overwhelmed in the whirlwind of activity.

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Technical Presentation: Jumping to the other side of the fence

Giving my first technical talk at the event “Opportunities for Women and Beyond” conducted by Women Techmakers’ group was exhilarating. After all the preparation and butterflies in my stomach, I wanted to reach out to more people by sharing it on my blog. But once I started jotting it down, my mind raced in all sorts of directions… so, I took it a step further.

Wrapping Up: OpenStack – Outreachy Internship

The pencil down date has passed. It’s been one heck of a journey! If done right, it is perhaps one of the world’s best experiences for aspiring developers. I got to learn from some of the most talented developers while chasing time zones and ideologies. The opportunity to explore beyond the scope of formal academics, be it the code base, version control system, code development practices, review process or any other unfamiliar terrain I came across, is unmatched. Even the frustrating moments, made me grow not only in skills but also as a person.

In the following article I will walk you through my internship journey along with some tips based on my experience.

How to set up work environment to become an OpenStack Developer?

Although there are developer and wiki guides on how to quickly create an OpenStack development environment, I found them bit overwhelming as a beginner. After reading various docs and taking help from some core-contributors in OpenStack, I came up with the following easy-to-follow guide. If you still face any problems, feel free to reach out by commenting below.

1. Install Ubuntu in an Oracle Virtual Box

A virtual machine(VM) is recommended because usually, we don’t want lots of dependencies installed in our everyday environment . A VM allows us to install all of our necessary dependencies without interfering with anything else on the system and at the same time, prevents others from interfering with us. Also, if at any point we mess up things, it becomes easier to start over from scratch.

Depression – The secret battle I fought against myself

“According to the National Institute of Mental Health, depression is a common but serious mood disorder that causes severe symptoms that affect how one feels, thinks, and handles daily activities, such as sleeping, eating, or working.”

But having gone through Major Depressive Disorder, I can say it’s much…much worse. Worse than the image the above words or for that matter any words, can portray. It almost killed me! Statistics say, every 30 seconds, somewhere, someone is taking away his/her life because of “depression”.

I last swallowed antidepressants and sleeping pills about 4 months back and even today I can’t be more grateful to the little everyday joys which I would call blessings now:-

Taking one thyroxine pill vs. swallowing 13 pills everyday simply to function.

Outreachy Internship – What, Why and the How?

 

Before we dive into the article, a little about me – I am working in OpenStack on The Functional Testing Development for the Keystone Client Library, under the mentorship of Mr. Samuel de Medeiros Queiroz as an Outreachy May-Aug 2016 intern.

What is an Outreachy Internship?

Outreachy helps women (cis and trans), trans men, and gender-queer people (basically people of under-represented backgrounds) get involved in free and open source software by working remotely. Additionally, it is open to residents and nationals of the United States of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latin@, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.

Outreachy internships were inspired in many ways by Google Summer of Code and by how few women applied for it in the past.

What is OpenStack?

OpenStack is a free and open-source software platform for cloud computing. It is a global collaboration of developers and cloud computing technologists producing the open standard cloud computing platform for both public and private clouds. It is written in Python and is designed as a Cross-platform Operating system.

It began in 2010 as a joint project of Rackspace Hosting and NASA. As of 2016, it is managed by the OpenStack Foundation to promote OpenStack software and its community. It is backed by a vibrant community of developers and some of the biggest names in the industry. Hundreds of the world’s largest brands rely on OpenStack to run their businesses every day, reducing costs and helping them move faster.