I am an undergraduate student at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology. I have known the FOSS culture and Open source organizations since past 8 months and love it.
I belong to a university, where there are brilliant coders and students with great potentials, but there are few who have got in-depth knowledge about open source, how anyone can become a part of it and there exists many misconceptions about it. I have read up how Gnome supports new contributes and coders and encourages them and I really like it.
This is often considered as a male-dominated field, where hardly women are aware of it. To increase the awareness among women in software development, hats off to programs like Outreach Program for Women. I was unfortunate to hear about it after the deadline elasped and couldn't participate in it but fortunate enough to know its hand in hand another program- Google Summer of Code and be a part of it.
Amongst the 17 students selected from our university this year, I am the only girl student. None of my female batchmates or female seniors present at college have got the same opportunity as me. Many of my batchmates, juniors and friends ask me how do I start. I do explain them to the best I can, but still I feel something is lacked and I can't guide them 100%.
I use Gnome and its various softwares. One of them, I feel more attached with is GCompris. My younger sister loves it and plays it all day long. I have many plans in head for its improvement. I have downloaded its source but had got no time to hack upon it due to current project. I plan working for it after september and do a full time project for its improvement and adding new activities.
I am willing to attend GUADEC 2013 to learn more about Gnome, involve my fellow batchmates, junior and friends and also for myself to contribute to it. I want to meet this awesome community and wonderful people from it, but I am in financial crisis. It would be great if I can get some sponsership so that I can attend this conference and bridge the gap.
I am interested in many talks which includes First Step Towards Contributing, Gnome in Open Source Community, Gnome Outreach from Three Point zero to Hero,FLOSS community outreaches, Outreach Preogram for Women-Lessons in Collaboration, Foss & Education. I am also willing to volunteer, if given an opportunity to come which may smooth the management and I can get to help this awesome community :)
I know it has been too long, but thanks for spending you time and reading it :)
Best Regards,
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Kesha Shah.
