OSH: Rules, Benefits, Timeline and more!
What is OSH?
Open Source Hack is a virtual open source program by AnitaB.org Open Source Community. OSH aims to bring together individuals and communities from various fields like UI/UX, development, testing and beyond through innovative and impactful projects like Mentorship System, AnitaB forms, BridgeInTech, STEM Diverse TV, and more.
Rules
This year, the contest is running from 1st July to 15th July, during which contributors have to submit their pull requests while pertaining to certain guidelines.
Usually, AnitaB.org welcomes issues created by contributors, be it features, enhancements or bugs. After the issues are opened, project maintainers check and add appropriate labels to them. But, for OSH, participants have to work on issues that have already been created and labelled as "Open Source Hack".
Once a PR is created, it must be reviewed and approved by a mentor/admin for it to be eligible as a valid PR and get a contributor their digital certificate.
PRs must be submitted for the following issues labelled to be eligible for a certificate:
• Documentation/Training (at least 1 PR)
• User Interface (at least 1 PR)
• Outreach/Research (at least 1 PR)
• (at least 1 PR from any of the below):
--> Quality Assurance
--> Coding
- After submission of PRs, contributors have to submit a google form, listing their PRs in each category.
Benefits
Contributors will be receiving several perks including, but not limited to:
Improved skill set and an opportunity to work on real-world projects with global community.
Opportunity to network with and be guided by skilled mentors.
Experience in contributing to user level software.
Increased community and peer recognition.
Digital Certificate of Completion.
LinkedIn Badge.
Timeline
The timeline of the entire contest, including selection of volunteers/mentors, project repositories and participants is as given below:
Eligibility
Registration for OSH is free of cost. The program serves as a platform to all participants from varied and diverse backgrounds.
Here is a word from AnitaB.org about it:
Anyone can participate! There can be a 13 year old contributor who's been coding since primary school or a retired 70 year old who has never coded before!
Prerequisites
• Access to a computer.
• Access to the internet.
• A GitHub account.
My experience and takeaways from OSH
I came to know about OSH from a LinkedIn post. Pretty intrigued, I dived into the contest's website and registered myself. I walked myself through the list of issues opened and labelled as "Open Source Hack", and decided to work on a documentation improvement first to make myself comfortable.
Entered Mentorship System Android repository. My first documentation issue under this project was pretty simple as it was based on documenting the UI of the deployed app. The approval of my first PR ever in this organization became a confidence booster. Later, I was assigned an issue wherein I worked on a minor enhancement of Filter functionality to add a proper toast message when no user with common skills was found. I also worked on an Outreach/Research issue in which I had to research on and document why MVVM architecture was chosen to build this Android application by comparing and contrasting it to other architectural patterns.
Working on an entirely new tech stack and engaging with mentors to look for solutions to even the smallest hitches have taught me that it's okay to not know everything.
STEM Diverse TV
About the Project
STEM Diverse TV is a project under AnitaB.org which focuses on gathering and providing inspiring, motivating, informative, educational and supportive videos about diversity in STEM.
At the moment all content is coming from Youtube, but the content is soon to be extended with other resources.
Goal
Video content was chosen for STEM Diverse TV to promote and increase diversity in STEM because this is a growing trend in younger generations and this specific generation can make a real impact on the future rate of diversity in STEM.
The organization, through this project, is trying to focus on all areas of diversity and are here to hear from every underrepresented group in STEM.
For now, the backend goal is to serve data, however, in future, machine learning and big data analysis are most likely to be included in order to provide more content.
Dissecting the Project
The entire project is divided into two separate repositories:
stem-diverse-tv-cms repo
It is the Content Management System for managing the content of STEM Diverse TV.
It controls the front end part of the project to add, edit, and/or remove content of the platform apps.
Tech Stack
ReactJS
Firebase
stem-diverse-tv repo
This is the backend of the project and it's hosted on Heroku.
Tech Stack
Languages: Python 3.x, Javascript (Docusaurus)
Framework: Flask 1.1.2 Flask Extensions: Flask-RESTX 0.3.0 , Flask-SQLAlchemy 2.5.1, Flask-JWT-Extended 4.1.0
Hosting Service: Heroku
Database: PostgreSQL 13.2