Sandeep is one of our 2022 GitHub Externship – Winter Cohort students working on our Talawa project. He started formal coding with the Externship in January and has been collaborating with other students and mentors on his various GitHub pull requests.
Welcome Sandeep!
I’m Sandeep Valpasani, a pre-final year undergraduate student pursuing a B.E. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Sathyabama Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, India. I’m a self-taught full-stack developer with expertise in different web technologies. My interest lies in developing web applications that solve any problem. I enjoy contributing to Open Source projects. In my free time, I like writing scripts that automates the boring stuff, participating in Hackathons. I also worked as a part-time freelancer in developing full-stack applications. I also engage in tech communities in my free time.
Currently, I’m working as a GitHub Extern for Palisadoes Foundation. Over the period, I’ll be working on testing, improving the Architecture of talawa API. I always wanted to work on real-world applications and I’m happy because I’m in the right place working under the guidance of mentors.
Apart from coding, I also play cricket, badminton during my vacation. In my free time, I enjoy listening to music, watching cricket and movies, spending time in nature.
The Palisadoes Foundation announces its acceptance into the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) as a mentoring organization. Palisadoes previously participated in 2021.
Established in 2005, the Google Summer of Code offers developers from around the world stipends to write code for various Open Source software projects. GSoC will run for nine months this year. The aim is to attract new contributors to be regular Open Source contributors
“From Summer to Autumn, many new contributors to our Talawa projects will benefit from this program. GSoC participants this year will include not only students but also industry professionals. This is an exceptional Google sponsored activity,” said Peter Harrison, President of the Palisadoes Foundation. “The program helps us to not only get some great code written, but also to introduce developers into Open Source development and hopefully recruit some new long-term Committers.”
Participants are encouraged to discuss ideas with mentoring organizations and finalize proposals for projects by the April 19 deadline. Palisadoes mentors have proposed numerous ideas for Talawa projects in mobile development, web applications, and practical API concepts. Participants may choose from the Talawa “Ideas Page” or suggest their own project for approval. The Talawa software repositories can be found on our organization’s GitHub page. The GSoC website has a complete timeline that you can review. Participants can learn more about our projects on the Talawa GSoC FAQ page.
“GSoC gives students the chance to work on industry-leading Open Source projects, collaborate with diverse communities, and gain real world experience related to their academic pursuits,” added Harrison. “We are proud to have mentored so many talented students over the years, and furthered our mission of providing software products for the public good. It’s a rewarding experience both for the students and the Talawa community at-large.”
Since 2016, The Palisadoes Foundation has actively participated in furthering the education of software engineering students through its various programs. The Calico Challenge, modeled on GSoC, has mentored over 30 Jamaicans attending local universities. Like GSoC, students received stipends upon achieving predefined goals when contributing to the Foundation’s GitHub projects.
“This second GSoC success would not have happened without the faith our Jamaican corporate sponsors had in our Calico vision. Their support since 2016 in terms of time, people and financing has been invaluable, ” Harrison explained, “The GSoC acceptance is a clear vote of faith from arguably the world’s largest software company. This is a huge global endorsement of Jamaican software development skills”
Details on the Google Summer of Code is available at: https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/
About the Palisadoes Foundation
The California based Palisadoes Foundation aims to provide new avenues to promote Jamaica’s technology businesses and talent using a series of programs aimed at creating increased awareness of the island’s abilities in the global marketplace.
I am a software developer specializing in full stack development, and however, I am mostly fluent in using frontend technologies such as React.js and Next.js. Moreover, I am also versed with UI design, and aim to delve into UX engineering as my career progresses.
For Google’s Summer of Code, I had primarily mentored for the Talawa-Admin project, whilst also occasionally assisting with the code review for the Talawa-API project. My role as a mentor has been to ensure that the quality of the contributions made to the project were of a high standard, whilst also providing the contributors with assistance whenever it was needed.
I am currently in my final year of studies for my Bachelors degree in Computer Science at the University of the West Indies and in my spare time, I enjoy practicing playing the guitar, and traveling to improve upon my photography.
The Palisadoes Foundation was selected to participate as an open source organization by the 2022 GitHub Externship program run by GitHub India.
This is the second time that the Foundation has been awarded this status after successfully participating in the first Externship in the Summer of 2021. At that time, GitHub received over 1300 student applications from 175 Indian higher education institutions that are participating in the GitHub Campus Program. 62 students were selected as GitHub Externs to work with projects and mentors from 18 organizations, of which Palisadoes was one.
Three students are participating in this round: Patibanda Sriram, Nishnata Debnath, and Sandeep Valpasani. This is a recording of their mid-term review.
