16,000+ students, 111 countries, 16 years and 715 open-source organizations – this is Google Summer of Code! ShapeBlue and the CloudStack Community are happy to be part of this global program focused on bringing students into open-source software development and helping them learn new skills.
About Google Summer of Code
Google Summer of Code (GSoC) started back in 2005. The program pairs students with mentors from participating open-source organizations, allowing students to face the real world of software development and coding. This also gives them the opportunity to learn new technologies, improve their skills and learn from the best developers globally. For the organizations participating, it is a chance to identify new, talented developers, who hopefully go on to become long-term contributors to the project. The successful symbiosis between students and open-source organizations results in more quality code being created and released!
How Does it Work
3 parties are involved in Google Summer of Code: students, organizations and mentors. Students contact the organizations they are interested in and submit project proposals. If approved, they spend 10 weeks of collaboration with the organization and mentors. Only open-source organizations can participate and when they are approved, they appoint mentors, who are existing contributors to open-source projects and experienced developers.
Meet Google Summer of Code Mentors from ShapeBlue
Apache CloudStack is again one of the open-source organizations participating in GSoC, and ShapeBlue is happy to support young talent and bring new contributors to the project. Over the next few weeks, our mentors will dedicate their passion and skills to enable students to find out more about the world of open-source technologies.
Meet our Mentors:
Pearl d’Silva: “Google Summer of Code is a brilliant way of introducing students to the tech world by allowing them to work on real-world problem statements and best of all – a chance to work in an Open Source community! It’s a great way to learn to work in a team and collaborate with people. Being a mentor in this program is a chance for me to guide these motivated students through the process and – if the student wishes to stay committed to the community – help them get roped into our brilliant CloudStack family!”
Harikrishna Patnala: “GSoC is always a good platform for the students to learn and get experience with different products. According to myself, it is also a great experience to mentor enthusiastic students. The most exciting part for me is to introduce students to a very good community-driven product and work on it together. This opportunity is a rare chance for students to explore technology. At the end of the project, I hope students will be more confident about their next achievements.”
Suresh Anaparti: “GSoC provides a platform to share our knowledge and experience, and help/advise students to accomplish their project tasks. It is a dynamic ecosystem to engage with students across the globe, understand the younger generation mindset and thinking abilities, which can be different from us. There is mutual learning and dialogue of ideas between all parties within the project.
“For students, GSoC programme provides an opportunity to contribute to projects outside their academic work with their skills and mentors support. They are welcomed to join and be part of a wider community and discover a whole new culture. Students can continue their contribution to the projects at a later point if interested. They can utilise this platform to learn and improve their skills while performing their project tasks and can learning how open-source organisations work.”
Nicolas Vazquez: “GSOC is a great experience, for the students and mentors. Students can choose a project of their interest and help improving it while learning new technologies. Even though the time frame is limited and every project has a learning curve, I think the experience is very valuable as they can have first-hand experience on working on open-source projects, engaging with the community and interact with it, getting support from people who actively use the product and contributes to it. As a mentor, I am happy to meet talented people and supporting them in their learning and contribution experience in the Apache CloudStack project.”
Boris Stoyanov: “I am happy to be a mentor in GSoC and have the chance to help young people explore the Apache CloudStack project and contribute to it. The project is a win-win situation for all parties involved. Students can gather new skills, mentors can get inspired from fresh ideas and organizations attract new contributors to them.
“As a mentor, for me it is vital to help students have a smooth start in the project, guide them and give them a hand to help them complete their tasks successfully. When you start your career, mentors are the people who guide you and give you a direction affecting your whole career. That is why, I will put all my effort to inspire, teach and guide students and hopefully make them long-term contributors to Apache CloudStack.”
David Jumani: ” GSoC is a great platform for students as well as mentors to learn and grow. Students have the opportunity to work on open source projects, be a part of a community and see their contributions used by people around the world. They gain real-world experience working on software, in a team, and a look into the larger software industry.
“Mentors have the privilege of working with talented students, guiding them, and watching them grow as a person and in the community. Not only do we get a chance to hone our own skills but also leave a lasting impression on the students we mentor.”
Why Students Need to Join Google Summer of Code – Ian Duffy Shares Experience
Ian Duffy is a past participant in the GSoC program who started contributing to the CloudStack project during the program. He completed successfully GSoC and after some time became a PMC member of the project.
“It has been a few years since I joined the GSoC, but the nice memories are still here and I am happy to give some inspiration to students. This program provides many opportunities, which will help you with your future career development. Firstly, you are getting introduced to a large codebase while still within the college. You have the chance to meet professionals across the world and collaborate with them. Some of these relationships I still maintain even today.
“Getting mentorship from proven professionals and learning so much was a great experience. I also got the chance to do public speaking. In addition, you will manage to do work that is available publicly and you can point to in the future when employers ask “what have you done?”.
“Getting a small payment from Google for the work also assisted with my rent, which was a great benefit. The main things I love these days about Google Summer of Code is seeing where all the people I met back then are now. So many of them became really successful and influential in the industry!”
ShapeBlue Supports Young Talent
One of our company goals is to be a socially responsible company with an internal and external focus on people. A company that inspires its team members to develop outstanding solutions and service to our customers, but also to give back to the community and CloudStack project. By helping students in GSoC, we will facilitate not only their career development but also the pace of the CloudStack project and the growth of the community.
Stay tuned for our next blog posts, where students participating in the program will share their first-hand experience!
Hello all, I’m Harikrishna, and I’m based in Hyderabad, India. I joined ShapeBlue few months ago and I’m very happy to be part of this amazing team.
discussions. I enjoy the release process and contributing features and fixes to the project.
The challenge here is remote working, and I wondered how a whole, distributed team could work remotely and deliver such a quality work in the community and to our customers. To be frank, that was a concern to me, but I quickly realized this works very well and can be more productive, and I started enjoying working this way. We use various different tools to stay in touch, and the Slack channel is always busy with people discussing various aspects of their work and personal lives. I feel like people are always around! The team is spread across the world in different time zones, and this makes the Slack channel active all the time. People here are very open and helpful, and one can ping anyone directly or in the general channel, at any time and on any topic. Our bespoke lab infrastructure is a great resource with respect to building new environments, packaging, etc., and helps me to focus on actual work instead of worrying about process.
Hi, my name is Vladimir Petrov and I am a Software Test Engineer at ShapeBlue. I started 10 months ago and have now been here long enough to share my ‘first impressions’ with you.
friend of mine told me that the company he works for is hiring, and that they are major contributors to an open source project. This is how I found ShapeBlue. I did not have enough experience in cloud technologies, so I saw it as a nice opportunity to expand my knowledge in the area, and after several talks and interviews with the management I joined the company. This was a real game-changer for me having never worked remotely before, and I wondered if it would work for me. I knew I’d miss the conversations, the office atmosphere, working together in a team with colleagues and the friendships you develop during the process. It turned out the benefits of working from wherever you want far outweigh the drawbacks. Having full control of your working environment is priceless – less distractions from others’ conversations and usual office noises, no more negotiations about the A/C temperature settings, avoiding viruses during the flu season, listening to your kind of music while working… and many more positives. If the weather is fine, you can work from a coffee shop, park or even the seashore. Flexible working time is also very convenient – you can run some errands or even take a break when needed and then continue with your work later in the evening.
The first six months in a new company is always very challenging – but also the most interesting. You meet many new people, learn a lot, and even make new friendships. It was a pleasant surprise that all my colleagues are very friendly and ready to help. ShapeBlue also offers dedicated in-house initial training which makes learning faster. Sometimes, there are decisions to be made and you feel like a part of a big family when you initiate a discussion with your colleagues and reach a final agreement together. It is very easy to forget the physical distances and cultural differences when you work together to reach a common goal. It’s being a part of an international team of different people working from all around the globe makes this experience so unique.
Hello, I’m Alexandre Mattioli – a Cloud Architect at ShapeBlue. After a few months working here I’d like to share some views.
I studied Computer Science and Engineering, and after graduation I worked at some of the biggest virtualization and networking companies (such as Vmware, Cisco and General Electric) developing cloud and on-premise applications, such as an incident co-relation engine (from which relationships can be drawn from monitoring events); breaking monoliths into microservices, and creating an entirely new Object Relationship Mapping in Go. I also had some exposure on the infrastructure side – creating resilient, self-healing systems, as well as self-aware, self-balancing mechanisms for applications across datacenters. I have always been interested in Machine Learning, and during a hackathon I developed an analytic engine to identify potential at-risk students based on their search history, as well as a program that learns to write programs (cue the ‘Inception’ theme music).
Having graduated with a degree in Electronics and Communication, I developed a professional inclination towards communication and networking on distributed systems, and I was quite fortunate to work in these fields as a campus recruit. I then worked in various areas that spanned across cloud computing, software defined networking, Network Management and Cloud automation and orchestration, before taking up a role as an Automation Engineer in my next company. However, after 3 years in the industry, I realised that there was something missing, and eventually began looking for an opportunity that was challenging and provided larger scope to learn. That’s when I came across ShapeBlue! At first, I was apprehensive about working in a ‘distributed office’ environment, but the job turned out to be a perfect match. As unfamiliar as this concept (distributed office) seemed to me, the hiring process was also unique, and as I was introduced to the various stages of the hiring process I realized that this place was different – in a GOOD way! The year 2019 ended on a high note when I was offered a job at the company.
