I was just casually sitting on my padeo and enjoying tea and I received a notification, it was a message in the WhatsApp group for the finalists and winners of a national level programming contest I had attended four months ago, telling me that there is another fabulous opportunity which comes my way in December, that was how I came to know about Google Code in, A seven week long coding competition that tests the skills of a participant to the fullest.
December 3, 2019
I woke up and checked the GCI website, the link was open for applications I immediately filled the form and on I went to start the most awesome seven weeks of my life! I use linux as a daily driver by the way to be precise I use Arch Linux which is notorious for not being easy to configure in a dual boot so the task 0 for me was to get it at least working alongside windows as windows is what most people use so I wanted to make my app executables and other work I did to work properly with windows first.
The Sweetest Seven Weeks :)
Now the trickiest part was choosing the correct organisation, in the plethora of options that google had in the GCI program what stood out the most for me was Liquid Galaxy. Why Liquid Galaxy? you may ask, well nice question! It was the best suited for my interests, they worked in all the fields I love, they had 3D modelling tasks, app development tasks, and bash and linux all the things I love!
I was the second person on the slack channel, it seemed barren at first but then people started to join, by the third week we had around 7-8 participants, the community was thriving!
What I loved the most, even more than doing tasks was making new friends and getting the opportunity to speak to the awesome open source contributors!
When you enjoy time seems to fly fast, the same was the story of GCI for me it seems as if it was just yesterday that I was doing my first task :)
I loved the GCI experience
But…
Post GCI
… There was a task in GCI where we had to make a mascot, my model didn’t get selected though. But for the one that did, I made a lot of animations and renders for those, if you want you can see them here. This work gave me more pleasure and happiness as compared to GCI because this was real contribution not something done as a part of the competition
These competitions will come and go, but, what will remain forever is the community we made and the friendships we made along the journey!
A special thanks to Mr. Andreu and his team of mentors and my friends Sergi, Dylan, Emilie, Janiru, Asmrvin, Tapaswini, Flevy, Mobius donut, Praveen, Qazi, RoyalChirayu, Jakub and Matej!
Merul Dhiman :)
Post GCI
… There was a task in GCI where we had to make a mascot, my model didn’t get selected though. But for the one that did, I made a lot of animations and renders for those, if you want you can see them here. This work gave me more pleasure and happiness as compared to GCI because this was real contribution not something done as a part of the competition
These competitions will come and go, but, what will remain forever is the community we made and the friendships we made along the journey!
A special thanks to Mr. Andreu and his team of mentors and my friends Sergi, Dylan, Emilie, Janiru, Asmrvin, Tapaswini, Flevy, Mobius donut, Praveen, Qazi, RoyalChirayu, Jakub and Matej!
Merul Dhiman :)