 Good afternoon, good evening, good morning. Depending on which time zones you are and all the people who are tuned in. I'm Jamal Thru, I'm going to be a host for this one. It's kind of like entrepreneurship, but not literally anchoring. We are going to talk in depth about your experience with the program and how the days went by, how you felt, experience in general. So I'm going to go ahead very quickly, talk about the three people that are in the call right now. So you have, so on my right, we have Maurya Nanango, who is currently an interaction designer at Red Hat. Shatha, who works as a software engineer at Hasura, and Smira, who is a V-tech student and is a product designer for other companies. And you guys can take like two odd minutes talking about yourselves and let me know what you're doing, a bit more depth than I did, and then we can kick off the sessions. So go ahead. Right, I'll go first. Okay, so hi, I'm Smira. I basically got involved with Fedora during my Outreachy internship that was two years ago, summer of 2020. And my project was basically a design project. So that's how I got involved with open source design. And then after that, I did some open source design work with other conferences, mainly just Fedora. And I was looking for jobs and I am now working as a product designer in a semi open source company where the main tech staff is open source. So it's a German company you'll look on and they work in digital identity security and access management. And I'm also currently pursuing my, all right, I'm also a final year engineering student. I don't see myself as an engineer more like a designer, especially because when I started my Outreachy internship, that is where I fully embraced the identity of a designer. And yeah, that's it. Awesome. I'll go next. I'm Shadha. I did Outreachy with Fedora back in 2019. And yeah, I worked on a project for Fedora Happiness Package with Justin, Yona, Alberto. And yeah, it was a pleasure. That was my first experience with open source. Then I went ahead and did GSOC with SEF on the project for tautology. And then I did a couple of more internships and then joined full-time with Hasara where we automate your API creation on top of your schema. So yeah, that's in short, cool. Oh, okay. I'll go next. Sumantra, can you mute yourself for a sec? Still a lot of beeping. Thank you. I'm sorry. All right. Hey, I'm gonna introduce myself. My name is Marcia, oh, Maria. And I'm gonna, just before anything happens, I'm gonna say that my son might purge in because it's a Saturday and he's home and he's three and a half. So he does not understand the concept of online conferences too well. So please excuse me in advance. Anyway, I'm really glad to be here because I was at Fedora intern long, long time ago, like six years ago. So I could not remember whether 2015 or 2016. It was a trial. I'll need to check that I was an intern on the Fedora design team for about nine months because in Czech Republic, you can go on and turning until you all agree. That's not like in the years where we'll get three months in the summer and that's that. And from that, I went on to be on a full-time position, not on the Fedora team, but still a track head. And so I'm gonna continue on that path right now. Just kind of a good help to mix between the UI and the GX and just, you know, lurking around the Fedora community still and not maybe contributing too much, but I'm there, like I know what's happening. Thanks. All right, so that's thanks for that introduction. I'd love to leave this opportunity to take some time out on a Saturday to do this. It's actually very important because you guys have been sort of kind of the poster titles of the internship program that Fedora runs and all the mentorship program includes it. So you guys have broken through a lot of barrier, myths, and you have gotten a lot of experience as you have, you know, progressed with the mentorship. So a couple of things that we would want the audience to currently understand and know so forth. So let's start off with how was your experience when you started off with the program? Like what went really well in the program? Like if you were a part of our crew team, if you were a part of our team job, and like how was the mentorship program for you? Specifically, did it use all of your positive qualities? Did it challenge you at some point? What went really good? That's what we are kicking off this thing. It's the same flow as the other program you can pick off. Right. I think it's hard to pick one thing that went really well. I mean, I think the first thing, if I were to go like, let's say chronologically, the thing that impacted me the most was obviously my mentor, Marie Nordin. So she, I think she made my like internship. Like she was the highlight, you could say, not only during the internship, but after that also. And I was obviously a bit skipped. This was my first internship. I am not very tech savvy. I had tried contributing to open source a year before that on the tech side. And I was not super good at it. So I was a little scared, right? But I think Marie being there to guide me through everything she was perfect and throughout the thing. So for me, I think it's the mentor that makes the internship or makes the project, even I didn't tell her at that time, right? That I was scared or I was nervous or at least I hope that it did not come off that way. But later on, we still get together once a month to just hang out and talk. And slowly after that, I was like, oh, I used to be shit scared during the course. I was so nervous. I would start sweating from panic over like one hour before our calls just because I wanted to impress her and I wanted for her to like my work. And I wanted to do a good job. So yeah, I think one of the biggest challenges was actually presenting my work to someone else because it was not just Marie. It was also everyone in the community. A lot of times you're solving issues for other people. That was one of the challenges that I sort of overcame that and obviously imposter syndrome. I felt like I had lucked my way into that internship. And even during the internship, a lot of times I felt that I'm not doing enough or everyone's just pretending that my work is fine. Secretly, you know, they don't like it. So yeah, that was my experience without reaching. I so relate with that. I mean, both the parts, especially like the first where you mentioned that you used to get like so nervous when you were waiting for meetings. Like I remember my first meeting with Justin and two hours before, I was like ready with everything, like sorting out my internet and camera, like this is even before I got selected. He just wanted to do an intro call. And I was just like full of nerves, right? And but yeah, like he was just such a pleasure. Like everybody here knows what a delight Justin is to work with. And yeah, it's just such a pleasure to talk to him. And then later on, you know, actually went ahead and like we, I think we used to do calls every single week. And yeah, it was a pleasure. And yeah, it's just the one thing that went really well, circling back to Samantha's question is that the communication in Fedora community is just flawless. Like I've worked with open source communities after that and working a full time job, but the pace at which and the ease with which the communication happens inside Fedora and get to encounter it in any other place. Like whether it be email communication or on telegram or IRC, wherever it may be, it's just so good. People are so approachable. You can ask questions. You can just like, you know, like, they're also very good sounding words. If you're just struggling with something, you can reach out to them. Even when I met these folks, all of that was like, you know, a hundred times more just because, you know, your face to face. So yeah, it was a delight. So communication is one thing that went extremely good. And the second thing that against where I mentioned that imposter syndrome, again, something that I really relate with that that was again my first internship, like ever. So it was just such a, such an empowering thing to be in, in like, you know, with so many talented people and to be among them and to learn so much from them and to work with them and just observe them how they go about, you know, communicating or, you know, solving some particular thing and learning so much from it. But also what helped me doing all the things that I did in the internship. Also like kind of helped me realize that, okay, these are the things that I enjoy doing and these are the things that I don't particularly enjoy doing. Like, you know, in the course of all the things that I did in the sound of the internship. So yeah. Well, that's cool how you mentioned empowering, like in the word empower, because that's exactly how I thought. And it's funny because I never thought that anybody was as nervous as me when I first had like, my first abudian school with Moe Duffy. I was crazy. I was checking my equipment the day before to make sure everything's working. My wife was fine. Oh gosh, the conversation with a pair that used to be in blue jeans, like, you know, checking your video and photo and then going back to the empowering part. That's what I was, I was going to mention because I'm coming from a sort of, I don't want to say community, but a background where when you do design work, you would get a lot of negative feedback. And in the photography community, it's not the same at all. Like, you would do anything, maybe something really small and then you would get so much, you know, encouragement and great feedback in return. Like, and that would include somewhere in it, some recommendations how to make it better, but then it would start with something very nice and who would be made to feel like you're, you know, the best designer in the world. And that is in turn so empowering that you're among all these people who are great professionals and awesome people. But it's, and still they tell you nice things about your work. It was really great. And it's funny how we all have different mentors. I didn't realize that the really good perspective that we're gonna get during this call today. So I love the way you guys have finally condensed all the learning and what happened good. I specifically hear this, this word was out of all of your learnings, which is communication. And that's the key. And you guys have mentioned it over and over saying, communication was the key. Communication was the key. What communication method works best for you? Like Shruth mentioned, she was upfront with a lot of communication and over calls and stuff. But I would want to know what worked best when you are in that pressure, when you are in that zone, when you are like about to hit it off, what communication method works best for you? And if something could have been done better, so let's say parallely hosting things, like video call with notes or something like that, if you have some suggestions like that, that you think could have been done much better, go ahead, take the floor. Right, so my primary method of communication with Marie was first, it was video call, like weekly video calls. That worked really well for me, even though initially at that time I was a little bit nervous. Video calls weren't a thing at least for me back then, that this was the start of the pandemic, right? We are much more accustomed to it now. Back then, I probably never had video call professionally someone, maybe friends, but never professionally. So there was a little bit of hesitance about talking to someone face to face, right? When you're talking on email, you can compose your thoughts much better. You have like all the time in the world to compose your answer or your response. So, but I realized that now after two years that for me, my preferred mode of communication is always now face to face. It's so much more transparent. There is a less chance of miscommunication, I feel. You can't really understand tone, like tone of speech when you're communicating via email, right? Texting sort of also works as an in-between because emojis and depending on how informal you are in the internship. Emails help for an entirely different purpose where a lot of times if we were discussing an issue and there were a lot of things that we needed to keep in mind, Z would probably send that over email. So sort of acted like notes. So that was easy to get back to. And then obviously like for personal day-to-day chat or just a simple question, we would use Telegram, which I really liked because it wasn't super formal. It wasn't as intimidating as sending an email just to ask one small thing. So it was just to the text, get a reply and then probably set a subject. So that made it much more easy to sort of be at ease communicating with someone across the world who had never met before. Yeah, I again agree with Smera that, yeah, just like just the classification that she did that makes a lot of sense. Also one thing that I not sure how well I did it but just to definitely make sure that this was like done is that whenever it's something extremely work related and it needs to be documented because this might need to be referenced later by somebody else who's gonna work on the project later or even like, you know, I had a fellow intern with me, Alisha, who I recently met, was doing awesome in life. For everybody here who knows her and wants an update. Yeah, just writing that down and having other people reference it just because they might need it later is extremely important because that cannot be done when you're having a one-on-one calls and you need that information later. Obviously you can take notes which also works but just writing that down one way or another is extremely important as well as whenever it comes to things which are not very technical which again, you know, do not have a lot of information that needs to be referenced later and especially things like, you know, when imposter syndrome kicks in or you're just feeling low if there are things which you just want an informal chat with, there I always prefer to have a one-on-one with my manager or just whoever it is because then it's much more easier to convey whatever it is that, you know, because then when the person, you can see them in front of you, they can see you, it's very, very easy to express all of those things which are not that easy to communicate on text and stuff like that. But I definitely, like I switch between these two whenever there are things that I need to explain, I might not do that very well when we're on call because there's just so many things that you need to keep in mind. So yeah, that's generally how I go about it and how also something that I learned from Justin because he made sure that we kind of implement this throughout the duration of our internship. So yeah. Cool, Anto wants to go. Right, I'm gonna say a couple of words in favor of IRC that we use or chat that we can use right now because if he asked a question there, then you get like a written response which is great because if they include links or some references, then you can say that and print that or something because lately when I found like if I'm in too many meetings then I kind of space out towards the end of them and then I don't remember like, oh, they mentioned this thing, you know or there was this concept that I didn't catch because there was like meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting, right? So you have to go back and luckily most of them are recorded now but then you kind of end up doing the same thing twice because you are in a meeting once and then you rewatch it again to take notes which is not maybe a bad thing because that's like you're learning better but then if you have everything written down then that's really good. But also I wanted to mention that I know everything's online now like almost all the mentors and mentees are online but the best way to review design work is just sit next to each other and just look at it together and if that's at all possible like if there are any, maybe we'll start again like meeting, you know and having vlogs or whatever or just doing some sort of team meetings so people can meet and just kind of collaborate on the same thing. And I feel like video chats are a great way to get to know people better like even if you're not discussing any sort of work related questions just to talk to each other sometimes like even if you prefer communication in chat then it still helps a lot if you can see a person if you can talk to them, oh, hey like what movies did you see lately or what books did you read or like how's your pet animal doing and stuff like that so that definitely not to be overlooked but maybe, you know, video calls are becoming more and more of a thing lately so that's understandable to everybody and I feel like email is like the last thing you would want to send like with maybe some formal stuff and points, I don't know or if you want to have like a group discussion that everybody kind of take their time and think through later and just get back to you not in chat like in real time but later which can be a thing because sometimes it's again it's hard like doing a video call to come up with something like if you need some design decision later something then it's sometimes better to just sleep on it, you know think about it for a while and then your brain will come up with something and you can do that afterwards yeah, so that's my take Awesome, so next one is a little bit tough it's a little bit on the edge for you guys and we're gonna like switch it up so Marsha goes first and then Smira goes last like so that's the change now, so all of you have participated in multiple of mentorship programs in your resource and kind of have been there for some time and one thing that is very important that we let students look forward to is what are my career opportunities once I graduate out of any of these programs like what changes do I expect inside myself after I have gone through this program like is it going to be just skills learning is it going to be skills plus leadership is it going to be skills plus leadership plus delegation is it like something that I would learn and be able to implement in my career over time and then the question simply stands after going through the program did you find that your career pathways have opened up or something new has come up here something that you would not probably have seen so Marsha, you can speak off I get the most difficult question oh yeah, well, okay let me think about it for a second yeah, so before the internship I was a person in a new country where I was not sure what I was gonna be doing because I didn't know the language very well we've just moved to the Czech Republic and I was sort of learning Czech sort of doing some freelance designs and never, I guess, ever in my head did I imagine that it would be working in an international multilingual company like Red Hat and that just kind of happened to me and I honestly could not comprehend that because I thought it's a second AT company there's no designers, there's no sign position so it's just not, not for me and look at me, here I am 70 years later as an interaction designer so that's definitely something that the internship opened up for me, I learned all the new tools like I learned all the open-source design tools and I didn't know about them before well, maybe I knew about them but didn't use them as much because I was not in the habit of doing that that's one thing and then I also learned to be sort of in a corporate environment and to communicate with people and then also I had a lot of connections that I made, like even being in this culture or also because I was in an office quite a bit back then and so I communicated with all the people like I grew the connections and also we did have flocks we did have offline dev cons and so again, I met everybody like I met a lot of people from Fedora and that those are the people that are still to this day know and talk to and whenever I see them there's one of the most favorite people to see basically in the world and I feel like we're still helping each other or talking to each other from time to time and that's one thing that the program taught me and also I'm gonna mention one thing like at the beginning I was sort of a mentee because I was an intern and Maria Duffy was my mentor so to speak but later I used a lot of what I saw in our communication with her and how she approached the mentorship because I used to have these high school design interns so it's just some students that would come in the office and they would help out with design because they can have Fedora badges and so maybe some small logos around the office and such and so just the approach that she took with me, right? So how she guided me through tasks and such that helped me really, really a lot in that later because I knew how to do that because without it I probably wouldn't because I don't have like any specific training or anything like that. So I guess that's another thing I might think of something later but I'm not sure. All right, so you should have your confidence. Yeah, I like obviously the first thing that I think once we also mentioned is that I mean prior to this internship I didn't really have experience working on like actual things that are being used, right? So the biggest part of like these mentorship sort of programs is that you get to work on things which are actually being used by people. It's not just your toy project that you make yourself and then a couple of your friends use like it's actually a product that is being used by people and you get to make changes there and see how your change is made impact to all of those other people, right? So the first thing is that you get that sense of belonging that yes, whatever you're doing that is having an impact and you're not just working in an void. So that's the first thing that I got out of like all of these mentorship internship that I did. Second thing is that so when you have this experience and then when you go ahead and apply to jobs or switch jobs or whatever it is you do there this experience really helps because you already have this experience of impactful work and that speaks for itself. Like you also have experience of working with people who have like standards would be said because open source has such huge standards for regard to sport quality to the kind of processes that you employ to get things done the kind of communication that you use. All of these things are so well done in open source that for any corporate world that you enter it's just going to be a breeze for you because you already know what is the right way when should you ping people? When should you email them? Is it too often or is it too less? When is it that you need help? You shouldn't sit on a problem too long because all of these things are solved for you because you've already experienced them in a semi-professional environment, right? So these things really help and these are something that really helped me because when I entered and because like when I started a lot of other folks or what the same as me also started that is something that they clearly saw difference who hadn't had this experience was that they really struggled with communication they always used to be afraid when should I talk to my manager or when should I not? Or they just used to wait around a lot and asking questions because they were just afraid that what did they think that I am stupid? But the thing is that in a corporate environment you can just sit on something for too long and then the timelines are screwed you need to get it going, right? And because in open source your mentors like Yona and Justin really did a good job just making you feel at home and just making me feel like I can ask questions I'm not going to be interpreted as stupid if I just like ask too many questions. So just these things really made it possible for a very easy transition from student life actually as a working professional. So these things and especially one of the things that I feel like is very well done in these mentorship programs is just the entire process like the entire team which is behind setting this entire thing up from actually posting the particular project on Outreachy or GSOC and for the final completion that you actually publish the report on like the Fedora Community blog or whatever it is for GSOC. This entire pipeline from you read the description you understand what you need to do you go to the right channels the mailing list or the telegram group or the IRC you communicate with them you go through the entire process of actually getting selected you go through the entire process of actually doing the work that needs to be done doing all of the necessary things in it and then actually completing it. This entire process really teaches you a lot about how a project goes from just a thought to actually being executed which is very, very important for every single project that you do when you're in a professional setting and just iterating on that and learning a lot from that really helps you you're not a newbie when you actually enter a full-time job you actually have experience of okay how this is how this executed. So that's something that I have used so many kinds of this then I've implemented so much of how things were done at Fedora in like you know even where I'm working just because it was so well done. So yeah, these are like you know few things that you pick up from this mentorship that you're going to be selected for anybody who's like you know watching this who's hoping to get selected. I really hope that these are some things that you focus on while you go to the internship and especially one last thing is that just the quality of code you write and especially you know the PR that you open the kind of descriptive comments that you add just really high standards for even commit messages that I remember when Justin used to write a PR he just used to like crack his knuckles when it was time to write a commit message like it was just like such a long like you know paragraphs and paragraphs and go back to any commit you will get the entire context of why this change was done and this is something which is very, very you don't want to be pinging your coworkers that like odd things just to understand you know why this is done especially when you're working in a distributed team. So yeah, I'll stop my band now. What I have to say is actually a combination of what Marsha and Shradda mentioned. So actually before this intern like for my outreach internship I did not know about open source design. I thought that open source only had a sort of tech component never really was exposed to the design part. So I was very happily surprised and I also thought that this was a one off right? Like during before my internship I thought that this is just one single project that probably focuses on design also, right? Not really something that you would find commonly or like people would have jobs for. So that was a good surprise and that's how I got inducted into the open source community. In fact, the job that I have right now is very closely related to my internship. So if I were to trace a path after I was done with my internship I was still in contact with some of the people from Fedora and then one day Justin approached me and he asked me to be on he was on a podcast he was like he was on a podcast for sustainable open source design and he asked me to be a guest on it. So I said yes, even though I was kind of scared because I didn't think I had anything to add but we talked about open source design in the outreach that was a good experience. And on that podcast there were six other people who were on the panel and who were already established or were doing something in the open source design community. Right now when I applied to my job this is I think a year or so after that they actually mentioned the podcast and I didn't actually like talk to them directly about it it was on my portfolio. They mentioned that podcast they said they had listened to it and they knew someone who was on the panel, right? And that's what they sort of made like a positive comment about it that I actually listened to that because we know so and so who was also was also on that podcast. So I think for me that was, you know one of the reasons that I got selected for my job and this is a very direct consequence that and what Shraddha mentioned about soft skills, right? You pick up a lot of quality like how to work basically, not exactly like obviously you will pick up a lot of skills. I like learned a lot of tools, open source design tools and just in general design skills but also how to work, how to communicate with someone you're working with, you know how to ask questions, when to ping people and how to do that, right? Not just open-ended questions. I could see a difference between like me before the internship and me after the internship and I have carried that throughout in other internships and the job that I've done. And also I think the best thing of all is just the comfort level that you have like after working with other people. I feel like this is sort of like a, how do you say? Like a safety net you are still working in an organization or in a community where you're involved with other people but it isn't as intimidating as you know like a corporate environment could be because everyone here is very nice and like they are mentoring you so they expect you to make mistakes and they are not like, they're no punishments for making mistakes. So just this kind of like a safe environment to have your first working experience in makes you feel very confident. And so now when I'm actually working or I have calls with my colleagues, I am not scared. I don't have to sit for an hour before each call just to make sure that everything is fine. You know, I'm not, I don't have the, I don't have the panic stress basically now. And it's because that I went through this internship that I had the confidence that I'm able to do this now. So yeah. All right, so that was a tough question. So guys, I'm glad you guys answered it really nicely for people. There is a lot of takeaway from people like you have graduated out of such internship programs and are doing really nice in the industry. So one thing that always comes back to the orgs, right? The orgs for mentoring units is what do you, in a far distant future, probably like, let's say five years, if we're to look back and say, okay, if the org or the mentors or the org admins and the structure in itself were to be slightly turned and it would have favored us really nice, what would that slight turn be? Like think of it like a change either in your mentor communicating. So you guys have awesome mentors who have communicated really well, set expectations really nice. What is this one thing that still is kind of there? If you want to address, you want to talk about the guys are out of internship programs now. Yeah, like you can talk about it freely. So go ahead, tell me something that the org, either the org, the mentors and the org admin. So in this case, admins are really people, Akash, Mori, right? So we could have done that in order to support you guys in the future. What I'll do is I'll actually take that question first because I've been kind of dodging and doing it in between. So every day that question first. So Fedora is actually extremely easy from like the get go, like just even contacting mentors, like I've done it for other like, you know, organization and it's a pain, like just even to start that conversation, that conversation thread whether it be like, you know, IRC or email or whatever it is, it's a pain, but with Fedora that was really, really easy. Like if you look at the professional aspect of it from that first, you know, interaction to actually getting the project done, it has been very easy. And I mentioned this is the thing that went really well was that the communication was very strong, but this was very true for all the professional things, for all the outsourcing that I needed for, all the things that I needed in context for the project itself. But then outside of it, there was not much room to, you know, like outside of just my project mentors, there was not much room to just communicate, you know, freely with the other interns in, you know, different projects that maybe the GSOC interns, I met them when we had an offsite. But before that, there wasn't really any interactions where I could, you know, like talk to them before and even informally, right? Just having maybe something. I remember we had an interview, something that we gave a form and we just filled out like, you know, like a couple of questions about that says also a couple of informal questions. And then there's those approach, I believe Samantro heads that I think. So that was really nice. And I got to read and got to know them, but there was no actually, you know, face-on-face time with them, but I could actually interact with them and not just them, but also the mentors for them as well, right? Just getting involved with the community. So that would have been really nice just to talk to them or, and I know it might be too much to ask, but just also if, you know, a weekly or a monthly thing, something like that could be set up just like, you know, a coffee, a donut call or something like that, where, you know, you could just interact with more people in the organization. I know everybody is very busy, but this would, this would like make, this would be like awesome to have, just to know more people in the community and not be a stranger. Although like Fedora does an awesome job at it, as like already, but just something to add there. And yeah, and I think Mary's mentioned something to do an animalized social, and yeah, we should definitely do that. Like, I would definitely want to meet, you know, all the rest of them turns out before and after me. Like, that would be awesome. So yeah, that was just a little bit, little idea that I had, like, you know, like how this is happening. And just like, you know, just this thing where we're having a mentor summit. This would have been like so helpful back in the day when, you know, I was planning to be an intern and you know, trying to get there. So yeah, just that was, that was me. Right. I actually don't have a lot to add in this question mainly because this was my first experience and I think this is the only open source community I've been actively part of. So for me, I don't have a scale to sort of measure, but for me, everything went really nicely. The one thing that is sort of impractical but would be good to have is, as Marcia mentioned, design is something that is best done when you're sitting together and just like, oh, you know, you're getting reviews, you're sitting together. And just in that like physical space being together that for me also works best. I know that this is a remote internship. So actually, you know, like turning it into a physical one would be counterproductive, but to have that option of physical meetups, you know, obviously COVID happened. So we don't have luck and things like this anymore. But those are really necessary, not just for the fun aspect of it, but also to get to know other people, be more at ease. And just when you are physically hanging out with someone or even working, that's a whole different ball game than being on a ball or like working digitally. So I'm just gonna say what Marie mentioned in chat that the interns would go to flock all the time. So would they kind of meet each other? But then I realized that nowadays those flocks not been happening for two years now. How many, I don't know, COVID's been there for a long time. I guess that's an issue, right? So they don't meet together. And I guess it's been nice to just have regular calls. And as from my take on this question, I've been thinking really hard since yesterday, since I got the question. Like what could have been done differently? What went, didn't go well? I honestly, I don't know. Like the only thing that I can think of and it's not directly related to the internship is that the setup to just get started and get contributing and maybe just, you know, installing some of the software used to be kind of maybe a little bit hard-ish. I'm not sure like how it is right now. I know the thing has been working very hard to fix that. So people would get on board it more easily, especially in the design team, the people who are not as technical maybe, who have trouble setting up a stage case and stuff like that who need help doing that and can be tough doing that online. But that's honestly like the only thing that I could think of truly. I actually have one more thing to add an extension to what you just said is that in the very beginning, like in the first few weeks, everything is just a little, there's just a little bit of friction because you're not that comfortable in the community yet or even with your mentors, like, you know, asking questions. If in that period, we could like just set up more frequent calls with our mentor rather than that just once a week, just while we're getting the setup done or just getting started with the project, that frequency could be just a little bit higher and obviously our cordons with the mentor if they have the time for it, definitely. That would actually bring down a lot of asynchronous conversation and just in terms, just sitting with their head between their hands and like trying to understand how to make this work, how to just run this. That would also, you know, like again, like you asked the questions about communication thing, that is just a little bit of, you know, time frame where I really think that it would help to just have more synchronous communication instead of doing just like maybe a one call of things. Yeah, that's it. That's very detailed and that's really good. So there are a lot of takeaway items like literally Murray and people are planning things right now on the basis of the discussion. So that's good. That's good. That's the input that we were looking at. Okay, one thing that always comes to our mind when we look at all this candidates coming and going, we see all these people showing interest and we always kind of want to retain them. We have this thing that let's retain most of these people some form or the other. Either in a formal mentorship, in any formal mentorship, probably in a setting where they would feel comfortable contributing even the slightest bit, but they should be connected with the community. What reward mechanisms come to your mind? What mechanisms come to your mind when it comes to, interns being retained by projects in this case, that's a factor, right? So what comes to your mind? Go ahead. Okay. I would say that's a good question because I myself struggled with this because right after my internship ended, I got involved with college and I felt really guilty about not being able to put in enough time to be involved in the community, especially because for the three months, I had only done that. And then after that, it was basically no, right? There was some, I would mostly get involved in events. So I think that is something like not something day to day, but whenever there was an event or when there was NEST, we also had better women say. So for those specific events, for that period, I would get more active. So I think that's a good way to call back people, even this doing this, right? Like having a panel where people can come and talk. So it might not be the kind of contribution, it's not basically just resolving issues, but this is a sort of contribution that people can take time out of their day to do, right? And secondly, or plan events. I was looking forward to flock during my time, but it's been two years now, but I think, you know, there's always that incentive of, you know, after we do this, we get to have a lot of fun. We get to hang out, party, network, everything. So all of that is sort of incentive for I think for people to stay. Yeah, completely agree with Smera that again, offline events help, but even online events like this one, like after even my internship, like Smera mentioned, I wasn't in constant, you know, like I wasn't in touch with my mentors, but then apart from that, to the wider community, I wasn't really in touch with for long, but then whenever it came to events like this or organizing a federal women's day in my college, back when we, I think, yeah, 2019 itself, because yeah, before times. So yeah, stuff like that really helped because I could still promote whatever it is that I learned in Fedora to the wider, you know, community that I was in touch with outside of Fedora, right? And bringing folks from there, a couple of my juniors actually joined the Fedora community. They're active in it even now. So these things really help. Just even now, like I'm here after like three or four years, you know, talking about whatever it is that I learned during my time as a mentor here. So just these kind of events, I think help, but outside of that, even, you know, if you folks have any idea, how even I could like, you know, get involved again, that would be great, I'd be happy to know. I take my previous words back. This is the hardest question. I know a lot of people have been working to solve this, like how do you say, make people stay with Fedora after they've done with their internships, some mentorships or whatever. And it is really hard. And one of the things that I thought of during the years that I was thinking about it is that it takes a certain type of people to kind of keep contributing. And one of the things that I've heard from talking to a bunch of Fedora folks is that what they like to do in life is that they like to help people out. So if somebody has a problem and they work to solve it during their internship or just as a contributor, and then they get the feedback back that, hey, that worked. Thank you very much. Like you made my life better. And then just a pure reward of doing that and just getting something back from the community. It's maybe one of the best things. And just the community itself, like I mentioned this before, and to this day, like whenever I see someone from the Fedora community, maybe they did not even contribute anymore. Maybe they've moved on, but I still feel like they're sort of family, all great people. So that and just the pure possibility of going to flock would make me contribute so much harder, honestly. Because sometimes I have it back in my mind, like, hey, maybe I should do something for Fedora, but, you know, I have a little sum and I have full time job and it can be hard to actually get to do something like give me five, there's something I really love. But then if I thought, hey, I can go to flock, oh my God, I would make time for sure. All right, so we are for nine minutes of the session to wrap up and we have four questions. So this is going to be kind of like rapid fire if you will. So here we go. First thing, as a former mentor, do you feel like you could be a mentor? I'll take that one first. I am actually doing my first outreach project this summer as a mentor. So it's, I won't say that it's not super scary, it's intimidating, especially because I was like, I feel like I was right there two years ago, right? I was on the other end. So I'm like, okay, it's been so much time already that now I am a mentor, that when I told my parents, I explained it to them like this. I'm like, you know how Marie was a mentor to me? I'm going to be someone's Marie. And then that thought is sort of like, oh my God, oh my God, I have big shoes to fill then. So yeah, I think it does make you want to do that. And also obviously gives you all these skills. There is also that internal sort of anxiety about being able to do a good job. But other than that, obviously pushes you to be a mentor. You're making Marie cry, stop. Yeah, no, yeah. I think it's like the best way to progress in your career into the life, just going from mentee to being a mentor. Like I mentioned before, you have all the interns and I would sort of build up on the knowledge that I got from Mo and just to think back, like what would a Mo do in this situation? Like what would she tell them? And so it's great that they have someone to sort of fall back onto, right? And someone to ask questions, like if you need advice, and if you probably have encountered many great people in your life who have sort of guided you on your job path, maybe even after the mentorship happened. So you can always think, oh, hey, what would they do in this situation? And that's always a great thing that would help you. And I think it's just only natural to become someone's mentor, sort of to give back what you received, right? And like if I had an opportunity to be someone's mentor, again, I would totally do it because it's very rewarding. Again, teaching someone stuff that you've learned, right? And showing them how they can contribute and can move on with their career. That's all the great things that you can do. I think you folks almost covered everything that I wanted to say here, but just like one more thing, since it's rapid fire anyway, is that it doesn't just, you know, like is limited to these mentorship programs that like this also extends into your like full-time job. Like I was, I think back in October last time, I was interviewing folks to actually join my company. And just that experience, like how Justin must have done for us, like he actually not interviews per se, but just like, you know, he talked to us and then like, you know, decided on who to actually, you know, become his mentee and stuff like that. That actually like, you know, helped me kind of like, you know, do that. And we talked about it as well, Justin, and it really like, when they actually joined full-time, it was such a fulfilling feeling, just knowing that you were also part of, you know, their journey. And I'm hiring interns again in the company who I'm going to be mentoring. So it's, yeah, it's all, it's an awesome feeling. And yeah, I really hope I'm able to do how good at the job as Justin did with me. Awesome. So any advice for a future aspirin Fedora project internship candidate? So any, any, any advice from you guys, any tips, any facts, any specific things to look out for? I would, I would say, don't be afraid. That's, I think, if I could condense it, because I remember during my internship, I was very afraid of a lot of things, of doing a bad job, of, you know, even communicating on like, on the public channel, like, oh, what would other people think of me? But I think, and this is, this is the advice that we would also get at that time. Like, don't be afraid to ask questions. No one's going to judge you. There's no stupid question. And, and even right now, I feel that, okay, that was actually the best advice that you could get. It's hard to internalize, sure. It's like, it comes through practice, but once you get over that fear, that sort of hesitance that you would get from like being a newcomer to the community, once you get over that, you will feel right at home too. And you will learn so much. Like there, no one ever judges you for not knowing stuff. I mean, two days before I texted to the public that I don't know how to make a commit, so I can't. And that's, I think that's a very basic thing that people can do in the open source community. But I was like, okay, I don't know. I have, I'm technically a computer science engineer in my final year, I've done four years. I still don't know how to do a commit. But that's fine. Then someone else, you know, agreed to help me out and this, and we were like, okay, we'll sit together and do this. And it's going to be a learning experience. So don't be afraid. That's my advice. If I can second that, and also something I thought of is that if any sort of opportunities come your way and if you get any suggestions to take part in this and that, don't say no. Say yes all the time. Like even if you think you don't know what's going to happen, like you're not sure you can do it, say yes. I mean, say yes, and then you'll figure it out. And basically, if you're still unsure, like fake it till you make it, like pretend you know everything and just go into them. Chances are you already know what you need to know. And if you don't, you're going to learn while you're, I don't know, preparing for something. And then you're going to meet a lot of great people meanwhile, like on your way to that. I'll just start with that is that just keep the open source spirit alive. Like don't make it into a rat race where you're competing with like the other folks or also trying to like make it to this project. Just keep the open source spirit alive, help people, help out other people. Like, you know, even review their PR, just like your mentor, like, you know, give you the green light. Just always be helpful and always try to sustain the community instead of, you know, trying to be like the, or duck here. So yeah, just that. All right. The last question, and this is like, what practice would you recommend to a mentee in order to make a better experience in terms of learning and growth? So you guys have already talked a lot about many of these following certain footsteps. Any practices that you guys follow? Like meditation and yoga, you know, I don't know, any practices that you guys follow that may be productive in terms of learning and growth? So something that has worked really well for me always. Like I do it even now is that right, right, everything. Like my notes are just filled with my conversation that I did back in the day with like, Fiona, Justin, even when like I went on the off-site with like, you know, Proctor Fedora, even from then I have like so many notes from so many conversations that you have with like so many people that you meet. It's your brain, it's not a hard disk. It's not going to keep everything in store. You're not going to remember everything, but you're definitely like, if you have all of them written down, you're definitely going to remember things that really hit you back in the day, which now you might have forgotten. So just write, write out your thoughts, journal if you may, but definitely just keep a lot of notes. I would say to not give up on problems, but know when to take a break, right? Especially this is something that I still haven't gotten the hang of doing, especially in design, when you're making something, if it doesn't come to you, you can work on it for hours and hours and hours at end, you're not going to get it, right? If I'm supposed to come up with a badge or something, I could spend hours and if it's not coming to me, it's just not going to happen that day, right? I need to take a break, I need to, you know, get some external inspiration, some motivation, maybe walk around, need to take a break, get away from the screen, sleep on it, and trust me, it will be better. But make sure that you have done your best before you reach that point where you've exhausted most of your options and you're like, okay, I know that I can't do any more of this. It's a fine balance between giving up too early or just basically giving up the first time you run into a problem and versus going at it, even though it's not productive anymore. But yeah, once you find that balance, it's going to make your work and your learning experience so much better. Where you are not gonna feel, you know, oh, you don't know anything. Like a lot of times what happened used to happen if I was working on a design and it's just not coming to me, I would think, okay, I have failed as a designer, I am ashamed to the community, I don't know anything. I don't know basic color theory, I don't know about like visual stuff, I don't know anything. Then the next day, I would sleep on it, then the next day it would come to me instantly, you know? So that sort of thing is gonna happen, you're just gonna have to be easy on yourself. Okay, that's me now, I don't know. Maybe one of the things which I didn't follow myself, but I think that's good thing to keep in mind, you can set goals for yourself, like what do I want to accomplish as a result of this internship or mentorship or a program or something that you're taking, right? And just have that goal in mind, like maybe what do you wanna learn during that or maybe what do you wanna grow into? Do you wanna, you know, get a job or if you wanna accomplish this many projects, you wanna build a portfolio. So maybe something like that would be helpful. And again, write everything down, I really love that. I remember I still have somewhere like a printouts of IRC conversations with Mo with some of the advice, you know, with my things underlined. Yeah, that's so true. I like to write everything down too all the time, still to this day. Awesome. So it was really nice hearing your thoughts out of the experiences and everything. There is always, there's a lot of learning, it's an ever moving process for me, it has always been. So thanks for being here on Saturday, sharing experiences. This means a really lot to all the people who are watching. These are the people who have actually gone ahead and done exceptional contributions to open source software and also some of the new mentors this year. So you might be able to work with them in a number of times. Right, so thank you all.