 All right. Thank you guys for joining in and thanks for the people who are joining in virtually as well. So I'm Narendra and without much of an introduction, let's get started with the topic for today. So this is a story. This is my story as a new programmer in January 2020 to being a full-time open source contributor by March 2021. So I have been programming since I was a teenager, but I never thought about having to do programming as a career. So when I decided to actually be a software engineer, I had no idea how to start. I had no idea how to find jobs. I had no idea what should I learn. I had no idea about anything. So I was scrolling through YouTube and I found that contributing to open source is a good way to improve your skills. It is a good way to get yourself familiarized with actual software that is being used by people. So to contribute to open source, I need to know something. But so I started by pushing all of my source code on GitHub. I started pushing my toy applications, which I was using to learn stuff. I was pushing everything on GitHub. And eventually, a couple of those projects turned out to be somewhat moderately successful. But I was still unsure about how I can contribute to other open source projects, how I can contribute to these big open source projects that everybody is using. So I had no idea what to do. So that's when I found out about the Linux Foundation mentorship program. So I was thinking, which project should I contribute to? Do I have a skill to contribute to such open source projects? I was thinking along these lines. And that is when I found out about the Linux Foundation's mentorship program. So the LFX mentorship program is an open source mentorship program hosted by the Linux Foundation. And the program, what it does is it connects mentees to open source projects and with their mentors. So you can basically contribute to open source projects. And you will be assigned a mentor. And they will help you contribute to those open source projects. So I stumbled right into the LFX mentorship homepage. And it shows a list of projects that are participating in the program. So there was my answer to my first question, like, which project should I contribute to? So all these projects, they wanted people to contribute to it. They were very particular about what kind of stuff, what kind of contributions they wanted people to make. So yeah, I found this list quite helpful. So at that point of time, I was learning new stuff. I was learning about cloud native stuff. So I was looking through all these projects and seeing which project I can actually contribute to. And as you can see, it shows the required skills, what they're expecting, all sort of things. And then I applied to a couple of these projects. And I actually started contributing to making small contribution to some of these projects. So I was a mentee for the Mashary project, which is a cloud native computing foundation project. So I started by making really small contributions, small bug fixes. Then I eventually worked my way up to make bigger contributions. And after a couple of contributions, I was able to apply for the LFX mentorship program. And I got accepted as a mentee. So in March 2021, I was an LFX mentee for the Mashary project. And during my time as a mentee, like, I learned a lot of stuff. It wasn't always about learning how to code, but I learned a lot of other stuff as well. So I learned a lot of other stuff as well. I was speaking at conferences like UConn. I was talking about my work. I was representing the project in front of the whole community. So without this LFX mentorship program, I would have never gotten a chance to discover such projects and be part of such projects. And I was also giving talks at other conferences. So all of this happened after I was part of the LFX mentorship program and after I started contributing the project. And I made a lot of code contributions to the project as well. This helped me learn new skills, learn actual skills that are practical and that can be applied to building real world projects. And I was doing open source stuff for the entire day, like the Linux Foundation mentorship program provided me a stipend. So I didn't have to worry about finding a job. I can just contribute to open source projects, but it also was sustainable since I had some sort of an income. So I was a new programmer in January 2022, but 2020, but not anymore. So I was working in open source full-time. So right after the program, the company behind the project, the company who actually initiated the project before it was donated to the foundation, they hired me to work on their open source project full-time. So which was like the dream. So it was like a dream come true. To this day, when I work in open source, I can't believe people actually pay me to do that. I might, I would actually do this for free, but thank God there are people who are willing to pay me for it. So yeah, that's how I went from open source, noob to a full-time open source contributor. And open source is about paying it forward. So when I was a new contributor, I asked a lot of stupid questions. I wrote bad code and I broke stuff in production all the time, like the master branch was full of my books. So people were helping me out. People didn't complain, they didn't get angry at me. They were helping me make better contributions. They were helping me a lot. So to give it back to the community, what I decided to do was to become a mentor. So in 2021, I returned back to the program as a mentor. And so I'm a mentor of two projects, two CNCF projects. So coming back to this program as a mentor was a way for me to help the community and give something back to the community. And by being a mentor, I also learned a lot, maybe more than what I learned when I was a mentor. So I learned a lot of leadership skills. I learned to work with a lot of people. By teaching them, by helping them, I was able to reinforce my knowledge a bit more. And this also gave me access to a lot more opportunities with this newly acquired skills. I was getting a lot of job opportunities and speaking opportunities, all sorts of things. I also gave talks about contributing to open source, helping people by sharing my experience as an open source contributor, my journey through open source contributions. I was also writing a lot of blogs and trying to help more students, more new contributors make contributions to open source. So programs like LFX actually help the LFX mentorship program actually help making the open source communities more accessible to people from around the world. Like it might seem like this is similar to any other internship program. It might seem similar to any sort of other internship programs that tech companies offer. But from people who are from the parts of the world where they don't have such opportunities, these programs can act like the catalyst. They can be the game changer when it comes to getting new opportunities. They can be the ladder that the people need to get access to such opportunities. And in the last couple of years, I'm seeing a lot more people from very, very different backgrounds being part of these programs. And these programs actually helping them to level up in their career, helping them to gain access to opportunities that they normally couldn't have. And it really encourages me to see that 82% of contributors, new contributors, feel really welcome within open source communities. But at the same time, the 18% who are feeling unwelcome are from disproportionately underrepresented groups. So there is definitely a bias. There is definitely a disproportionality between in this metrics. So there is still a lot for us to do, like programs like LFX could actually help settle this imbalance and make open source more inclusive, more welcome to people from all over the world regardless of where they are. But still 89% of people contributing to open source, they feel that they are making a positive impact in this world, which I think is what is most important. So people are contributing to open source and they are happy that they are doing it. And that's all I have for today. And if you have questions to me, you can ask them now or I'll be hanging out over here. And for the folks tuning in online, you can reach out to me on Twitter. Thank you. We have a question. I think they might, should work. It's a great journey for, it's okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're right. So your journey is very good and very impressive. So what's your first programming language? Where are you started? That should go back to basic using QBasic. So print, what is your name, that sort of stuff. But like, no, basic language. Basic language. Then like, the actual language that I learned was probably C++. It must be GoLang. GoLang. Go, yeah. That's good. So you are a student enrolled in some programs? No, like now I work for the Apache API6 project, which I am there in the p-shirt today. So yeah, so I work for a company that actually is building some software on top of API6. But I work on the Apache API6 project. So this open source projects? My work is to work on open source projects. I try to be a mentor today, but like I stopped working with the CNCF projects, but like I plan to be a mentor for more open source projects like in the next years, yeah. Thank you. Yeah, like because, so I actually quit my, so let me repeat the question. So the question was, was being a mentee a full-time job for me? So I worked in renewable energy, solar panel, that sort of stuff. So I quit that job and I was looking to transition into software engineering. So I didn't have anything else to do. So I worked as an LFS mentee full-time. Yeah, that's a really good question. So LFX mentorship has two different schemes. You can work either in full-time or as part-time. So even if you are working professional or even if you are a student, you can like work 20 hours a week or maybe less depending on the project and like how you're interacting with the maintenance. And you can actually work for less and like you can complete the program within six months. So yeah, it is open for all. You don't have to be a student. You can even be a working professional and work part-time for this. Good, thank you. Thank you, yeah. As a team or is this hired as one mentee and pushing them all the stuff? So the program, so you can actually specify what project you want the mentees to work on. So the LFX, so when you list your project in the LFX portal, you are actually listing it as a project, as a sub-project. So maybe you want a new feature in your project and you can list it there. And the mentees who are participating, they will work on that particular feature. And the goal is to have the mentees working on the project even after their mentorship program. So that is to ensure sustainability. So these mentees will keep contributing to the open source project even after their mentorship period ends. And eventually they might transition to be maintenance of the project and they will help us to work the project in the future. Are there any questions online or? No. So thank you everyone for joining.