 Hi and welcome to this session. I'm Navindu and I like listening to people's stories. I like hearing about their lives. I like hearing their journey through their careers. All of these helped me a lot in my personal life and my careers. So today I'll talk about how the LFX mentorship program helped me start my career. And hopefully by the end of the session, whether you are a developer who is just starting out, starting out on their career or whether you are a seasoned developer looking to give something back to the community. I hope you learn something from my journey and it can be helpful in your own lives. So let's get started. So a little bit about me. I'm a developer advocate at api7.ai. And I'm a contributor to the Apache API 6 open source project. I was a CNCF maintainer. I formerly maintained two CNCF projects. CNCF is the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. And I also mentor people through Google Summer of Code and of course the Linux Foundation Mentorship Program, which we are here to talk about today. And I'm from a small town in southern India. And it's a town that is not known for its open source contribution, but more or less it's agriculture. So I come from a small town. And we'll see how me coming from a really small town in India was able to make open source contributions to some of the top projects in the world. So in January 2020, I was a new programmer. Even though I learned programming back in high school, I wasn't using programming. I wasn't actively a programmer. I wasn't a software engineer. I wasn't actively coding. But I knew how to code. But in January 2020, I decided to start learning programming. So that is where my journey starts. And by March 2021, I was able to be a full-time open source contributor. I was working as an open source contributor. I was getting paid. So that was my job. So within this time period, a little more than a year, I was able to work in open source. So I will talk about that journey today. And hopefully that will help you in your journeys as well. So before the LFX Mentorship Program, so definitely the LFX Mentorship Program was impactful in my career. But let's take the journey a little bit back and let's see where I was at before the LFX Mentorship Program. So like I mentioned in January 2020, I decided I want to work as a software engineer. So I started learning programming. I started, I went through Udemy tutorials. I went through YouTube tutorials. I was learning programming. I was learning web development. I was building toy apps and everything. So I pushed all these toy apps on my GitHub profile. People on the internet used to tell that you need to create a portfolio for your projects. So even though there were toy projects, I published them on GitHub so that I could just add them as a line on my resume. I was, I didn't have any experience as a software engineer. So pushing them to GitHub made it so that I had some experience building actual projects. So I was pushing them on GitHub. And then one fine day I created my own project and I pushed it on GitHub. And with some time it grew up to be a popular open source project. Today it has more than a thousand stars on GitHub. It has more than thousands of users. So the project grew and it became really popular. That was my first introduction to open source and what it can provide. I really enjoyed building the project. I also enjoyed making it free and open source so people can freely come in and use it. So the excitement of building a project and the excitement of launching it for the public to use, it was quite good. It felt very good. So after a couple of months, what happened was like I was really into open source. I was really into building software that is open source. So I was looking at different projects to contribute. But being relatively inexperienced, it was still my first year of learning programming. So being relatively inexperienced and like I was almost, I was almost six months into not having a job. So I had to pay the bills, all sort of things. So those things held me back. So I didn't know if this was a viable career option. So there were a lot of problems in deciding to work in open source full time. So I was in a dilemma. I built an open source project, but I don't know how to contribute to open source projects. I had a lot of questions. I didn't know who to ask for answers. It was a real mess. So I came out of this experience and fused about open source and how all those things work. And I asked a lot of questions to myself. So what project should I contribute to? I had no idea. I had a very broad skill set, but I was relatively inexperienced in all of those skill sets. So I didn't, I wasn't a master of any skill. And I didn't know a lot of open source projects. I didn't know which project I can contribute to. I don't know if they will accept my contributions. I don't know whether these projects were open source. I don't know what kind of skills they were looking for in their contributors, all sorts of things. I didn't know where I should start. I didn't know which project I should contribute to. And even if I found a project, how do I start? How do you go to a random project and understand their code base and start contributing to them? Where is the starting point? So that was also another dilemma. I had no idea where I should start. I was pretty sure I lacked the skills to contribute to an open source project. So no clue where to start. And this question is often asked by every developer regardless of whether they are beginners or whether they are experts. I was wondering, like, I'm relatively inexperienced. Maybe open source is reserved for people who are really skilled. Like, who will use a software written by an year programmer with an year experience, right? So these kind of questions were in my mind. And these kind of questions for these kind of questions, I couldn't find answers on the internet. And that is when and with all of these questions combined, like how I should get skilled, how I should start, what project I should look into, the burning question in my back of mind was how can this help my career? Because I was out of a job. I didn't know that open source was a sustainable career. I thought open source would be a stepping stone. Maybe I can contribute to open source projects. Maybe that will help me in my resume. And maybe that could help me get jobs. But I wasn't also sure whether this would happen. Like, no people were talking about open source helping their career. And times have changed in the last two years. And there are definitely more people talking about open source contributions. But back then, like, there was also a question of discoverability. People who were talking about open source weren't discovered as much. So I had a lot of questions. And I was wondering whether this would help my career. And that is when I discovered the LFX mentorship program. The next foundation is quite popular. I was familiar with the next project. I have been using Linux for a long time. And I knew that there was a Linux foundation. And that is when I discovered the Linux foundation mentorship program. So my thought process was like, okay, I can contribute to an open source project. There will be a mentor assigned to me. He will help me make contributions. And I will also get paid for my contributions. So I can justify spending three months on this program. Writing code for an open source project. Because at the end I will get paid a stable stipend. And of course, like I can, of course, an experience in a real world project can help me land better jobs. But little did I know that this would end up being my career. So in the LFX mentorship program, in late 2020, I discovered this program and I was, the first thing that this program helped me do was discover projects. So the screenshot below is from my Linux foundation LFX mentorship profile. So I applied to a couple of projects. And eventually I found a project that liked me the same way I liked them. And I applied to it. And as you can see, I'm a LFX graduated LFX Mindy. So this is the Mashary project. So Mashary was one of the popular project at that time. And I think it still is. It is one of the most popular LFX projects. A lot of people apply to that program. But what intrigued me was the project and its community. So the LFX portal, the LFX mentorship portal, what it did for me was it gave me access to a lot of projects. So I knew these projects were expecting contributions from people like me. And by people like me, I mean people who are relatively inexperienced, people who are just starting out their open source journeys, people who are just starting to learn programming, those kind of people. So I was able to discover a lot of these projects. And the portal showed what the requirements of the project was. So when I looked into the Mashary project, it showed the requirements were the stuff that I was learning. I was learning a lot of cloud stuff back then, Docker, Kubernetes, that sort of thing. And the project was also using those technologies. So yeah, I thought maybe this might end up well. Maybe I do have a shot at this internship position. And I joined the project's community. So that is when things changed because the project's community was really cool. I really enjoyed the project's community. They really made me feel part of themselves. And after joining the project's community, I started small. So starting small was quite important because at that point I was quite overwhelmed. And at this point I wasn't mentee at this point. This was before I got into the LFX mentorship program at this project. I was just a passive observer for a long time. Then I started contributing to the project. I started contributing code. And within it took me like two months, or maybe two and a half months to learn what I was supposed to do to observe and understand what they are trying to do. And I started by making small bug fixes that maybe like took four lines of code changes. And then I eventually worked my way up and eventually started owning certain areas of the project. And during this, during all this time, the community was really welcoming. They were helping me make contributions. Even though I was in mentee or even though I was in part of any program, they were warm and welcoming. There were a lot of maintenance who were willing to help me out. There were people offering help, a lot of things. So the community was really welcoming. And they helped me a lot in making these first contributions. So I had some people like, they even taught me basics of like, okay, this is how you build the project. This is where you are going wrong. Okay, this is the area. So all those sort of things, the community kind of hand held me and they took me through my first steps with my first open source contributions. And within some time, so within after this two and a half month period, I was making an impact. I was my contributions were progressively getting bigger. I was spending a lot more time actually contributing to this project. I was devoting a lot of, a lot of my time contributing to this project. And with this, with these contributions, like the community after the community and the maintenance recognize that, okay, I was a good contributor and I had the potential to make good contributions to the project. My applications, application to become a Linux foundation mentee on the Mashary project was accepted in March 2021. They knew I can get the job done. My proposal was good. And since I already showed that I can contribute to the project, I was selected. So this was life changing for me because till that point I didn't make any money from open source, but from then I was so I will start to make money from open source. And I also get, get in, get a position. So it is, it is essentially an internship position with the, with the Mashary project. I'm contributing to the project. And that is my work. So my job is to contribute to an open source project, which was really fun because I, I don't know anyone who, who, who, who does this for a living, who contributes to open source projects for a living. So it was a surreal experience. People around me, like they, they didn't know what to make of it. Like they didn't know the meaning of contributing to open source or anything. But they're just happy for me. I got a job that I wanted. So I was, I was learning. So I learned a lot and I was contributing to open source. And I was an LFX 20s. So it was really fun. And I learned a lot during my period as a, as an LFX 20. So the mentorship program, actually, when I say it is life changing, I'm not overstating the, the impact it had on my life. I feel like it was really less changing from that point from the, like the, it really changed my career and it really put me on this part. And like, I really enjoy what I'm doing now. So I learned a lot as an LFX 20. I learned the skills. So I learned the skills I needed to be to work on cloud. I learned programming in Go. I learned a lot of, a lot about cloud architectures, cloud infrastructure, networking, all sorts of things. So I got a lot of skills as an engineer. My mentor was helping me a lot. There were other maintenance in the project who have also helped me a lot. And they, they helped me become a better engineer. Like when I was, so I was also able to apply the skills I learned. I learned programming, but I haven't actually applied the programming to a real world project. I haven't worked in a company or I haven't used my code to build actual, actual products before. So being part of the, the community being part of this project, I was able to use my code to build real world projects. So it gave me an exposure into software engineering. It gave me exposure into how things are done in the industry. And this LFX mentorship program being online and being a remote job. I was able to meet a lot of people from different countries. I was able to work with a lot of people in different countries. And this improved my speaking skills. Like I'm more comfortable talking in English after, after the program. So this helped me a lot. And with things being async and with things being distributed, I mean, people were working from different parts of the world and they were in different time zones. Most of our communication was in written format. So I was able to learn, learn and improve my writing, improve my technical writing, improve, improve how I documented new features, improve how I documented new proposals, all sorts of things. So my technical writing was completely improved. I didn't know anything about that, but the process set by the project before it helped me a lot. So I was able to learn all sorts of things I was able to improve in communication. And after the program, like I spent all of my time contributing open source code to the project. So once you start contributing to a project, you will quickly gain the confidence. Because when you start looking, start, when you think about the time you started contributing to a project, you are most likely to be overwhelmed by the code or overwhelmed by the size of the code. You won't understand what the issues are about and all sorts of things. So coming from that point to completing the LFX mentorship, I was actively contributing to code. I could understand the code base. I could understand how everything works. So it also helped me with my confidence. So I was more confident in contributing to the project. I was more confident about my skills. I was more contributing, more confident in contributing to open source projects. And during this time, I was also exposed to a lot of open source communities within the LFX foundation itself. So within the Cloud IT Computing Foundation, I was part of a lot of open source communities. I was part of tag groups, technically advisory groups. So I did a lot of community stuff around well. I met a lot of people who are working on open source stuff. And I realized that there are more people like me. There are more people passionate about writing open source code. There are more people. There are people making money by contributing to contributing to open source code. And that made me realize that working in open source is definitely a career option. There are a lot of people working in open source as their career. There are a lot of ways they make sustainable income in contributing to open source. And it seemed to me that these people were having a lot of fun. And I thought maybe I can make open source my career as well. So I completed my LFX mentorship program now. And what I did to us, I came back to the program as a mentor. And this was also life changing for me. This also helped me do a lot of stuff. So the journey continues in the section. So I completed my LFX mentorship program. And here we are. So after the program, I had been working for the project almost close to half a year. So within half a year, I gained a lot of experience in the project. And I was trusted to be a maintainer. And the company that built the open source project, they actually offered me a job. So that was really good because somebody wanted to pay me to work in open source. And I got a job. So it was like a dream come true. A year ago, I didn't know this job existed. At that point of time, I was really happy, really excited to work on an open source project as my job. And since I was a maintainer, I was doing a lot of stuff. I eventually gained a lot more confidence in the project. I had a lot of high level idea about how all things worked. I was making decisions. I was helping with the decisions that affected the product and everything. And I was doing open source stuff full time. And that is when I realized the core motto of open source, which is open source or maybe open source contributions, which is to pay it forward. So this is definitely applicable to life as well. But in the context of open source contributions, by paid forward, I mean that people help me make my first contribution. People help me get a career in open source. So I should definitely pay it forward. I should definitely help someone who are starting out to make a career in open source, maybe do a mentorship in open source. Help them contribute to open source. So that's when I decided to start mentoring. So I applied to be a mentor for the same machinery project and another project in the CNCF. So I started mentoring through the LFX mentorship program. So this screenshot below shows the two projects in which I was a mentor. And even after this project, I was able to even after this program, I was able to mentor some people as well. But this program helped me when I was a mentee. Now it is time for me to help others get on the same path, help them mentor them and help them like someone else helped me. So I'll talk about my experience as an LFX mentor. And definitely I learned a lot of stuff as a mentor. And the first thing I learned was that I love sharing knowledge. So I love teaching people what I know. I love sharing what I know. I love writing. I love talking to people about technical stuff or sort of things. So being part of this program, I was working with a mentee. So I had to help him. I had to share my knowledge to them. So this made me realize like I really enjoy this process of helping others sharing what I know. So that was a great opportunity for this self realization. I also learned that there are no trivial questions. So when I was a mentee, I used to ask a lot of stupid, a lot of trivial sounding questions. But when I became a mentor, I realized quickly that people who ask such easy and such trivial questions are the people who learn things faster. So by helping out, by helping out these mentees, they used to ask a lot of questions. And by helping them out, I realized this fact as well. And I also learned a lot by teaching. So if you have to teach something to someone, you need to have an in-depth understanding of the thing yourself. So this made me, so that's how I, so when I tried to articulate technical things to the mentees, I was able to solidify my understanding of the technique as well. So teaching helped me learn a lot. And this is like a well-known principle in studying. So but this definitely helped me in real life as well. I was learning a lot. I learned a lot more about our project. And this also helped me a lot. I developed dealership skills and being a mentor also opened me up to a whole new set of career opportunities. So I was a new programmer in January 2020. And I worked, I started working in open source for full time in March 2021. And definitely the Linux Foundation Mentorship Program was the catalyst. So as the catalyst, what the program did was it helped me discover open source project. So from someone who is coming from this part of the world, that is where like these kind of opportunities, these kind of projects are not discoverable like we don't have people talking about open source stuff where I live. So this program was provided me with the ability to discover these open source projects. So I'm just a guy with an internet connection and a computer. So I was able to discover the, a lot of these projects and these projects were really good. And definitely like this program enabled me to do that. It also connected me to mentors from around the world. So definitely like there are a lot of people, a lot of people, especially students in the world where they don't get access to such mentorships where they don't get access to such opportunities. And what this program did was it helped us find these projects and it also helped us by connecting us to the mentors. So these mentors could be on the opposite side of the earth with you. But they're here to help you out. You can you can ask them questions they're here to help you out. And this is not something that is, that is trivial when it comes to some countries when it comes to people, people who are from such such countries. Right. So, this program definitely enabled people enabled me to connect to such mentors find such mentors, even though they are there and from there and from our part of the world. It also gave me the same opportunity as someone, someone like living in, in, in much the same much tech friendly environment right. It also provided me a staple stipend. So I was out of my out of a job for a long time, and I had to quickly find some job before I blew through my savings, trying to shift, trying to switch carriers. And the program provided a stable stipend and throughout this program, I didn't have to worry about worry about money so I was able to contribute to open source and I was able to get a stipend, get paid for my work. So that is definitely something that that does not happen in open source projects regularly most people spend their free time most people friend their free time and effort, and sometimes money to build open source projects and in turn they don't get back anything. But this can be quite difficult for people who are in the real estate of their career they need money they're just starting to make money so they need some way to support their career they need to make make it sustainable. So this program provides a stable provided a stable stipend and which which gave me a lot of room to think just about the open source project just about my work. So it create and from with with all this what the program enables is it creates a lot of opportunity from people for people around the world, regardless of where you are from regardless of what your background is. The only thing you need to have is the will to learn is the will to contribute will be the will to work on such open source projects, and all you need is a computer and an internet connection and you can work with people from all over the world. Within your living room so that that that level of opportunities that level of enablement is what makes this program such a success and from my experience in the last two years I see a lot of people like me I see a lot of people from places that are that are that are a lot that are a lot disadvantaged than than my situation they were they are coming up, and they are making, they are taking part of this program and they are they are changing their lives so those that kind of enablement is what the LFX does how that is how the program cattle program access the catalyst in in all of these different people's careers. And it is definitely and I would definitely say like people transitioning looking to transition into working on open source I would definitely say that this program can be a path it can be a part of a path for a career in open source. And there is always, but I didn't want to end in my presentation this way but like with all these highs like there there are some, there are some warnings there are some things that you need to be aware of it is not all green fields. You have to take time to let things work. I spent a lot of time contributing the project for free life spent a lot of my free time contributing to open source projects. At that point of time I didn't think like I am doing free work or anything but like it took it took a lot of time for me to reach a point where I accepted as an LFX minty. It took a lot of time to learn the stuff that I needed to contribute it took a lot of time to become a maintainer, and it took a lot of time to reach a point where I can help other people to contribute as well. So all things take time. And there are no shortcuts for hard work. So the program is a request you to work hard the program requires you to learn a lot of stuff. There are a lot of people who are applying to this program and some just apply for the sake of it some some really work hard to contribute to the project some really work hard to learn stuff. They really put a lot of effort in their proposal so there are no shortcuts for hard work and people who put in the work definitely get the get the rewards of the rewards of their work. And you are and while contributing to open source you are pushing your code on a public repository where anyone in this world can literally see your code. So this opens up a lot of room for imposter syndrome to step in. So this is quite natural, like a lot of people experience it, even if they are experts in programming people experience this so there is definitely that that that there is definitely an impact impact from it while contributing to open source so the important thing is to recognize that and realize that everyone faces that issue. And it is also important to realize that open source is about company community, and as the Apache foundation motor says open source is community or code. So, it is more about the projects community it is more about the people, this is more about the environment that the open source project is being built upon more than the actual code more than the actual technical stuff itself. That is also something to remember. And with that, I end my talk and I open the floor for questions. If you have them, please ask them. And if not, or if you are, if you have questions sometime in the future like, or if you want to reach out to me about open source stuff, you can hit me up on Twitter. I talk a lot about open source stuff there as well. So you can hit me up there, and I will try to reply reply back to you and yeah, that's it. And I hope you enjoy the session.