Summer Internship with Mozilla — Vikash from Manipal Institute of Technology
Wildcard entry for: – 20th August 2012
Name of the intern: – Vikash
Institute: – Manipal Institute of Technology
Organization interned with: – Mozilla through Google Summer of Code
What the heck is Open Source? Why do people just talk about it? How to make money through Open Source? Open Source is a great buzz word for some, well on the other hand its a religion for others. Open Source for lay man can be understood like this, I have a beer can which can be shared by anyone for drinking, and the beer in this can never end. Now I go to a party with this beer can and I make unlimited copies of this beer can so that everyone can have their beer individually. So your question would be how’s this possible, is it some kind of a magic? Technically? No, Morally? Yes; it’s a magic :). Now you must be thinking, why am I talking about Open Source, when I am supposed to talk about my internship story. Don’t worry, I will get to the climax of the story but first I must create the plot.
It was 3 years ago when I came to Manipal as a young guy who had plans/hopes to complete his engineering and get into the best business school right after college. College was going great until I sat for my first programming class. I had economics in 12th, so I had NO prior experience of programming. I admit my first computer class wasn’t great but something captivated me towards it. I attended few workshops organized by holy “Linux Users Group”, Manipal (LUG). It was here that I got a motive/passion/love to learn programming and make my life a better place. Now moving to the agenda of my internship story.
I interned with Mozilla through Google Summer of Code, 2012 (GSoC), an initiative by Google. My final evaluation is still left and once I am done with that, I will make around $5000. Trust me it’s huge, you can buy two to three MacBooks :-). So what is GSoC? GSoC is an initiative by Google in which students contribute to various open source projects during their entire summer with their coding abilities. It’s kind of a hectic procedure to get into because you are competing globally and not just in your country. But once you are through, you will have a great experience, trust me on this! GSoC allows you to work from home or any where in the world, so you can be with your family, and code as per your wish! So, if 1200+ people were GSoC students, under 180 organizations (Mozilla being just one), how does it differentiate my story from the others? And the answer is – I still went to an office :-). I went to TLabs.
TLabs is one of newer wings of Times Group. Some of the products of Times Group include names like, The Times of India, Indiatimes.com, Gaana.com, Radio Mirchi, Times Now, and likewise. But still TLabs is different. TLabs is a start-up accelerator and the people were so generous that they had given me a space to work on my GSoC project specifically. We always hear that start-ups have a very different culture and I am sure I had a very close peek at that. I remember the days when I used to code all day long, and when I got tired I used to hop on the X-Box. I remember the *specific* day when I was so tired and sleepy that even 6 cups of coffee didn’t help me. So I slept for 6 long hours on a bean bag and no one interrupted me. So this was one hell of an office.
TLabs people are also a major contributor and organizer for Start-up Weekend in India; so I got to meet some of the greatest start-up minds in India and get associated with a brand. During my internship, I was working with MDN – Mozilla Developer Network, the documentation wing of Mozilla. To cut short, my work was to write examples and code samples in HTML5 and CSS3. In the first view it seems easy but it has a completely different perspective. There was one day when I wrote a code, my mentor said – “Good Work” whereas on another day he said, “Vikash, your code is now outdated, because the speculation has changed for the particular implementation”. So it was challenging in several aspects too. Also, my work is freely available at https://github.com/ivikash/
Examples-for-the-web . I also got a job offer from iDubba.com whom I met at Start-up Saturday, Delhi which was organized by Headstart and TLabs guys, and one major reason for my hiring being my association with Mozilla. So this summer was hell of a ride for me.To conclude, what do you think of;
Interning with Mozilla with some great mentors and guides | Making $5000 during the summer | Unlimited coffee | Full on X-Box | Bean Bags | Office Experience | And a great amount of learning.
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