I found this diagram when I was looking for what mentorship is. In order to complete any task successfully, we need some kind of guidance and assistance. Otherwise we will be moving to wrong directions, wrong decisions and even into worst conditions. As the diagram demonstrates, a mentor provides us support, help, advice, guidance and assistance. I am glad that I found a mentor with all those qualities.
I believe that a GSoC project requires a good relationship in between the mentor and the student. For that, we need to maintain a good means of communication. When I selected and decided to work on this project, what I did first was subscribing to the KDE and Inqlude mailing lists. On 7th March, I communicated my interest on this project with my mentor via an email. There I introduced my self.
"I am Nanduni Nimalsiri, a third year undergraduate at Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. I would like to take part in GSOC Programme 2016 with KDE Community."
In my first mail, I mentioned my interest on the project idea : Improve categorization and search on inqlude website. I also mentioned about my doubts regarding the project and I asked him about the approach that I need to follow to proceed with this project. I waited eagerly for a reply. It was after one day (8th March) that I got a reply. I was very happy and my interest for the project increased more and more. The first few words which my mentor had mentioned in his email were,
"Hi Nanduni,
Welcome. It's great that you are interested in this project."
These words inspired me. It was a great welcome. I felt that it is a privilege to be a part of their community.
Let me introduce my mentor. He is Cornelius Schumacher, an open source Software developer from German, which is a country far away from Sri Lanka. He has been a core KDE contributor since a long time. He was the main developer and maintainer of KOrganizer for many years too. He is a Qt user since Qt 1.1 and he has authored and maintained a significant number of Qt and KDE applications and libraries.
Recently I read a blog about him : Meet Cornelius Schumacher - Akademy Keynote Speaker. It's really interesting. I like to get to know how giant people in the industry enjoy their lives amidst busy schedules. I prefer its section on "Behind the KDE scene" very much. Cornelius's ideas on Akademy and open source technology are very interesting. I felt very proud of myself to be in touch with KDE community and I am really really looking forward to be a part of it.
Journey commenced in this way. I always try to clarify the doubts through my mentor. He advised me to focus on design aspects rather than implementation which can be done after coming up with a good set of designs. I was asked to learn Ruby and he pointed out some interesting sites for that too. So the journey proceeds ...
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