GNOME.Asia Summit 2016

While I was going through news.gnome.org, a piece of news flashed on my screen stating that GNOME.Asia summit 2016 is to be held in Delhi, India which is my own place. Though at that time I was completely unaware about what happens in a summit, what it is meant for and all that sort of questions. But for once, I decided to atleast attend it, if not participate. I told about this news to my mentors Jonas Danielsson and Damian Nohales.  Initially i was quite reluctant to participate there, but Jonas pushed me a lot to present a lightning talk about my outreachy project in the summit. Damian too motivated me to go for the summit. Therefore I decided to submit a lightning talk proposal about my project : "Adding print route support in GNOME-Maps". Within few days i got the confirmation regarding the acceptance of my talk and also the approval of travelling sponsorship.

I was all ready for being the part of the summit and was quite excited to meet people whom I have just known by their nicks on IRC. The summit was held in Manav Rachna International University, Faridabad (India).

Day 1 comprised of workshops. The first session was divided based upon different ways in which one can contribute to GNOME (development, documentation, engagement) and in development it was branched further based on programming languages one was interested in. Because of my interest in javascript, I   joined Cosimo's team. The discussion turned out to be really helpful and cleared a lot of my doubts. Then there was a hands on session on gstreamer taken by Nirbheek and Arun. It was again an interesting one. Meanwhile I made many friends and exchanged talk with them. Above all of it, the community felt like very friendly, interesting and helping.

Day 2 and 3 comprised of a lot of interesting talks by various speakers. It was my first experience to deliver a talk at such a big summit. I was quite scared initially, but it happened all well at the end. I felt glad when I was able to reach out to people and shared the work clearly.

I was not aware of Day 4 plan i.e. excursion trip. But when Shobha (The summit coordinator) asked me to join them, I happily agreed to join them on the trip. It was a fun-filled trip to Taj Mahal, Agra. I got to know a lot about cultures of different countries and made awesome friends.

This summit has been very helpful to get me a feel of GNOME community. After all it's the people who has made it. I am thankful to GNOME community for making me a part of it and the summit. :) Looking forward to more such meets. :)