Outreachy is an internship program that helps women and people who are under-represented get more invloved with open source through remote internships. Outreachy provides a supportive community for beginning to contribute any time throughout the year and offer focused internship opportunities twice a year with a number of free software organizations.
The Application Process
When I first heard of outreachy I was skeptical because I had very little experience in open source. I decided to do some research. After series of research on outreachy and reading the reports and success stories of ex-interns, I was convinced within me that this was the breakthrough I needed to break out of my shell and get more involved in open source.
So I subscribed to Outreachy’s mailing list to get a notification when applications would open and started getting more involved in open source contributions as I was really motivated by all the success stories I had read at this point.
Fastforward few weeks later I submitted my initial application and was ecstatic when it was approved. This took me to the the second phase which is the contribution phase.
Contribution Phase
Selecting a Project
The contribution phase kicked off on 1st of October and lasted for about a month. It came with the dilemma of selecting a project from the numerous list of projects to contribute to. I wanted to make contributions to at least two different projects to increase my chances of getting selected. I went through all the projects and read their descriptions and required skill set to find a project that matches my skillset and where I knew I could make a difference. I was happy when I came across Mediawiki’s project Documentation improvements to the ~20 top 100 most viewed MediaWiki Action API pages on-wiki. Wikipedia has always been a primary source of content when carrying out any research for me, from solving school assignments to undergraduate thesis, to post-graduate studies, my software-development career and even getting information on the fly. Though I hadn’t contributed to wikimedia before, although I have worked on improving documentation for an organization before and managed their engineering blog, I decided to take a leap of faith by applying with the mindset that even if I didn’t get accepted, I will have the opportunity to contribute to improving the experience of thousands of developers who utilize Mediawiki’s API and be able to give back to the community that has helped me by so doing. So with that mindset, I chose wikimedia and my contribution phase began.
Contributing
After selecting my choice project, I went through all the available resources, registered on the communication platform which was zulip, created a phabricator account and a mediawiki account. I introduced myself on zulip -MediaWiki’s communication channel- to other members and also to the mentor assigned to me (Brenda Jerop).
Then came the time to actually put in some work. A phabricator page was created for us (applicants) with a list of micro-tasks to work on. Things like API documentation page improvement were included in the tasks. I picked my first task which became my first contribution and started working on it. To be honest it was all overwhelming at first as most of the technologies were a bit new to me. But then there was something very important I learnt from this phase, which is fact that communication is key. I asked my mentor for guidance whenever I got stuck or was confused coupled with the fact that mediawiki had a lot of resources to help including blog posts and reports of past interns, all you had to do was just look.
I was so excited when I created my first pull request but even more ecstatic when it was merged. I was able to submit three pull requests during the contribution period with one work in progress. Somewhere in between contributions, I drafted out my final application and submitted it to my mentor to review. Then I submitted on outreachy.
One great advice I got for this contribution phase, which I’m happy I took was to start contributing early. At first it might seem like you have enough time but depending on the organization and project you are working on and how familiar you are with their process, you might need some time to understand the tools and process. For me, even though I had worked on similar projects outside wikimedia, I hadn’t contributed to wikimedia before and their processes and tools were slightly different, so starting early gave me enough room to get used to all these.
Getting Selected as an Outreachy Wikimedia Intern
On the 26th of November 2019, I got the most exciting news that I had been selected as an Outreachy intern for Wikimedia. I was excited that I didn’t give up before I even started simply because I thought it wasn’t for me. So I will be working on the project: Documentation improvements to the ~20 top 100 most viewed MediaWiki Action API pages on-wiki.
I’m really excited to be working for Wikimedia, it feels like a dream come through and I also look forward to working with my mentor and the Wikimedia community to be able to contribute my own little quota to this wonderful foundation.