Welcome to Bitshift Open Community!
Bitshift Open Community aims to foster young developers who are entering the vast field of software developent and design by guiding them so that they don't get lost and maintain their motivation and enthusiasm; eventually loosing interest in the art of software development alltogether.
We personally at some point of our career have been in the stage where we felt lost and overwhelmed by this world of software development; keep aside open-source software dev. So we thought to create an organisation which could foster young college students by mentoring them and guiding to our best capacity to break into software development and later contribute to large scale open-source projects.
Some of us were lucky to have good mentors who could guide us though this realm, and now it's time to return the favour by passing our knowledge to the young developers entering this field. We experienced that software development consists of a lot of scattered concepts which we learn as we go. But the barrier lies when we don't even know what to start with and how, be it a simple project or getting into a prestigious programme like Google Summer of Code.
We follow a mentor-student topology with a focus on building projects that could have a positive impact on our lives and solve real-life problems. We believe in teaching the students how to fish rather than feeding it to them ourselves.
Here is a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about this initiative and their answers. If you feel there is something we left to address here, you may contact @viveknigam3003 for more details.
Bitshift Open Community initiative as of now is an invitation based project. Soon we will be forming a robust onboarding process, which shall help us extend our mentorship to hundreds of other brilliant students.
If you believe you have the motivation to learn and also guide young minds along the way, you may contact us here with your motivation and your current skillset, and we shall find a fit student and project for you to mentor.
As a young community we allow more room for ideas and brainstorming sessions with a talented lot of student developers who can understand your level and relate to your stuggle while guiding you into open source software development.
You might be a freshman, a sophomore, or a junior at college, and a guidance from your seniors who could relate with your problems and help you through it will be a great opportunity to learn and grow.
You will be working on possibly innovative projects, and also proposing your own projects which could possibly solve a relevant real-life problem. This way you'll develop critical thinking and analytical skills which are a great asset in builing an original product.
All the code you write will have full credit against your name, which can later prove to be a great addition to your experience.
As a mentor you're responsibility shall include unblocking the students if they get stuck somewhere and ask for your help. You may do this by explaning the problem in simple terms with your experience, guiding them towards relevant material, or brainstorm the solution to their problem so that they may get to see a bigger picture. We estimate that this might not take more than 5-6 hours of your time per week at max, while on average it may take only 2-3 hours/week of your precious time.
Anything else on your mind? Do let us know my mailing us here.