...is the start of another.
Yeah. It was the last week of my internship when I got accepted to become a co-mentor with ODK-X.
Here's a summary of my Outreachy experience and my final article in the series. From digging into Material Design to creating UI components and naming colour styles, I’ve indeed learnt and grown while working with ODK-X. I’m able to say I know Material 3 at the back of my hand. I combed through several UI components while replicating across each of the ODK-X Tools.
In the end, I was able to revamp and make significant changes to the existing ODK-X Design Guidelines to meet the latest version of Material Design. Going forward, I’ll be fixing UI issues in the ODK-X Tools as much as I can, to simplify the experience for people in resource-constrained environments that use these tools.
I never had fears when I submitted my final application. I had the foresight that I would get into the internship phase. I knew because;
I have God.
I got good feedback from my mentors during the contribution phase.
That was all the assurance I needed!
The most amazing experience during the internship was the opportunity I got to speak with some senior staff at Google. My mentor Waylon Brunette did a great job of setting us up with them to ask questions about our careers and how we could grow too. They encouraged me to keep doing my best work till I find myself in the global job market.
The theme for the 11th week of the internship was ‘Continuing our open source journey’. We were to think about our plans for Open Source after Outreachy.
Outreachy has opened my eyes to the beauty of Open source - particularly the part about extending a helping hand to people who can't extend a hand for help. I've decided to be involved in open-source projects in every way I can.
Currently, I’m a co-mentor for the "Create a GitHub and CircleCI based continuous build system for ODK-X". Other things I've done to continue my open-source journey include;
Using more open source projects like the ones I find at Figma Community, etc.
Finding a job in Open source: I took a bold step when I applied for a role as a Product Designer at Mastodon, the decentralized social media. I was thrilled to get to the 2nd stage in the process. It reassured me that I'm taking the right steps.
I’d also be attending open-source events I know about. One of them is the Outreachy's one-thousandth intern celebration coming up in July.
Lastly, I have assisted applicants with tips and advice in writing the initial applications and getting past the contribution phase. I found myself speaking for the first time on a Twitter space, Women Techmakers Uyo and at my community - RoadTrip Community
Also, I had an interesting conversation with Marie Nordin - Code of Conduct Specialist - at Red Hat. I learnt about how she grew from being an Outreachy intern in 2013 to becoming a top Code of Conduct Specialist at the same Open Source Community.
How interesting!
Here’s what I learnt from our informal chat;
The best ways to get a job in the industry are to;
Build connections with other people,
Show up; and
Follow through.
I have held on to this, and it works!!!
That's it, my Outreachy experience. There's more, but that's all I have to write, for now. You can follow my journey through the internship with the other articles in the Outreachy series here.
Now, I have some mentor responsibilities to respond to.
¡Muchas gracias!