I speak here {^_^}

What GirlScript Sonipat Chapter did so far?

• • •

June 20, 2019

I am writing this report as the GirlScript Chapter Leader- Sonipat(region), right now. Though, it's even more delightful to know at the back of my mind that I am the Regional Head of Haryana region and I have higher responsibilities now. 😊

So, first of all, before starting anything, I would love to mention for everyone who doesn't know anything about the initiative.

What is GirlScript Sonipat?

GirlScript Sonipat is a non-profit community under GirlScript Foundation, India for students, software developers, IT Professionals and Entrepreneurs. GirlScript Sonipat Chapter is led by Priyanka Saggu (mentor on Freenode IRC Channel #GirlScriptSonipat, which is me though :P) and Sourabh Pruthi. The organizing team consists of a number of energized individuals from the Sonipat region. We believe in being the force that transforms how students learn in India. Our focus is on beginners and learners. And we try to accomplish the core vision by conducting free-of-cost offline sessions as in-person classrooms meetups, curated workshops and online sessions on Freenode server in IRC channel #GirlScriptSnp. Our ultimate aim is to provide everyone with
a platform to exchange great ideas and knowledge.

Now, as we know what the organization is and what its core motive is. Let's dive into

What GirlScript Sonipat Chapter has done so far?

My journey with GirlScript Sonipat happened in many folds. And I would like to state my journey in three phases.

  1. The Budding Phase.
  2. The Growing Phase.
  3. The Leading Phase.

THE BUDDING PHASE

This was the very early stage of our chapter. We were struggling really hard to bring folks into our community. The struggle was may be due to the lack of the outreach of the organization from our end, or maybe the folks themselves were not aware of the significance of being a part of any community(that time, ours) and the number of perks and benefits they were going to receive after being a member. So, it took us about a month long, to bring the first 5 folks into our realm. But that was a major benchmark received.

Now, the first step was done. And the next one was to actually start working with them and on them. And for that, we required a space. A space to host meetups and conduct the session. That was hard, really hard for that initial span. There was no space with us. So, we decided to take these folks into the actual open-source environment. I registered an IRC channel #GirlScriptSnp on Freenode server and begin to taking sessions there only. For conducting those sessions in a more disciplined and well-framed manner, I developed an IRC bot, gbot overnight for our channel. You can check for the working and source code of the bot here.

We had many sessions. Some of them were really tiring, others were long and really interesting. You can read about my experience during those IRC sessions and logs in the links provided below.

So, this was the end of our budding phase. We successfully ended up in building the foundation of our community. 🎉

GirlScript IRC

THE GROWING PHASE

While we were successful in building our community and we were actually working with them. Our goal was to eventually impact masses. So, we had to move from our online IRC sessions to actual in-person meetups and classroom sessions. We organized their sessions until late evenings in their empty classrooms when the college hours were done. The success of these in-person meetups and the feedbacks from the oldies lead to attracting more students into our community. The earlier were even happier and satisfied with their faster learning of the concepts and their doubts and problems being solved and troubleshoot in real time. Besides, the newbies were finding it easy to grasp the techy terms and working in collaboration. So, we reached another benchmark of providing the students with an open-source and collaborative environment of working. Our in-person meetups covered many technical concepts ranging from setting up their machines with Linux OS, learning using various text-editors, getting versed with documentation languages and version control system to as big as starting working with actual programming languages and building products out of that. To get a glimpse of how our physical classrooms looked like, let's have a look at some of the snapshots. :)

So, initially, the classrooms looked like this :

And,

And the day when we had maximum of them in one time :D

So, this phase actually went on being into action until we reached our biggest milestone which is our next phase though. ☺️

THE LEADING PHASE

This phase actually had seen the biggest benchmark, our community has received so far. So while all other older and well-established GirlScript chapters were busy prepping and organizing for their paid and huge LetsPy event. I took it as a challenge to organize a BootCamp of the same reach and participating strength with zero cost at all. The problems were if there was no cost included in hosting the BootCamp, so, who will come for actually taking up the expert sessions. But, with, no if and buts after a month-long process of finalizing the venue and getting a grant for goodies and swag from the core GirlScript Organization, I hosted and mentored the students myself. Our event "Python 1O1 BootCamp" was organized in the state level technical fest- TechNova in Deenbandhu Chhotu Ram University of Science and Technology. The biggest happiness was when our event was the only one which received the highest number of participants registration in just one day. The number crossed more than 90+ on the first day of registrations itself. The BootCamp was hosted for two days and I conducted sessions for more than 15+ hours in 2 shifts all by myself (that was the day when I actually realized I have achieved something really big).


Python 1O1 BootCamp-1


Python 1O1 BootCamp-2

So, yes we did something really big. This was not possible if the volunteers (the oldies from the organization haven't taken care of the non-techy pieces of stuff to make this event a really successful one). So, thanks a lot to each one of the member of the community and all of the participants who very patiently learned from us.

You can check and download the content and presentation slides used while BootCamp from here.

So, here I am concluding with the major 3 phases that our community GirlScript-Sonipat had gone through.

And, yeah, not to forget, recently we celebrated the "2-year completion of GirlScript Foundation". Eventually, that was our GirlScript Sonipat Chapter's "1-year completion" celebration as well.


GirlScript 2 years celebration at GirlScript Sonipat Chpater.

So, with the ending note of this report cum my journey as GirlScript Foundation's Sonipat Chapter Leader, I now, as the GirlScript Regional Head of Haryana, very happily wants to announce that the Applications for joining GirlScript Haryana for various roles are open now. You can enroll yourself by filling this form.

With this note, I want to thank my mentor Jason Braganza for teaching me so well! followed by another thanks to everyone from GirlScript Foundation for giving me this big opportunity to flourish myself.

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