The Community Bonding Period with Dask (+ Dask Distributed Summit 2021 Experience)
Let’s get this party started, shall we? This is the day I’ve been anticipating for quite some time! My Google Summer of Code adventure with Dask begins. I’m really looking forward to learning new things, gaining confidence in my abilities, proving my value to my mentors, and contributing to Dask! Imagine thousands of developers and users counting on a library that I wrote code for!
The first part of Google Summer of Code is dubbed as the Community Bonding Period, and it is during this time that students connect with the organization’s community to bounce ideas off each other, chill with them, and learn more about one other! This was always my favorite portion of the GSoC. I’m only a 19-year-old student, yet I get to work alongside industry pros while simultaneously making significant contributions to such a wonderful library. I feel so fortunate!
My Awesome Mentors
Every project has a couple of mentors assigned and I am so so so grateful to have the COOLEST mentors ever! Enter Genevieve and Martin 🎉!
Genevieve Buckley
She works as a scientist and programmer in Melbourne, Australia. She creates software tools to aid in scientific research. deep learning, automated analysis, and contributing to open source projects are among her passions. She has extensive expertise in image processing and analysis, including x-ray imaging, fluorescence microscopy, and electron beam microscopy. She works on the dask-imageproject and the naparipicture viewer.
Martin Durant
He is a community advocate and an open-source contributor. He has previously worked as an astronomer, data scientist, and medical imaging researcher. He’s been working with Anaconda for nearly six years. He has worked on training for python programming courses (intensive on-site and remote, numerical Python, visualization, and machine learning) and course development, as well as consultant work for external clients, proprietary software development (anaconda-cluster, anaconda-enterprise-notebooks, AE5), conda packaging, and anaconda-navigator design. He is also the lead developer of open source projects Intake, fssspec, fastparquet, and others, which have had millions of downloads. He is also a core contributor to Dask, zarr, and other high-profile python data processing applications.
Genevieve and Martin both are really cool! I really like talking with both of them. They always have something pleasant to share with me, and every time I talk with them, I learn something new. They have made it very easy for me to understand how the Dask codebase works. With their assistance, I was able to swiftly comprehend the principles of my project throughout this time frame. They are both extremely friendly, helpful, and welcome.
The Dask Distributed Summit 2021
Guess what! The annual Dask Distributed Summit happened during the Community Bonding Period itself! What better way to become acquainted with Dask and its community than to attend their yearly festival, where the entire community (developers and users) gathers to discuss Dask! It was my first summit, and it was fantastic! Above all, I had a good time. This was a wonderful experience, and I also learned a lot about how summits work. This couldn’t have happened at a better moment.
It was a three-day event that included lightning talks, tutorials, seminars, discussions, and entertaining trivia nights! I attended one of each — High-Performance Data Access for Dask, Life Science Workshop, Hacking Dask: Diving Into Dask’s Internals, and the best — Trivia Night! I felt a little hesitant at first, but as time passed, I became more at ease and began talking and exchanging ideas with fantastic people.
It was an excellent experience, and I would gladly attend the next Dask Distributed Summit. I’m thinking of giving a quick tutorial during the next summit on the work I did at Dask. That would be incredible!
Every Open Source Organization has a unique culture and set of ethics to which its community adheres. Dask has its own as well. The best thing GSoC does is give students a month to learn about this in their community. So I mostly used the community bonding phase to familiarize myself with the Dask ecosystem! How does Dask function? Is my local development environment ideal? Do I have all of the expertise required for this project? I kept answering these questions throughout the period, and as the days passed, I grew more confident in myself and my proposal.
I’m excited to get started and contribute to Dask. Coding Phase, here I come!
Aavjo 👋!
