User:Kaustubhhiware/Maintainer works

I was elected maintainer via MetaKGP's election in mid October 2017. My SOP.

Tenure

Oct '17 - Jan '18

(As per SOP) [In order of perceived importance]

• Introductory seminar

As discussed on 12 November 2017, an intro seminar is planned to be held in mid February. Room bookings were almost done, but Naresh spoke with KOSS and we decided it would be best to conduct a seminar with them, given KOSS's popularity due to KWoC (Kharargpur Winter of Code) should convert to increased footfall. Plan to distribute stickers then and bring up topics discussed below during the seminar. Agenda here.

• More hackathons.

None yet. Current plan is to hold one after the introductory seminar. Pitch it as a place for self-help, rather than teaching something.

• Getting more people on slack.

Partially successful. Number of people on channel increased from 324 to 411 as of Feb 05, 2018. This can be credited to Kharagpur Winter of Code. Although people joined in, most of them shrivel away soon after joining. Number of active users barely increased from 20 to 25 (as per slack channel stats). I'm expecting the introductory seminar will help us in increasing Points of Contacts, or help in garnering more interest from the community.

• Course reviews

As per the meetup on 12 November 2017, it was decided the maintainers will themselves start adding some reviews. A Facebook post was also made, however very few reviews were added. To make sure this receives attention, we can make our intro seminar as 'NOT A FIRST YEARS ONLY' seminar, and discuss about this.

• Metakgp's blog

Medium blog initiated by Naresh. Demo days ensure regular updates, need to identify more ways of extending blog topics. An example could be "Setting up Docker" based on Siddharth's talk on Feb 3, 2018. (Will be taken up by either me or someone who attended the session).

• Increased points of contacts

Projects which were open in KWoC were assigned a mentor, thus ensuring no one feels a certain project is abandoned. Might have to update project README's accordingly, if not done already for some project.

Plans / Discussions not included in SoP

• Identified that server crashes are only resolved by Siddharth, and spoke with Naresh regarding conducting some session related to this. The session was held successfully, thanks to Naresh and Siddharth, with an attendance of 8 (previous year attendance was 2 for a similar session).

• New projects

As Vikrant pointed out, most of the widely-used projects were developed by graduated students. To make sure metakgp stands for innovation, new projects need to be rolled out.

1. Geotagged map for KGP: Progress stalled because did not seem viable at that poin, only to realise this could be used by students coming to KGP for fests. Will start development on this soon, to be used and pitched to fest management.
2. BTP MTP repository: As suggested by Srihari and realised myself, it would be helpful if we could crowd pool our technical knowledge and create a platform where people share what they're working on, what projects they're doing, and so on. This would help people interested in a topic say Smart Phone Computing, to get in touch with me and so on. However after a chat with Naresh, it seemed unviable because of two challenges: a) Convincing people to share details about their work b) Mindless pestering by first/second/third years. Need to come up with an elegant solution for this, if at all others are interested in backing this up.
3. Project application portal: I happened to be the batch representative when Prof. Partha Chakrabarti (Director) met with third and fourth year Computer Science students. In the session, he informed that numerous alumni have showed interests in offering internships to KGP students (talent based, because alumni know CGPA doesn't matter) and also fund student-run projects. From my personal experience (Ayush can vouch for this), I know that companies approach professors with funding to execute a project they have in mind. These projects are allotted to freshly joined Research Scholars or PhD students, who usually lack the technical know-how to complete these projects within a semester. This information was available to me last year. A week ago (30 Jan), I got to know that a portal, that has been proposed by committee members of Bitwise (CS department's almost defunct society) multiple times, was accepted last year. The portal would allow professors / PhD students post ongoing research projects, entailing details of the project, where students can apply. The current system is manually mailing the prof for a project, which is usually allotted blindly, without knowing what it is about. The portal would help in getting the truly interested people together for a project. As an extension, alumni can also post internships which they wish to offer. The proposal for such a portal was accepted in last Spring semester, however was never worked upon, as my conversation with Bitwise's president revealed. The conversation (on Feb 1 2018) hinted that the department society won't be taking this up any time soon. We can take up this project and really create something impactful for the KGP community.

The progress for the last 2 projects could not be discussed because the developments were very recent and I was busy for the last 3 days for personal reasons.

Self-verdict

Although I would shrug my shoulders and say I was a maintainer for only 2 academic months, my involvement could have been more proactive. Barely acceptable tenure so far, given the gusto with which I had presented my Statement of Purpose. However, the future might bring a ray of hope. Mistakes have been made, lessons have been learned, and improvements will be made very soon. I hope at the end of my tenure, aapko shikayat ka mauka nahi denge.