Context

Google Code-in is a contest to introduce pre-university students (ages 13-17) to open source software development. Since 2010, 8,108 students from 107 countries have completed over 40,100 open source tasks Because Google Code-in is often the first experience many students have with open source, the contest is designed to make it easy for students to jump right in. I was one of the mentors in this first time for Fedora program. We had 125 students participating in Fedora and the top 3 students completed 26, 25 and 22 tasks each.

Mentors

Very active and helpful group of mentors helped the students whenever required. We were 7 mentors

Our winners:

Every year Google invites Grand-Prize winner and their parents, and a mentor to it’s headquarters in San Francisco, California for a 4 days trip. This report covers activities and other things that happened there.

Day 00 (Reception)

  • Meeting the mentees at the hotel (4:30)
  • Opening reception at 5:00pm at the Google San Francisco office for all attendees.
  • Welcome (snacks and appreciating everyone’s efforts)
  • Swag giveaway
    • Students got Pixel 3xl phones and a bag full with a jacket and 2 T-shirts.
    • Mentors got the bag with a Jacket and 2 T-shirts as well
    • A lot of GCI and GSoC stickers
    • Pens/Pins/…
  • Dinner

Day 01 (Full Day at Google headquarters in Mountain View.)

  • Take shuttle to the Google headquarters
  • See around Googleplex
  • Visit Google Merch store (students were provided $150 and mentors $75 to purchase merchandise of their choice)
  • Students met Google Employees from their home country and had lunch with them
  • Talks by Google employees
    • Recruiting - Lauren Alpizar
    • Android OS: Ally Sillins
    • Cloud: Ryan Matsumoto
    • Chrome OS - Grant Grundler
    • Google Assistant - Daniel Myers
    • Google TensorFlow - Paige Bailey
  • Dinner and then back to the hotel

Day 10 (Fun Day in San Francisco)

  • Cable car around the city and see

    • Twin Peaks, San Francisco
    • Golden gate park
    • Golden gate bridge (also, walked across it)

  • Dinner on a Yacht

Day 11 (Closing reception in Google SF office)

  • Breakfast
  • Award ceremony (to grand prize winners)
  • Presentation (by mentors and winners - 4 minutes each)
  • Lunch
  • Interview recording
  • lunch and closing reception at Google San Francisco office. Events end no later than 3:00pm.