Talk Intermediate

Impact of Open Source on my professional journey

Approved

Session Description

In this talk, I will share my experience in contributing to FOSS and what FOSS gave back in return in 2 parts.

Part 1: I will share my life experience on how contributing to FOSS happened and how it helped me find a job. My contribution to FOSS began during my career break and it helped me to stay confident and overcome my fear during the vulnerable phase of my life. I applied for an Outreachy internship during this phase and started making contributions to Apache Airflow. I will share some of the tips that helped me to begin contributing to FOSS and stories from my experience on how FOSS operates from a beginner's perspective.

Part 2: Life was going smoothly and I was contributing to FOSS and working a part-time role in my job that I got via my FOSS contributions. Then came a day when the contract of my job was terminated with a 2-day notice. Another vulnerable phase and this time too I turned towards FOSS. I have started making sales pitches to implement FOSS solutions like Frappe to small businesses and got my first customer. I am also trying to build my open-source solution and FOSS has given me all the confidence to try it.

References

https://in.pycon.org/cfp/pycon-india-2023/proposals/how-i-restarted-my-career-by-contributing-to-open-source~dPNm4/

Session Categories

FOSS

Speakers

Bowrna Prabhakaran Software Developer

I am Bowrna with over 11 years of experience in software development. My experience ranges from working in installable network monitoring software to cloud apps to building a scalable backend for image tagging AI systems. After my maternity break, I had to take a break from my career. And that's when I started checking if I can contribute to Open Source projects. I applied for Outreachy, started contributing to Apache Airflow, and found a part-time job. Life was going easy until my job terminated and this time I have turned to Open Source to kickstart my own company which implements open-source software solutions for organizations and small businesses.

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