UTMSAM Hack the Case Notes

# UTMSAM Hack the Case Notes ###### tags: `Events` ### Initiative Overview 👁️‍🗨️  [Website](https://hackthecase.tech/) [Devpost](https://hack-the-case-2021.devpost.com/?ref_content=default&ref_feature=challenge&ref_medium=discover) UTMSAM is hosting Hack The Case **About Hack The Case** Welcome to Hack the Case! Imagine a hackathon, case competition, workshops, and game events mashed together with networking opportunities, and tons of prizes. That's us! Hack the Case is an innovation focused competition designed for diversed students of all backgrounds. In this hackathon, students will have to develop a business + technology solution to a problem presented to them. As an invited partner, we will deliver a talk titled "Build the Future With Open Source" and host mentorship sessions via our [online portal](http://meet.grey.software). ## Build the Future with Open Source ### When and Where 16th February at 12 pm. Discord **A UTM Student's experience with Open Source: Arsala's Journey** - Start off by talking about your journey and how and why you decided to contribute to open source. Relate to being like them in search of stability and work As I began to see what OSS could do for me, I awoke to the global possibilities - What has your experience been like so far? - How has it impacted you as a software developer? - Maybe show your first ever contrbution to open source - What exactly is Open Source? **Some facts about open source** - Approximately 3 out of 5 developers contribute to open source. - 61% of open source developers are involved in emerging technologies of the future like Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning - And a few more.. **Networking opportunities** The world of open source software development is home to many passionate contributors. Developers in South Asia, Middle East, and Africa are more likely to contribute to open source than not. [More OSS Research](https://hackmd.io/@grey-software/Open-source-landscape-research) ## Mentorship Link online resources and booking portal. - [ ] Create utmhtc.grey.software ### Impact 💥 This will be Grey Software's first event as a guest speaking organization at UTM. ## Script Hope you're all doing well. My name is Arsala Bangash, and I'll be speaking before you all today as the founder of an open source non-profit, and a student of UTM. By the end of this talk, you will walk away with an understanding of how you can create and use open source technologies and become a driving force for a better future. My hope is that by learning about my journey through University, the start up and corporate tech sectors in the US, and the global world of open source software, you will come to see why I believe in creating a world where we can trust, love, and learn from our software. But this isn't what I always believed Allow me to take you back to my first two years at the University where I was a young computer science student following the curriculum to the best of my ability, so that like many of you, I could develop the skills that I needed to be employable after university and sustain myself in the modern economy. At first, the goals were rather humble because the pinnacle of achievement in my mind at the time was being a successful teaching assistant and landing a decent job for my personal experience year. My perspective really changed after I had the opportunity to attend a number of hackathons in the United States. There, my world opened up to students creating beautiful And functional open source software in less than 48 hours, and there were large and exciting tech companies set up to recruit these students. It's important to note that these were students that had For more knowledge about the global software ecosystem and far more experience with hacking together projects and gaining applied experience. Personally, I knew I had to be a part of this because I had fallen in love with the idea of working at one of these esteemed tech giants as much as I did with the idea of creating Software to solve the problems that me or my friends and family faced in life. So by the time the summer after second year had come around, I had neither an esteemed internship nor the technical confidence to say I could bring a software idea to life. I turned my focus to a mental math practice side project I was working on and made a commitment to publish it as a high quality app on the Google Play Store and Github. I called the app Boltz, and it was motivated by me wanting to create a fun interface for my brother to practice math and stop saying he wasn't a math person. Up until this point, open source meant having an active Github profile with side projects so that recruiters in the industry could see that you had some hands-on experience with the technologies they used. This plan worked out rather well because the first two internships I got during university were in a large part facilitated by the work I put into Boltz. When I found out that I would be heading back to Google for a second time to work with the android studio team, my journey had come to a wonderful full Circle. Let me explain why The summer I worked on Boltz was a special summer in the android ecosystem. Android adopted the new Kotlin programming language as a first class development tool, Android studio who is undergoing major changes to improve developer experience. These changes made it possible for me As a university student with a laptop and an internet connection, to build on the android platform. At the same time Developers all around the world were affecting millions of people in countries like Pakistan and Brazil. There's an Uber clone, Kareem, that has had a huge impact on transportation In the cities where I grew up in Pakistan. Let's pick up the thread of open source right here. Since Uber was a closed source application, Meaning that the code was not open to the public, the people of Pakistan had to wait until Uber's leadership decided it was worth it to enter the Pakistani market, or until someone developed a competing solution. No back in the day before the open source developer to an ecosystem is as strong and fast as it is today, re-creating someone's solution wasn't so simple. But for the Kareem developers, they weren't starting from ground zero because they had access to the same development tools that the engineers at Uber did for the most part. The Uber engineering team themselves had a great culture of open sourcing their development tools. I saw this is an empowering force for equalizing the access to opportunity on the world. Now, this is an issue that's close to my heart because ever since I was a child I wondered why someone's geography limited their access to technology, education, high standard of living. When I imagined a world of software developers collaboratively working to equalize the access to knowledge and opportunity for everyone, it made me feel warm on the inside, and I felt that by working with the Android team at Google, I could contribute to that cause in a meaningful way. So...that would have been a great fairytale ending....what happened? Well, I had known that android was an open source technology but I had a rather naïve and romanticized view about how the project was being developed. I thought the Engineers at google would be collabvoratively designing and programming with developers all around the world in an open way, but I realized that the majority of the work was being done inside of Google and you couldn't meaningfully contribute to the project without being an employee. The term open source gets loosely applied to many projects who may want to benefit from the public relations boost that it gives, but often times in the industry you'll see projects that make their source code available, but don't try to facilitate any community engagement with the code or they impose restrictive licensing. I was approaching this from the lens of a university student that saw the value of open source development as a part of an effective software education and from the lens of an immigrant from a Third World country we're limited access to proprietary software holds back people trying to craft a better life for themselves and their families. I cared about how effectively your average software learner could understand open source software written by others, build on top of it, etc. I knew that a pathway could be created for university students to meaningfully contribute to the fast open source software ecosystem, and while I believe staying at Google and being a vocal spokesperson for such a program may have eventually landed me on a team that would make such a thing happen, I Started to experience unease with the culture at google and I chose not to return to work there full-time due to a mismatch in values and philosophy. My next best bet was the University, and when I returned to UTM, I vowed to use my position as a Hacklab coordinator to empower students to create and use open source software. Since returning, I've worked on three open source projects with a team supervised by a professor. These courses were an excellent playground for me to guide students who had great app ideas but lacked the technical experience to bring those ideas to life. Some of the projects I helped out on were Viaplanner and the UTM CSSC website, which we will take a look at for some applied Open Source Practice later on. Around May 2020, I began building a not for profit organization that would empower students to build open source software so that they could gain the technical skills they needed to compete in the industry or bring their software ideas to life. The first Grey software was built by myself, a number of paid students, and volunteers. It started in May 2020 and ended in August 2020. During this time, the organization was focused on teaching a handful of students to build out our portfolio of apps which included Toonin, Material Math, and the Focus extensions. The second Grey Software was an organization that was formally registered in Canada, but the students that were working with me in the summer had to move back to school or on to bigger things. At this time, I moved back to Pakistan and tried to climb the pioneer tournament ranks. The structural problems present as a result of a lone wolf mentality from the first Grey software were still present, but I learned and discovered new technologies, and built important open-source relationships. The third Grey software is an attempt to restructure the organization into a functioning organism that - [ ] Effectively moves financial capital towards open source creators and teachers - [ ] Sets up a technologically empowering environment for creative humans to maximize their contributing potential - [ ] Delivers useful products for humans - [ ] Runs successful for-credit programs with universities -------------------- This I dove headfirst into the android ecosystem And while there were some instability is and frustrations during the development process,