Tag Archives: mentorship

Experts.Anyone.Anywhere

Posted by Janelle Kuhlman, Developer Relations Program Manager

Click above to meet our community of Experts

The Google Developer Experts program is a global network of highly experienced technology experts, developers and thought leaders. GDEs share their expertise with other developers and tech communities through a variety of ways such as speaking engagements, mentorship and content writing. The community has access to an exclusive network of experts that span across different Google technologies including Android, Cloud, Machine Learning and more.

Get to know our diverse community and subscribe to the Google Developers YouTube Channel to stay informed on the latest updates across our products and platforms!

Finding courage and inspiration in the developer community

Posted by Monika Janota

How do we empower women in tech and equip them with the skills to help them become true leaders? One way is learning from others' successes and failures. Web GDEs—Debbie O'Brien, Julia Miocene, and Glafira Zhur—discuss the value of one to one mentoring and the impact it has made on their own professional and personal development.

A 2019 study showed that only 25% of keynote speakers at tech events are women, meanwhile 70% of female speakers mentioned being the only woman on a conference panel. One way of changing that is by running programs and workshops with the aim of empowering women and providing them with the relevant soft skills training, including public speaking, content creation, and leadership. Among such programs are the Women Developer Academy (WDA) and the Road to GDE, both run by Google's developer communities.

With more than 1000 graduates around the world, WDA is a program run by Women Techmakers for professional IT practitioners. To equip women in tech with speaking and presentation skills, along with confidence and courage, training sessions, workshops, and mentoring meetings are organized. Road to GDE, on the other hand, is a three-month mentoring program created to support people from historically underrepresented groups in tech on their path to becoming experts. What makes both programs special is the fact that they're based on a unique connection between mentor and mentee, direct knowledge sharing, and an individualized approach.

Photo of Julia Miocene speaking at a conference Julia Miocene

Some Web GDE community members have had a chance to be part of the mentoring programs for women as both mentors and mentees. Frontend developers Julia Miocene and Glafira Zhur are relatively new to the GDE program. They became Google Developers Experts in October 2021 and January 2022 respectively, after graduating from the first edition of both the Women Developer Academy and the Road to GDE; whilst Debbie O'Brien has been a member of the community and an active mentor for both programs for several years. They have all shared their experiences with the programs in order to encourage other women in tech to believe in themselves, take a chance, and to become true leaders.

Different paths, one goal

Although all three share an interest in frontend development, each has followed a very different path. Glafira Zhur, now a team leader with 12 years of professional experience, originally planned to become a musician, but decided to follow her other passion instead. A technology fan thanks to her father, she was able to reinstall Windows at the age of 11. Julia Miocene, after more than ten years in product design, was really passionate about CSS. She became a GDE because she wanted to work with Chrome and DevTools. Debbie is a Developer Advocate working in the frontend area, with a strong passion for user experience and performance. For her, mentoring is a way of giving back to the community, helping other people achieve their dreams, and become the programmers they want to be. At one point while learning JavaScript, she was so discouraged she wanted to give it up, but her mentor convinced her she could be successful. Now she's returning the favor.

Photo of Debbie O'Brien and another woman in a room smiling at the camera

Debbie O'Brien

As GDEs, Debbie, Glafira, and Julia all mention that the most valuable part of becoming experts is the chance to meet people with similar interests in technology, to network, and to provide early feedback for the web team. Mentoring, on the other hand, enables them to create, it boosts their confidence and empowers them to share their skills and knowledge—regardless of whether they're a mentor or a mentee.

Sharing knowledge

A huge part of being a mentee in Google's programs is learning how to share knowledge with other developers and help them in the most effective way. Many WDA and Road to GDE participants become mentors themselves. According to Julia, it's important to remember that a mentor is not a teacher—they are much more. The aim of mentoring, she says, is to create something together, whether it's an idea, a lasting connection, a piece of knowledge, or a plan for the future.

Glafira mentioned that she learned to perceive social media in a new way—as a hub for sharing knowledge, no matter how small the piece of advice might seem. It's because, she says, even the shortest Tweet may help someone who's stuck on a technical issue that they might not be able to resolve without such content being available online. Every piece of knowledge is valuable. Glafira adds that, "Social media is now my tool, I can use it to inspire people, invite them to join the activities I organize. It's not only about sharing rough knowledge, but also my energy."

Working with mentors who have successfully built an audience for their own channels allows the participants to learn more about the technical aspects of content creation—how to choose topics that might be interesting for readers, set up the lighting in the studio, or prepare an engaging conference speech.

Learning while teaching

From the other side of the mentor—mentee relationship, Debbie O'Brien says the best thing about mentoring is seeing the mentees grow and succeed: "We see in them something they can't see in themselves, we believe in them, and help guide them to achieve their goals. The funny thing is that sometimes the advice we give them is also useful for ourselves, so as mentors we end up learning a lot from the experience too."

TV screenin a room showing and image od Glafira Zhur

Glafira Zhur

Both Glafira and Julia state that they're willing to mentor other women on their way to success. Asked what is the most important learning from a mentorship program, they mention confidence—believing in yourself is something they want for every female developer out there.

Growing as a part of the community

Both Glafira and Julia mentioned that during the programs they met many inspiring people from their local developer communities. Being able to ask others for help, share insights and doubts, and get feedback was a valuable lesson for both women.

Mentors may become role models for the programs' participants. Julia mentioned how important it was for her to see someone else succeed and follow in their footsteps, to map out exactly where you want to be professionally, and how you can get there. This means learning not just from someone else's failures, but also from their victories and achievements.

Networking within the developer community is also a great opportunity to grow your audience by visiting other contributors' podcasts and YouTube channels. Glafira recalls that during the Academy, she received multiple invites and had an opportunity to share her knowledge on different channels.

Overall, what's even more important than growing your audience is finding your own voice. As Debbie states: "We need more women speaking at conferences, sharing knowledge online, and being part of the community. So I encourage you all to be brave and follow your dreams. I believe in you, so now it's time to start believing in yourself."

A milestone to celebrate: 10 years of GCI!

 
This year we celebrated the best of program milestones—10 years of bringing together 13-17 year old students from around the world into open source software development with our Google Code-in (GCI) contest. The contest wrapped up in January with our largest numbers ever; 3,566 students from 76 countries completed an impressive 20,840 tasks during the 7-week contest!

Students spent their time working online with mentors from 29 open source organizations that provided help to answer questions and guide students throughout the contest. The students wrote code, edited and created documentation, designed UI elements and logos, and conducted research. Additionally, they developed videos to teach others about open source software and found (and fixed!) hundreds of bugs.

Overview

  • 2,605 students completed three or more tasks (earning a Google Code-in 2019 t-shirt)
  • 18.5% of students were girls
  • 79.8% of students were first time participants in GCI (same percentage as in 2018- weird!)
  • We saw very large increases in the number of students from Japan, Mongolia, Sri Lanka, and Taiwan.

Student Age


Participating Schools

School NameNumber of Student ParticipantsCountry
Dunman High School138Singapore
Liceul Teoretic ''Aurel Vlaicu''47Romania
Indus E.M High School46India
Sacred Heart Convent Senior Secondary School34India
Ananda College29Sri Lanka

Students from 1,900 schools (yes, exactly 1,900!) competed in this year’s contest; plus, 273 students were homeschooled. Many students learn about GCI from their friends or teachers and continue to spread the word to their classmates. This year the top five schools that had the most students with completed tasks were:

Countries

The chart below displays the top 10 countries with students who completed at least 1 task.

We are thrilled that Google Code-in was so popular this year!

Thank you again to the people who make this program possible: the 895 mentors—from 59 countries—that guided students through the program and welcomed them into their open source communities.

By Stephanie Taylor, Google Open Source

Reboot your career with DigiPivot – Introducing a skilling program for women to build their careers in digital marketing

We are excited to introduce DigiPivot, a skilling program designed for women who are looking to  return to their corporate careers after a break or simply planning to make mid career shifts to digital marketing.
Developed jointly in association with Avtar and the prestigious Indian School of Business, the program aims to influence the overall gender mix in the digital marketing landscape in India and will provide an opportunity for 200 Women Professionals to re-skill themselves and become India’s next set of Digital Marketing Leaders. 
Selected participants will go through a curated 18 week learning program and engagement (both offline and online) that aims to empower the participants with digital marketing knowledge and tools as well as mentorship on strategic leadership skills. The program will culminate in a day long Graduation event at the Google Hyderabad Campus on 28th August 2020. 
The program is open to both women professionals who are currently working and those who are keen to return to the workforce with 4-10 years of experience in consulting, analytics, branding and sales and support with passion for digital marketing. The program is completely sponsored by Google and does not require participants to contribute to any registration, participation, travel or accommodation fees.
Applications are open from today. If you are interested or know someone who is looking for a career switch to digital marketing, share the link with them and ask them to register and apply today. Last date for registration is 21st March 2020.
You can read more about the program and apply here.


Posted by Arijit Sarker, VP, gTech Professional Services 

Unleashing Open Source Silicon

Open Source Silicon

We all know that open source software has changed the fundamental nature of the software industry and that Google generously adds fuel to this culture of openness and community through Google Summer of Code. What few people realize is that there is another major industry that is ripe for an open source overhaul—the silicon industry. And, this summer, a Google Summer of Code student helped open the floodgates.

If you search social media for “open source silicon,” you’ll find a few dozen names that pop up with some frequency. These folks are fanatically driving forward with open source circuit models and software for creating them. You’ll also find people clambering to jump aboard the RISC-V bandwagon. RISC-V, like x86, MIPS, and others before it, is a CPU “instruction set architecture,” and the mere fact that it is free of proprietary licenses has inspired countless open source implementations and an industry shake-up that has ARM quaking in its boots.

While this open source silicon community is a hotbed of enthusiasm, it is several decades behind the world of open source software. In this post, I’ll reveal the three reasons this movement has, thus far, not been able to take off like open source software, and I’ll explain why these three obstacles are all coming to a very sudden and dramatic end, that will unleash a tidal wave, catching the silicon industry by surprise. And you’ll see that Google Summer of Code, this year, played a pivotal role.

What’s Standing in the Way

So, why is coding and sharing circuit models any different from sharing software? Three reasons:
  1. Implementation Details: There’s more to worry about with hardware than software. Correct functionality is far from the only concern. Particular care must be given to physical implementation. And this detail must be modified for specific silicon technology and design constraints. As a result, leveraging open source logic can involve a substantial amount of rework.
  2. Access to software: While compilers for software tend to be open source, electronic design automation (EDA) tools for compiling hardware are traditionally proprietary and prohibitively expensive.
  3. Access to hardware: Unlike software, circuit models must be turned into silicon to be useful. Fabricating custom silicon is out of the question for a hobbyist, but field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) provide a more realistic option. These are chips that can be quickly reconfigured, or “programmed,” to implement any logic function. While FPGAs are within reach, they still cost money, and they are delivered by postal service, not a web browser. And, worst of all, it could take weeks to get an FPGA platform up and running and communicating with the open source logic.

Breaking Down the Barriers

Let’s look at what the open source community is doing to help:
  1. Implementation Details: There is a trend toward designing more abstractly, and leaving the details to tools. Open source tools can now compile C++ into silicon (with caveats). And several open source hardware description languages leverage modern software language innovations that make it easier to rework implementation details. The open source community has shown a greater willingness than industry to explore and adopt these languages. Though hardware remains fundamentally different from software, their differences are becoming less prominent.
  2. Access to software: Open source EDA software has marked some significant achievements in the past several years. Circuit designs have been implemented on FPGAs using 100% free and open source EDA tools. (Google Summer of Code has helped to fund a few open source EDA capabilities in projects under the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation.) The US government has recognized the opportunity and is providing significant fuel to the fire through the Posh Open Source Hardware initiative. Being restricted to open source software can still be a bit limiting, but it is no longer prohibitive.
  3. Access to hardware: Hmmm. This is still a problem.
My personal contributions to this open source silicon movement stem from my startup, Redwood EDA. We directly target problem #1 by providing tools that support advanced (yet simpler) circuit modeling techniques. And, to address #2, we make all of our software freely available online for open source development. But neither open source EDA nor the efforts of my startup had been able to noticeably impact problem #3, access to hardware.

This is where bigger forces have stepped in. In the past few years, cloud providers have begun incorporating FPGAs into their datacenters. These are available to anyone with an internet connection and a credit card, bundled with industry-class EDA software, on a pay-per-use basis. Wow! This is the solution to hardware access! An open source developer can provide not only their hardware model but also the platform for which their model was designed. A user can download and go, just like they can with software! …in theory.

So here’s the rub. The learning curve for cloud FPGA platforms has been way too high for the open source community to latch on.

Our Project

With a bit of help from Politecnico di Milano’s NECST Lab and ThroughPuter Inc., I was able to get a project off the ground, and it attracted some attention for this year’s Google Summer of Code. I was happy to see an application from Ákos Hadnagy who had done some other ground-breaking work with me in the last Summer of Code, and he was accepted into the program. Together, this summer, we built infrastructure, automated flows, and wrote documentation (or more to the point, eliminated documentation), and now, instead of a month to ramp up, it is now possible to develop for this platform in a matter of minutes!
We dubbed our framework “1st CLaaS,” where we have coined the term “CLaaS” for custom logic as a service. Very simply, 1st CLaaS wraps a developer’s custom FPGA logic as a microservice. Standard web protocols can be used to stream bits to and from this logic, and platform details are hidden by the framework.

Implications and Wrap-up

So there is no longer anything standing in the way! Hobbyists can build and share hardware, and open source silicon can thrive. Just imagine the disruption this will have on the industry, which is currently driven by corporate giants. And with easy web integration, the opportunity and demand for hardware acceleration should rise, and we could start to see some interesting new capabilities on the web that were not imaginable until now.

Google certainly didn’t have this specific industry transformation in mind when starting Google Summer of Code, but I suspect the whole point of the program was to inspire and enable the unexpected. And it did!

If you’d like to contribute to 1st CLaaS or collaborate on some of the world’s first FPGA-accelerated web applications, we’d be more than happy to have you involved. I look forward to next year's applications.

By Steve Hoover, Redwood EDA, Google Summer of Code mentor