Bachelors in DevCommunity Bonding- GDG Ahmedabad
Disclaimer: Engineering is taught in colleges, B.DB is taught by the folks at GDG Ahmedabad.
As all stories begin in the past, 4 years and day ago, I received this email from Vaibhavi Desai which introduced me to this degree. The mail was something like this.
Let me tell you a bit more about 2014 and GDG. There were 2 Google based groups active in Ahmedabad back then, the developer's group and the business group (GBG). For colleges, Google had also come up with a Google Student Ambassador's Club which was active in a very few colleges in Gujarat.
The Student Phase aka Enthusiasm 101 (2014–2015)
I remember meeting Dhrumil Shah while playing cricket with my brother’s friend in the GMDC ground (We still haven’t played after that day, have we Dhrumil bhai!) and I came to know that he is the one who will be taking the interview to select student co-ordinators. Now mind you, I had tried to get in the easier way without the interview but in hindsight, that was my life’s first interview before I went through the dreaded placement season next year and it gave me a lot to write on my resume which also helped in cracking mass recruiters. Paresh Mayani sir was humble and straightforward and at that time i.e 2014, the era of Eclipse IDE and thenewboston tutorials, he was already a superstar in Android. I was dabbling a bit in social network and sentiment analysis at that time because like bitcoin, I knew things would blow up in this field. ( I did not, but everyone brags, right?). I was given the responsibility to co-host the event with another classmate of mine and the writer in me couldn’t stop to make a hell of script. The event was fun, I dug up many things about the then speakers (Utpal Betai sir, I still have that Gujarati Poem and your #Top10 wisdom with me). This is an excerpt from that script.
The event was super fun. I learned that hosting and coordinating at the same time can be daunting and Utpal sir can bail you out from any situation because he is Chuck Norris when it comes to Devfest. Scripts may be kickass but the best hosting comes from the spur of the moment and I took home memories of my first devfest and 100s of new connections.
The Year of Placements, Events, and Learning — Delirium 101 (2015–2016)
This was the year I realized the GDG Ahmedabad is not just free pizzas and t-shirts and devfests but a continuous effort by the core team to share knowledge with the student as well as the developer community. I got a chance to host a tech quiz at KS School of Business Management, co-ordinate on a full day android workshop at IICT- Ahmedabad University, I/O Extended 2015 and even got a mini-workshop fest going on at Nirma’s annual techfest NuTech — 2015 with the help of Paresh Sir. Somewhere down the line, I became detached from the team owing to placements and life ahead. But every time I saw a post of upcoming event from GDG, I felt happy because I know the efforts of people involved, the enthusiasm of participants and the knowledge gain make us a strong and well-knit community.
Campus to Corporate— HotchPotch 101(2016–2017)
I moved to Noida to join Samsung after a grueling placement season. I had not attended Devfest 2015 for I was interviewing with Amazon that week. I stayed in Noida for the most part of 2016 but the folks at GDG Ahmedabad always kept getting bigger and aiming higher. Devfests became larger than life celebrations, Google kept on rolling more into IoT and started taking baby steps in AI APIs. As it was my job as a mobile software engineer, I got know some of the key ideologies followed in MNCs which totally changed my perspective. I understood why most of the people working at big companies can’t take time off to give something back to the community because of a skewed work-life. I began to appreciate the efforts put in more and more each day while I disconnected from Ahmedabad. New team, new people. But the core ideology of GDG never changed. I always used to tell my juniors to go and attend the events and they would always give me positive feedbacks that it helped them to know that there are other crazy developers living right in their nearby societies.
Back To The Drawing Board — Graduating 101 (2017–2018)
The love for Ahmedabad and Machine Learning brought me back to my home town and then began my journey in the world of job and mentor hunting again. At times, I would look for people to guide me and other times, I would be looking for jobs. GDG helped me a lot to understand the IT ecosystem of the city while I put on my detective shoes and went about searching for startups and individuals who’d understand the need for propagating knowledge in the right way as AI started making headlines every week.
I joined a masters program, dropped out of it owing to some idealogical mismatches but by doing so, I attended Devfest 2017 as a student, with some experience, confused yet curious. Meeting the community, the team once again bolstered my confidence for I could see the impact cohesive groups have rather than individualist learning and achievements. It felt great to be interviewed by Dhrumilbhai for a quick refresher down the memory lane. Dhruva Shastri, giving me an opportunity to take the stage to engage attendees and asking me to share my journey at MLCC Study Jam.
I’d say I graduated from B.Tech with the knowledge of tools but it was B.DB which helped me with the hands-on for as long as we don’t have anyone to guide us, no matter how much we learn to dig a hole, we will never reach the treasure waiting for us unless we know where to dig.
In a nutshell, these 4 years with GDG have been a roller coaster ride. Gaining knowledge and weight has been equally fun (Just go and see our photos from 2014!). I hope that I can come up with a solid proposal for speaking at Devfest 2018 to mark my graduation speech and pass on the experience to the young developers embarking on a journey of bug hunting, sleepless logical bouts and semicolon not found errors.
PS: Learn Python;
