2022 has been an excellent year for me. It marks not only another year of me working as a freelancer/independent contractor but also brought me a couple of personal achievements, such as finishing 150 hours of Japanese study requirement. Moreover, this month, I got two more achievements from Google.
Getting Included in Google Dev Library
The first achievement I would like to mention would be getting included in the Google Dev Library. Google Dev Library can be called a curated library from Google where the team behind it reviews and include projects & blogs after reviewing them. So, for example, my article from the LineageOS website last year on SELinux and a thread from the XDA Developers on kernel bring-up were included this month after I submitted them via Advocu. They can be found on my dedicated Author page here.
AOSP development has a minimal dev base, resulting in a need for better tutorials and blogs. I am happy to see them included and hope they will be accessible to more people now looking for help on those topics. Next year I will be able to work on more blogs to help others better in app and framework development.
Starting a Google Developers Group in my city
Meetup groups are common all over the world. Several meetup groups operate under a brand name and support from a specific community or company. For example, Google also promotes meetup groups under Google Developer Groups, a.k.a GDG.
My city Bhilai had an existing meetup group, though relatively inactive. So, I reached out to the GDG India team by filling out the form to start a new GDG in my area. As it turned out, they were looking for a new organizer. After a discussion with them, I decided to take over the organizer position instead of starting the group again from the start. Starting a new GDG or taking over an existing one requires the organizer to host an in-person event within a month to finalize the process.
Deciding to go ahead with the meetup, I decided to host it on the 24th of this month. 24th of December was ideal for me as it was before Christmas and the Winter Holidays. Furthermore, 24th was also a Saturday, a weekend on which people are usually free from their jobs and studies after half day. Therefore, the time was kept from 15:00 to 17:00 to accommodate everyone best.
Some of my friends from school days, their mutual friends, and local community organizers helped me to host the meetup as volunteers, partners, and hosts. Thanks to a couple of great meetup blogs on the internet, I got to know that JetBrains and DigitalOcean provide support to meetups. I applied for it and got a free license, five shirts, and 200 stickers to distribute during the event. GDG India team also supported the meetup by providing Food & beverage support and shirts for 100 people. All swags and F&B were distributed among the attendees and speakers after the event ended.
How I organized the meetup, planned events, and everything else deserves another post. In a nutshell, after fulfilling all the requirements, I am now the organizer of the GDG Bhilai group. It involved a lot of work, but this was a fun and learning experience. I plan to organize more meetups in this group next year and grow a great local tech community.
I hope for a healthy and safe new year for everyone reading this. There are a lot of plans that I hope to see fruitful next year. I hope to get around some of them while having a great time.