LFX’22 Mentorship Experience with Hyperledger Foundation
If you are reading this post you probably are applying for LFX mentorship or looking to apply in the near future. So let me take you to a journey of mine how I applied and got selected as an LFX Mentee
Background
I am Niku Singh a pre-final year student from NIT Jalandhar. I was selected as an LFX mentee for the an enterprise-grade, cross-industry open platform for distributed ledgers in 2022. I have been an active contributor to open-source projects like KDE and Gitlab where I used to solve good first issues and minor bugs.
What is LFX Mentorship?
LFX Mentorship is an open-source learning program that connects aspiring developers with industry mentors to collaborate on projects for organizations. The program is designed to equip developers, particularly those who are first-time open-source contributors, with the necessary skills and resources to learn, experiment, and contribute effectively to open-source communities.
In addition to the valuable guidance and support provided by their mentors, mentees also receive compensation for their work during the entire duration of the mentorship period.
Note: You can apply for a maximum of 3 organizations at a time.
Further details regarding the mentorship can be found here
LFX Mentorship programs:
Linux Foundation opens applications thrice a year: one in spring, one in summer, and the winter cohort, each cohort being for a span of 3 months.
Why I choose Hyperledger Foundation
Since my freshmen year, I was very inclined toward Blockchain technologies and was actively looking for some OSS organizations in this space. It was then I stumbled upon Hyperledger Foundation.
As I did not have much knowledge about blockchain so I thought of contributing to Docs and Frontend issues. I got involved with the community started joining their meetings regularly and asked for some good first issues to contribute.
Also, the support and personal mentorship which I got from the community member like , , , , made me clear to choose Hyperledger as my Organization
How did I come to know about the Hyperledger Mentorship Program?
It so happened that when I was looking for a good first issue, Arun asked for some help in making some changes to the site. I immediately got excited as it matched my skill set and volunteered myself for it.
After fixing some changes Arun invited me to the Hyperledger India Organization and made me the Maintainer for that repo. My work for that can be found
During the regular meeting, Arun introduced me to the Hyperldger Mentorship Programme and encouraged me to apply for it.
My Selection Process
The selection process was relatively short it consisted of two rounds the Application Round and the Interview Round
1. Application Round
This is the most crucial round as it would play a major role in your selection into the program.
The Application Round mainly requires 2 applications but may depend on org to org, Some org ask 3 or 4.
In my case and with respect to Hyperledger they just asked Resume and Cover letter.
- Resume / CV
- Cover Letter :
(this is very important in your application process and can be a major factor in your selection.)
Try to include the following things in your Cover letter
- How did you find out about our mentorship program?
- Why are you interested in this program?
- What experience and knowledge/skills do you have that are applicable to this program?
- What do you hope to get out of this mentorship experience?
- Include any previous contributions to the project or Organizations that you have made any code or non-code contributions are accepted.
3. Consent Letter from University ( depends on Org )
A permission document from your university stating they have no obligation over the entire span of the mentorship was also required(this depends on org to org and may not be asked as well)
4. Submission of Task ( depends on Org )
Many org give you some tasks to complete with need to be done and uploaded as proof.
2. Interview Round
The interview Round was scheduled for 21 May 2022. It was a 40 min video call with the mentors they asked me about the projects I had submitted, my work experience, my previous involvement in the community, basic questions about React and JS, asked me to showcase some of my design work.
After the interview, I felt I messed it up and was thinking I won't make it. As I wasn’t able to answer all the questions.
Getting Selected
On 24 May at 20:51 PM, I received a mail from LF Engineering Team congratulating me that I was accepted for this year's mentorship.
It was a really happy moment for me and I immediately called my brother and told him the good news.
My Mentorship Project
My mentorship project was to . which aimed at Improving the User experience for the new contributors and making it easier for them to navigate through the Hyperledger Ecosystem.
Further Details of the Project and Delivarable can be found here:
Now let's dive into what I worked on during the 6 months mentorship project. The complete list of my timeline can be found
The whole Project can be divided into 4 parts
1. Doing User Research
The first step of the project was to conduct user research and identify the various personas and based on that identify the user flow for the sites.
2. Designing the Site on Figma
After the research I came up with the mockups for the site, I took inspiration from CNCF and Layer5. The mockups made by me can be found . And the user flow for this site can be found .
3. Designing the Frontend
For designing the front end I took help from one of the Senior Frontend developers in the community who helped me to set up the project and help me with the best coding practices.
4. Deployment and Presentation
The deployed project can be found here Github Link: Deployed site: .
5. Current Status of Project
The project is currently at a halt and we are revamping the entire Hyperledger site.
Graduating and Future Involvements with the Community?
I graduated from the Mentorship in November and presented my work in the regular Hyperledger India Chapter meetup. The presentation slides can be found .
As soon as the Mentorship ended I thought of staying with the community in order to help them with other tasks and carrying my further contribution.
With this year's LFX’23 Hyperledger Mentorship, I am volunteering as a Mentor for the .
If you want to apply you can do so by .
How you can be a Mentee?
In order to apply as a Mentee you need to have an LFX account created and then look at the projects that are actively seeking mentees. Apply to any one of those projects that you like and match your skillset submit the asked documents and complete the Tasks assigned if any.
With respect to Hypedger Mentorship try going through the . To get an idea of past mentorship projects try going through this , and a complete archive of past projects can be found
How to increase your chances of getting Selected?
In order to increase of getting selected, follow the below steps
- Previous OSS contributions
Any previous OSS contributions would surely increase your chances of getting selected. - Engagement with the Community
Try to get involved with the community as early as possible, join their meets, solve some issues, and network with the community members. - Knowing your mentor
Get in touch with the mentor and let them know who you are and why you are the right fit for the project. Try asking your mentor what this project is about, its impact, and how can it be built better, propose to them your plan of implementing it,
( Please do not spam the mentor's dm, realize that they have other time commitments and are here on a volunteer basis, be patient and try to tackle easier problems on your own. ) - Help the other contributors
The best to show your community engagement is to help other contributors as mentors won't be available every time. So you can step up and guide the new contributors.
If you have reached this far and this blog post really helped you do let me know. Hope to hear from you the good news of making it through the LFX.
