This is part of a coursework that I did during my ‘Management in High Tech Industries’ course at Duke University.

The personal WHY in my life is to be the best version of myself so that I can be worth everything that is present in my life and to have a positive influence on the world. I want to touch the lives of people who are struggling to be heard and make the world a better place for future generations. I want to be thankful for this beautiful life and the wonderful people present in my life. My parents and my ancestors have sacrificed a lot in their life to create a comfortable life for me and my siblings. If I don’t respect their struggles and pain who would? The main goal that I want to accomplish is to support my parents as they’ve sacrificed their youth to provide me with everything that I ever wanted. Taking over the family financial burdens and letting my parents have an early retirement is the best I can do right now.

My purpose or reason for being is a combination of the following elements:

• Providing for my family
• Feeling loved and respected
• Touching the lives of the others
• To leave a legacy

From the most amazing 23 years of my life on Earth I’ve understood that the values with which I’ve been brought up stayed the same but how I prioritized them has changed. I believe that identifying what value is important at each stage of my life has shaped my character and is rooted in my core beliefs.

When I was a child, I used to question everything out of curiosity. Why do we need to respect elders? Why do we need to be thankful for what we have? I was not satisfied with the answers then. But now I understand that there is no perfect answer to these questions. Years of searching for the perfect values and morale made me realize that there is no perfection to values but depends on how we perceive them. They define me as a person and form the foundation of my identity.

The values that I live by made me realize that I should stop trying to become who I am not and live life with gratitude. Some of them which are ‘never for sale’ are:

1. Authenticity – Staying the same during every occasion without being afraid of other people’s judgments. ‘Be your authentic self’ is the go-to mantra that I chant every day right after I wake up. Saying this over and over every single day since my 17th birthday has made me more confident and happier.

2. Gratitude – I’ve made it a practice to write a gratitude list every day. The list is not long every day, but this practice is a reminder for me that I shouldn’t take everything in my life for granted. This has helped me to understand the importance of feeling gratitude and expressing it in my words, thoughts, and actions. A small ‘Thank You’ can make someone happy.

Once I have a steady income, I’d like to fund the education of a girl child in my neighborhood back in India. This is not to show the world that I did it but to show others that a small help can change lives.

Personal Leadership Brand

Passionate and compassionate to inspire others to find their true self by being a catalyst for positive change. I’d like to be part of multiple lives & leave the world better than I found it. I want to pass the good in me to others, so their lives are better and happier in some way because I was part of it.

There are multiple factors that shaped my true self – my family, tech communities,coaching programs and amazing mentors. I’d like to highlight 3 of the best brand shapers in my life:

1. My parents

They’ve sacrificed a lot in life to provide me with the best education and beautiful life. Hence, I dedicate all my success to them. They taught me to be selfless and compassionate. From their lives, they’ve shown me that even the smallest things in life can make someone happy. No matter how rich or poor you are, every human life is the same, and no one is above anyone. Their invaluable life lessons about work, marriage, life, and relationship form the stable foundation for my life and future.

2. My mentors

Throughout my life, I’ve encountered many mentors, at school, college, and work but one specific person has made the greatest impact. She was my coach initially but became a mentor for life in the past 2 years. ‘Why blend in when born to stand out’ mantra has inspired me a lot that I started to chant it every time when I felt low and doubtful. We often cannot see ourselves the way others in our life see us. So, it was important for me to have a mentor who can understand, listen, reflect, and hold me accountable as I grow every day. The dedication from her side pushed me to challenge myself. I now mentor some undergraduate students to guide and ground them in today’s chaotic world.

3. STEM communities​

I’ve been part of women in tech communities since my undergraduate studies. In my sophomore year, I realized that I wanted to combine my passion for technology with giving back to the world before I officially started my career.

I started to volunteer in some non-profit communities to understand their idea of ‘giving back’ and gain professional development that is required to create a healthy community mindset.

The biggest highlight was that I was able to lead a community called Google Women Techmakers and help a diverse set of women and underrepresented groups to break into tech. The main lesson from these 4 year long leadership roles was that it is fine to feel intimidated but be ready to take ownership of the programs that you want to do. Talk to a diverse set of people and ask questions. When I talked more and asked ‘stupid & meaningful’ questions, I gained more perspective.

The main elements of my Personal Leadership Brand are compassion, inspiration, true self, and positivity. These components clearly reflect what I will deliver as an individual and how it’ll be done. My goals as mentioned are centered around people, families, communities, and empathy. The Personal Leadership Brand illustrates how well it is in alignment with my goals.

• I can make more changes to bring better alignment between my goals, actions, and Personal Leadership Brand. I need to ask for feedback from people to make sure that my actions are creating positivity. Tracking progress, evaluating the lesson learned, and referring to them periodically will help me to reinforce my learning and make required changes. This will aid in bringing a better alignment between how I am perceived, my leadership principles, and how that translates into my actual behavior.
• I believe that Personal Leadership Brand influences how I approach the team activities and understand my team members. Initially, when the team was announced, I created a WhatsApp group so that team members could say ‘Hi’ to each other as we haven’t met each other in person. This effort from my side not only increased the bonding but also the team spirit. The PLB has pushed me to challenge myself and stand up for my team whenever required.
• I love to listen to the stories of others and I’m glad that I stayed back last week to listen to Prof Ted Ryan and Prof Allegra Jordan. It made me understand that storytelling is an art, and it can bring out the emotions of people. I was able to share my story and I believe that I was able to make others think the same. In such ways, I believe, I have been influencing the lives of many throughout the 23 years of my life.

I’d like to specify an initiative I started last week. Finding an internship as an international student in the USA is a difficult and daunting task. It requires a lot of patience, resilience, and perseverance. I talked to a couple of students and understood that they were not satisfied with their job search process and were struggling. Every day I dedicate around 2 hours to apply for jobs, and I enter the details of the applications into a database that I’ve created for my future reference. Last weekend I had a realization that I could help a lot of students by just making this repository/database public so that others can also apply for jobs easily. I created a system where everyone can contribute to the system and help each other. This became a reality last Thursday and I’m receiving constant love and support from students all over the USA. This initiative is clearly aligned with my PLB – to give back to my community.

EcoEvent — Product Buds Protothon Case Study [Most Daring Product]

Introduction

India is the land of big fat weddings, grand pujas and large party events. Planning and hosting these events involves researching and sourcing decorations, food, crockery, party favors from various different vendors. In this process, most customers pay little attention to whether the items are sustainable/non-sustainable or what their ecolabel indices are. Despite people’s readiness to switch to sustainable party items — the lack of visibility of eco-friendly businesses supplying sustainable items and the time-crunch, cluttered shopping experience, other event-organization concerns contribute to adverse environmental impact created by these non-eco-friendly parties.

Describing the Problem Space

Problem statement : Making events more eco-friendly in India by encouraging customers to switch to sustainable products while planning their events.

The large number of events that happen all-year long in the country and the number of non-sustainable items that are used cumulatively amount to a lot of earth’s resource depletion — On an average, an Indian wedding hosting 400–1000 people results in around 3 tonnes of waste and in some cases even more. This can be easily avoided by switching over to available and accessible sustainable items.

To gain an in-depth insight into our targeted customers, we conducted a comprehensive survey and interviews to find out how they plan for their events; why they choose non-sustainable options over sustainable ones; and if they would switch to sustainable options -

1. Top three aspects of event planning for people are pricing of products, quality of products, availability of products on time; and the three most undesirable aspects of event planning are overspending, sourcing from different vendors, coordinating with different vendors. We infer that the time and effort spent in shopping by navigating between different shop locations/websites is a cause of inconvenience for customers.
2. We further asked why people do not go for sustainable options and the top responses were Low visibility of sustainable options (50%) and Lack of reliable options (30%) — price concerns and trusting eco-friendly businesses did not receive many votes as such.
3. It was extremely encouraging to find however that 90% people said Yes, they would switch to sustainable options if their concerns are addressed while 10% said Maybe.
4. We thus identified that low visibility of vendors selling sustainable items prevents customers from making their events eco-friendly.

Goals

1. Promote eco-friendly events by encouraging customers to buy sustainable items.
2. Nudge uninterested people in sustainability towards the concept.
3. Provide visibility and customer outreach to sustainable businesses/vendors.
4. Save unnecessary time and effort spent on a cluttered shopping experience.

User Demographic

Our intended set of users belong to the younger generation, in the age groups of 16–50 chiefly belonging to Indian metropolitan areas. We have two sets of users — buyers and sellers.

1. The buyers are the customers and are further divided into two -
2. Ones who adopt sustainable practices
3. One who do are not actively interested in sustainable practices
4. Sellers are vendors of sustainable products who will be onboarded to our platform.

User Persona

We have the following user personas for our 2 types of customers — Anjali, a passionate promoter of sustainability and Jai, a hotshot lawyer who doesn’t care much about going green.

For our vendors, we have suppliers of sustainable products. In India, the sustainable-product industry is still very young and suppliers thus chiefly include small businesses that struggle to publicise their products. Through our platform, they would gain customer outreach and visibility which would help them market their products.

User Pain Points

Based on the survey results listed above, the user personas, we list down the user pain points -

Customers

1. Lack of accessibility to sellers of sustainable products — To save time and the effort that goes into research, they prefer to buy products easily available that are not necessarily sustainable.

2. Lack of reliable options — Customers are wary of greenwashing, which is being duped by unknown vendors whose products are not as sustainable as promised. They then prefer to buy from brands which they know of without checking the green index.

Sellers/Vendors

1. Low visibility — Vendors struggle to sell their products as they have no customer outreach and limited funds to publicise their products.

Our Solution

To address the pain points mentioned above, and additionally address all the other customer problems defined in the Problem section, we came up with two ideas -

1. Designing a Chrome Extension that would recommend sustainable products as we log into different e-commerce websites. However, the level of effort required was very difficult and there were a lot of technical friction points. Business-wise, none of the current e-commerce websites indicate which products are sustainable and do not promote environment-friendliness specially. We discarded this idea immediately.
2. Our chosen solution, EcoEvent — a mobile application that provides a seamless, one-stop shopping experience to customers for all the items they need for making their event go green. We provide an online marketplace for vendors to host their products and a recommendation system to customers based on their requirements. We also calculate the eco-friendliness of the items customers buy. Our solution also addresses the other pain points that customers face during event planning.

Prototype and MVP

Our MVP includes the following features

1. Facilitate looking up all the required products based on an event.
2. Provide a platform to businesses selling sustainable products.
3. Nudging the customer towards sustainability through a sustain-o-meter and recommendations for eco-friendly options.

The local businesses in India are being promoted to become sustainable through initiatives like Local for Vocal and Make in India by the Indian government. The Indian government also aids in maintaining a directory to measure the sustainability of businesses and products through eco-label indexes. These businesses selling sustainable products often lack discoverability, so our aim through EcoEvents is to provide a platform to businesses in India selling sustainable products.

Competitors

While there aren’t direct competitors to EcoEvents, users could still opt for online generic ecommerce platforms or local stores while looking for sustainable goods to host their events.

1. Local Stores- Hosting events usually require the host to source a lot of products. While these products may be available locally, a single store may not have all the products and these products may not be sustainable sourced. The host is inconvenienced and has to approach multiple stores in the hopes of finding the right products.
2. Online ecommerce platform — Ecommerce platforms like Amazon require users to put in special requests to buy products in bulk. They also do not indicate whether the items users buy are sustainably sourced.

Success Metrics

1. App success metrics — No. of downloads, Monthly Active Users, Revenue per Customer
2. User Success Metrics: Buyers — Customer Lifetime Value, Net Promoter Score, Customer Churn Rate, Sellers — Units Ordered, Conversion Rate
3. Social Success Metric — Conversion to Sustainability (No. of users who change non-sustainable products in the cart after a low sustain-o-meter reading)

Future Scope

The application EcoEvent is designed as an MVP and there are a lot of functionalities, which when added, would be attractive to both user segments of the application and impact the success metrics positively. A few of these are:

1. Gamification of the sustain-o-meter for social media sharing
2. Sustainable product recommendations based on budge.
3. Comparison of cart with a completely non-sustainable cart to see impact the user made
4. Renting of sustainable products
5. Sustainable packaging and shipping of items
6. Pickup of packing wastage after delivery

Phone Interview with Googler — Generation Google Scholarship (Women Techmakers Scholarship)

After the submission of my application for the Google Women Techmakers Scholarship on 11th August 2018, I almost forgot about it. I remember looking at blogs of former scholars and seeing their amazing and outstanding achievements. At that point I felt discouraged and questioned why they would select me.

On 31st August 2018 (at night) I received a surprise mail from Google that I had been short-listed for the interview. My hands started to shiver and I couldn’t talk because I couldn’t believe that I actually had been short-listed. At first I thought I’d tell my family about this but later decide to wait for 2 days.

My family was shocked hearing this and obviously asked me to prepare well for the interview.

I messaged a close friend of mine and told her this exciting news. She was happy and asked me to find if there were any other scholars from Kerala. Later fortunately I got to connect with 3 other candidates from Kerala; Anusree S, Ann Philip and Arya R Shankar.

We created a Whatsapp group and discussed the interview preparation. My interview was scheduled to take place after the interview of the other 3 Kerala scholars. We got on an appear call with the previous scholars Sukriti Paul and Ayushi Mrigen to get an insight on how the interview would be conducted. I’m really grateful to them especially to Sukriti didi.

I was told by the past scholars that the questions would be based on my application. I re-read the essay answers that I had submitted, prepared a small talk on my outreach ideas, went through my resume and each project in detail. I recollected the challenges faced with each of my projects, internships and team activities done and noted them down. Having a clear idea of what you’re going to say during the interview always helps instead of blabbering random things in a haphazard manner.

My interview was on 7th September 2017 from 2:00 PM to 2:30 PM. To me it was rather a casual discussion than an interview. The questions were based on my resume and essay answers. Questions would be asked to know your interests and thoughts about women in tech and the need of diversity in tech community. Please don’t get confused or scared :)

The interviewers try to make you comfortable and the questions are not entirely technical if your interviewer is from the outreach department. They asked about an outreach program I had organized and the challenges I faced. It was a 30 minute interview.

They only ask what you have mentioned in your resume and your essay answers. So make sure you are entirely honest with them. The goal of this interview is to understand you as a person and check the correctness of the essays. So stand by your vision and the cause that you support.

Following are the questions they had asked me:

• What are the problems caused by technology in the world?
• What are the challenges faced by the tech industry?
• Describe your outreach initiatives.
• How do you plan to find solutions to the challenges faced during the community/outreach programs?
• What will you do with the scholarship amount?
• How will you continue giving back to the society?
• What are the problems faced by women in society currently?
• What can be done to fight these problems?
• What have you done at the individual level to solve any such problems?
• Questions on internship projects.

Pro Tips

1. Seek guidance from previous scholars. Mail me at amalususan@gmail.com if you need any help!
2. Take a printout of your essay answers and resume and prepare well by highlighting important points.
3. Be genuine and talk with confidence.
4. Avoid extreme and offensive statements that portrays extreme feminism or bias.
5. If you don’t understand the interviewer’s question, ask them to repeat and it’s also fine to ask them for a few minutes to think which is better than beating around the bush.
6. Choose a place that is calm and silent for the interview.
7. Please make sure to use headphones as it will help you to balance things easily.
8. It’s important to mention the metrics and numbers about your work and the present diversity issues. This would create an impression that you’re well informed.
9. Highlight your unique ideas and ventures. Don’t forget to provide viable solutions to current problems related to diversity and inclusion. For this refer to the ventures and initiatives by previous scholars like Learn IT Girl, Right Apprise etc.
10. Practice with your friends.

This article definitely has flaws and was done in haste :)

ALL THE BEST!

Application Process for Generation Google Scholarship (Google Women Techmakers Scholarship)

From the day I received the phone call confirming my WTM Scholarship, many have been asking about the scholarship application process, tips and tricks. To all of them I’d like to summarize my scholarship journey in a single sentence:

Be sincere with your views!

This article would help you out if you’re an aspirant and would like to know more about the scholarship.

Personally, I am very honored and humbled to be selected as a Google Women Techmakers Scholar this year.

It is great to find someone who believes in you. Receiving this scholarship has given me a new air of confidence and empowerment.

I am very grateful for such an amazing opportunity. Thank you Google Women Techmakers!

What exactly is Google Women Techmakers Scholarship?

Through the Women Techmakers Scholars Program — formerly the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Program — Google is furthering Dr. Anita Borg’s vision of creating gender equality in the field of computer science by encouraging women to excel in computing and technology and become active leaders and role models in the same.

The opportunity of a lifetime presents you with 3 amazing priceless gifts:

Scholarship

An academic scholarship, awarded based on academic performance, leadership, and impact on the community of women in tech. You can use this for the growth of technology in your community and push all those out there to come forward and demonstrate their skill sets and talents.

Retreat

An opportunity to connect with fellow scholars and Google mentors, while participating in professional and personal development trainings and workshops. This will definitely be an amazing experience as you get to meet a lot of passionate girls from various parts of the world and hear their diverse stories. Mark my words ladies :)

Community

An online network with fellow scholars program participants designed to share resources, support the global community of women in tech and collaborate on projects to make continued impact. Believe me this is something you’ll forever be grateful for!

Find about the past scholars here.

Eligibility

First check your eligibility and give it a go girl!

The eligibility for the scholarship awarded varies with regions:

1. United States and Canada
2. Europe, Middle East and Africa
3. Asia Pacific

Since I was the Asia Pacific scholar, I’d point down the eligibility requirements in brief:

• Identify as female
• Currently be enrolled at an accredited university for 2019–2020 the academic year
• All students graduating in 2020 and beyond are eligible to apply
• Be studying computer science, computer engineering, or a closely related technical field
• Demonstrate a strong academic record
• Exemplify leadership and demonstrate passion for increasing the involvement of women in computer science

If you are eligible you can apply through Google Scholarships and Program application site.

You can find more about the Google Scholarships and programs here.

Application Process

Round 1: Essay

• The applicant should fill out basic information as part of the first step in Round 1.
• A resume has to be uploaded along with the applicant’s University transcripts.
• Then comes the essay part, which is the most crucial part of the application where the aspirant has to answer a number of questions which along with the resume and transcripts will reflect academic background and leadership skills. The questions are fabricated to extract the applicant’s passion for computer science, technical skills and involvement to promote women in computing and will serve as a deciding factor whether you deserve the scholarship. Details on how the questions have to be answered can be found here.

After answering the questions, submit the application and wait…!

Give yourself a pat on the shoulder as you did stay motivated all throughout the first phase. Kudos to you ;)

Round 2: Phone Interview

The second phase the application is a short phone interview where you can talk with a Googler. How cool is that! This would last for 20–30 minutes. This is also a good opportunity to ask any questions that you may have.

Now I guess you can feel how important and amazing is WTM Scholarship :)

My interview with Googler is here.

With this the application process comes to an end and wait till you receive an email from the scholarship committee.

Tips

1. Actively participate and organize events or programs which will create an impact and support women in STEM.
2. Do something for women in technology. This can be taking part in a mentoring program to mentor a junior or a person you know informally to start in technological field.
3. Develop leadership qualities with a vision; Understand diversity & inclusion.
4. Work on projects that’d create a social impact especially on the underrepresented groups.
5. Make contributions that’d leave a mark :)
6. Do not underestimate your power to bring about changes even if it’s small.
7. Everyone has their own unique story and that is what makes each of us amazing and different. Show the world how amazing you are.
8. Try again next year — The best tip I can give ;)

I hope this blog will help you to get a basic understanding of the scholarship.

Give back either if you’re selected or not. You are a CS student! You have superpowers! Do something about it and give back to your community.

Testimony by my friend Katie Elizabeth in Google Students Facebook page.

Keep hustling and explore!

The scholarship retreat experience blog will be posted soon :)

Application for Google Generation Scholarship (Women Techmakers Scholarship) — Essay Preparation

This blog will help in prepping the answers to the essay questions, the most important part of your Google Women Techmakers Scholarship application.

These questions would be related to your passion in computer science, struggles you faced in your tech journey and things you have done so far to promote women in tech. Since your technical skills and achievements are already portrayed in your resume, this step aims to explore your leadership qualities in the filed of women empowerment and what future initiatives you have in mind that you would like to carry out with the money and support that you’ll be given if you receive the scholarship.

While answering the questions keep in mind:

“Don’t underestimate yourself. You are capable of more than you can ever imagine” — Les Brown

How should you approach the questions?

My applications consisted of 3 essay questions:

1) How do you think computer science, computer engineering and/or a closely related technical field is changing the world? How do you plan to contribute?

• Point out how technology has created a strong impact in your community or area.
• How technology has empowered women in your peer circle or community.
• What contributions you have made; better to enumerate the contribution that would make you stand out considering the word limit.
• Also specify the contribution that you are currently working on or plan to work on.

Please describe the most significant computer science project or research you have worked on, how you approached key technical challenges, and what you gained from the experience. This can be an assignment work, a research project or work as an intern. In the case of a team-based project, help them understand what it’s like to work on a team by clearly specifying your individual role and contributions in the project.

2) Please discuss the structural issues impacting underrepresented groups that you have observed or experienced in computer science, computer engineering, and/or a closely related technical field. What connection and/or effect do you think these have to the industry and/or the wider world?

• Briefly describe the struggles that you have faced as a tech evangelist or as a woman in technology; you can state about the discouragement, bullying, unsupportive family and all the problems that pull you back from achieving your STEM dreams.
• How do you think these problems would create a bad impact on the world and the future; especially the dreams and happiness of underrepresented groups?
• Please describe how your experiences have influenced the goals you have for yourself.

3) Please write about an activity that you are currently or recently involved in to address structural issues for underrepresented groups in your field.

• Mention about your leadership roles and experiences while working with underrepresented groups in technology.
• Make sure to show the statistics and numbers. For example, specify the number of women on whom a particular activity had an impact or the count of participants from the underrepresented group.
• Explain how you were influential, what you were trying to achieve and the impact you had as a result.
• Think broadly and examine the ways you are having an effect on the members of your technical community, your university, or your broader community.
• Be genuine and be yourself :)

Pro Tips

1. Be honest with your answers. Do not boast and cook up stories even if you’re stating your accomplishments.
2. Start by creating a shitty first draft.
3. Give examples to demonstrate the work you have done and the impact it has created.
4. Identify any limitations or improvements that have to be made to your impact on community.
5. The answers should stand out for your own self in a very lucid manner- your potential, your experience, your views and your vision.
6. Get the answers reviewed by past scholars, mentors or friends.
7. Make sure to get rid of redundancies as clean and crisp application has the best impact.
8. Numbers matter — It’s important to mention metrics of your work and about diversity issues. This shows that you have done your research on diversity issues in tech.
9. Make use of the maximum word count.
10. Make sure your passion in computer science is displayed through your answers.
11. Stick to the word limit, write concisely, do not unnecessarily verbose and do not use flowery language.
12. Read the answers again and again until you are satisfied!

These are my two cents that helped me out.

Google had organised a YouTube live to aid the aspirants with application process and also to address general FAQs.

I’d like to thank my mentors, friends and family for believing in me :)

Good Luck Peeps!

Don’t hold yourself back from anything, step up! Don’t do it for recognition, do it for the experience and the unending path of learning.

1.Dependencies: You need to install a number of dependancies before you can install Node.js and NPM.

For Ubuntu or Debian-based Linux distributions, run the following command in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install build-essential curl git m4 ruby texinfo libbz2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libexpat-dev libncurses-dev zlib1g-dev

Then select Y to continue and wait for the packages to be installed.

2.Homebrew. Homebrew is a package manager originally for the Mac, but it’s been ported to Linux as Linuxbrew, making installing most open-source software (like Node) as simple as writing: brew install node

You can learn more about Homebrew at the Homebrew website and Linuxbrew at the Linuxbrew website. To install Homebrew for Linux, open your terminal application and paste in the command:

sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Linuxbrew/install/master/install.sh)"

Once Linuxbrew is installed, you’ll need add the following 3 lines to your .bashrcor .zshrc file:

export PATH="$HOME/.linuxbrew/bin:$PATH"
  export MANPATH="$HOME/.linuxbrew/share/man:$MANPATH"
  export INFOPATH="$HOME/.linuxbrew/share/info:$INFOPATH"
INSTALLATION

Installing Node.js and NPM is pretty straightforward using Linuxbrew, the Linux port of Homebrew. It handles downloading, unpacking, compiling, and installing Node and NPM on your system. After you have Linuxbrew installed, the whole process should only take you a few minutes.

Open up your terminal and type :

brew install node OR brew install -v node

Sit back and wait. Homebrew has to download some files, compile and install them. But that’s it. ( for me it took 21 minutes and 15 seconds)

Testing it out.

Make sure you have Node and NPM installed by running simple commands to see what version of each is installed:

• Test Node.js. To see if Node.js is installed, type node -v in the terminal. This should print the version number, so you’ll see something like this: v0.10.35.
• Test NPM. To see if NPM is installed, type npm -v in the terminal. This should print the version number, so you’ll see something like this: 2.1.17

On 20th January 2018, we got on Vanchinad Express(which was late by 30 minutes) by 7:30 am from Chengannur railway station. Staji, Sruthi ( seniors and close buddies) and me had discussions in the train about our college tech fest that came to an end last week. I usually get bored during a train journey, but that day I wasn’t. We reached Kazhakoottam at 10:10 am and walked to the Technopark front gate. The security handed over the pass that had an awkward pic of mine. We met my friend Sreelakshmi from SCT (also a Women Hacker) at the front gate. We walked for about 10 minutes to get to the building Thejaswini. I ate nothing except a toffee in the morning as my breakfast ( my mom doesn’t know about this ). We settled into our chairs in the Kerala StartUp Mission Meetup Cafe.

Sethu Sathyan, Community Lead Women Techmakers Trivandrum, gave a brief introduction. Later there was an interactive session by Mrs.Asha Jomis, which I really liked especially the way she presented her love for startups. To be honest the intro to Angular 4 was a bit boring for me, maybe because I’m not that into web apps. The most enlightening part of the meetup was the panel discussion by the GHCI Scholars from Trivandrum. Maria from College of Engineering Thiruvananthapuram, Pheba from Govt Engineering College Barton Hill and Rithu from Sree Chitra Thirunal College of Engineering Thiruvananthapuram were the scholars present. I’ve even posted a live video in my Facebook profile. Thank you Arya for asking me to do it ( I’ve always thought that going live isn’t my thing..actually scared of causing mistakes). What made me happy that day was that I met Pheba for the first time( Pheba helped me by reviewing the resume that I’d prepared for WeTech Qualcommm Scholarship). She’s so special to me :) I really had a great time meeting girls with whom I’d messaged in WhatsApp for real. Thank you Sethu for this :D

After the meetup, I went over to the 7th floor of the building to meet Arun chettan and Anjali chachy (2 special people who played an important role with my entry into FOSS). After a brief talk we headed over to the food court to have lunch. I’d Chicken Biriyani from Danbouq(its a biriyani stall in the food court). My plan was to travel back home by bus and others decided to get home by train. As I’d to board the bus only by 5:30pm, I decided to accompany other girls to the railway station. The train departed by 3:25pm and I was left alone. I decided to stay in the waiting room at the station till 5:00 pm. At 4:45pm I’d tea and also bought a bottle of ‘Rail Neer’ from a tea stall. I walked back to the front gate of Technopark and waited there for like 35 minutes for the arrival of bus. This is the first time I travelled alone in a bus with no family and friends at night this late. First I panicked at the thought of being alone. But later I built up courage. On my way I texted Aiswarya (another very special person in my life) and told her that I cut my hair short. She was happy that I had the courage to travel alone. I got home by 10:00pm and had a sweet sleep.

Day 1-19th December 2017 evening

Last 2 days (Dec 20th and 21st) actually turned a stressed soul into a happy one! I was kind of crying on 19th eve as my EDC exam was a disaster. (I am silly sometimes…!)Usually I’d start the preparations to go and attend an event 2 weeks before. But since I was not in a good mood (exams made me an emotional wreck) I kind of shoved all my clothes into a bag and yay I got ready.

It was actually planned that I’d accompany 5 second year students, but the count got cut short into 2 as the other 3 girls had some inconveniences. And there I was, happily enjoying company of my 2 girlfriends! The journey was fine. Fortunately got a window seat in aanavandi and it was a sunny evening. We reached Pattam by 5:45 pm, but sadly we got caught up in an ugly traffic jam (Since our PM Mr.Narendra Modi was visiting the cyclone Ocki affected areas). So we got off the bus at a junction near Vellayambalam and started to walk. Since we had no idea about where Hotel Mascot is, we asked the fellow pedestrians for the directions and walked about 4 kms (as per my mi band). There were no vehicles on the roads and people were restricted from crossing roads. I was rather disturbed by the thought of how badly it affected common man’s life. At last by Nataraj Motors we arrived at our destination by 7:00 pm. My seniors aka my friends had already reached there before us. We had a rough day of travelling and starvation. The girls from CEC decided to go to Zam Zam for dinner. After the scrumptious dinner we walked back to the hotel. On our way we saw the Government Men’s Hostel and we were like “lets sneak in”. Even I was so tempted to take a peek( ha ha). Our accomodation was arranged at the International Youth Center (but couldn’t find anything international there except for the board with the name). Boys and girls were asked to stay at the center and in a room 3 or 4 girls had to sleep in. I slept like a log after a shower by 1:30 am. (you might be wondering why I slept so late! The reason is simple we were doing musical.lys and dubsmashes along with some sleepover girly dances ;)) An end to a tiring day!

Day 2–20th December 2017

Its the first day of the conference and I was damn excited(coz this was my first international conference). I actually woke up at 5:00 am as I had to help my friends from MES Kuttippuram to settle into their rooms. I kinda heard a lot of swearing from my other CEC friends as I knocked their doors early morning. Had no idea that they would swear at me that ugly (I’m laughing now while typing).We had Idli with sambar/chadni and coffee for breakfast. We went back to the hotel by 9:00 am and I received my ID card along with a cool “kavikalude” bag (u know what I meant right !the side bag of nature poets). But within 30 minutes I had to get back to the youth center to arrange breakfast for Women Hackers from LBS Kasargod. I’d hoped that I would be able to meet my friend Ganja( her good name is Swati but we call her Ganja as a token of our love ;)) but she didn’t come as she’d other matters to attend to. And atlast I was back at the hotel by 10:20 am. I really really really enjoyed the Keynote speech by Ms.Karen Sandler. (A special thanks to Aiswarya for the wonderful session that she took during the Women Hackathon edition 2 in which she talked about Karen’s journey with a big heart) To be honest I did sleep during sessions and even dozed off and hit my head.Not because the sessions were boring but because I was not mentally prepared for that (hihihi I’m actually typing this out at night…at 10:49 to be exact). The food was great but I didnt try out every dish since I was practising self control ( you may find it funny but its really hard to stay under control man). The day saw its end with a live stage performance by team ‘Ooraali’. I danced madly during the performance with the other hackers and even bonded more with the girls. I tried to get feedback about the oorali’s performance and unfortunately some people weren’t happy with oorali’s songs. Team Oorali even sang a special song for the Women Hackers…Wow that was awesome (Anjali chachy did give us a hint that there’s a surprise for Women Hackers and Lida and I was thinking of something more crazy like special Christmas gifts…ha ha…you might be feeling sorry for us…That’s cool since I get a lot of face palms from my wild assumptions these days)The day definitely had worn me out and I again slept like a baby that night after a half sleepy shower.(I sleep sound most of the times)

Day 3–21st December 2017

“Its the final day” I’d first planned to get back home on 22nd December 2017. But since no one was ready to spend another night at our accommodation, I had to return back that day. We wore the swag t shirts of swatantra (I looked like a black cat since I wore black trousers and black tshirt…But I really enjoyed the outfit since it gave me a lil bit of freedom)and there we were back at the hotel. It was my senior Manimaran’s (Maaryappan)birthday that day and we made sure that he got enough traditional birthday punches from us. Women Hackers were fortunate enough to have a friendly talk with Ms.Karen Sandler and thanks to Arun chettan for clicking a photo of us. Pradeep chettan from ICFOSS agreed to click us some photos with a DSLR and we began to get ready and posed for the pics. We had some ‘kummans’ too in between. Yesterday I found out that Ganesh (my friend) wasn’t there in our photos and that’s a bit sad :(. (I’ll include some snaps from the days at the end of the write up) Miss Freaky (Parvathy) compered in Venue 1 and she’s promised to give Lida and me a treat for setting her up for this task.(Eagerly waiting for the food) For 2 days my mind kinda played a confusion game with me.(Emotional game actually… It still hasn’t left me…) The day saw its end with us returning back home by train Malabar. I ate omlette and ‘kattan’ on my way back home from a thattukada as I had to stay awake while driving car :)

I really want to use this platform to thank Arun chettan, Anjali chachy, Aiswarya, other Women Hackers, college buddies and my parents for this wonderful experience. Thank you so much :)