My LFX Journey

Hello and Welcome everyone!

I am Vaishali Rawat, currently pursuing Computer Science Engineering from Graphic Era Hill University, India. I recently graduated from the prestigious LFX Mentorship -program completing my tenure of 3-months. I worked with Confidential Computing Consortium in my term. As per the giveback ritual in our open-source community, its my pleasure to write about my experience with LFX.

If you are looking for a sign to be a LFX Mentee, here it is.

The Unknowing

My Open source journey began with Blogging. Yes, you heard it right. It began with sharing what I learnt and my experiences in general. And many of you might not consider this as an open source contribution but I will tell you a secret. In the world of open-source, your intentions really do matter, my intent was to really help people either by motivating or by sharing something new that I was learning. That too is counted as a valid contribution. It gave me confidence to participate in blogging competitions sponsored by wemakedevs and winning those competition really boosted my confidence. And that's how I got selected for Codess.Cafe and many other open source communities. Here I learned about LFX, Outreachy and GSOC deeply through students who have been a previous mentee.

A small change can lead to a big domino effect🦋

The Phenomenon

I remember a random mail naming Confidential Computing Mentorship. Yeah right, the name got my attention. Opened it and to my surprise I saw "LFX, Outreachy, Gsoc" and was immediately ready to learn more about it because that's what I was looking for. A head start. I checked in and out and researched my way through the internet about the organization and got introduced to a member Nick Vidal (now my greatest ally and my mentor). The only thing I did was reach out to him for help and he really answered every trivial query I had. I started contributing to their Enarx Project.The project was around Trusted Execution Environments, Intel-SGX and ARM processors, basically working on hardware components. The project was amazing on the same time really hard for a beginner to decipher.

Nick really helped me with the motivation I needed at that time. He had (till this date) been consistent with supporting me.

I learned a new programming language namely Rust and tried to contribute to the project. All under my mentor's assistance. One step at a time. Hence, it's called a phenomenon.

The Twilight

I remember filling out numerous applications and constantly getting rejection mails. It was a period where my patience was heavily tested. However, I continued with contributing to CCC and I started attending weekly meetings to know the organization more.

Pro-tip: Even if you feel this isn't going anywhere, you should stay consistent within communities you're really interested in. This helps to build trust and ensures your visibility in the eyes of the mentor.

And that was all I did. Outreachy opened their application and I filled the application with a lot of enthusiasm, as I really wanted to be a part of CCC as a mentee and work on real world project. I got selected for the initial phase but to my dismay ended up with a rejection mail for the final phase. It really was disappointing as being a CCC intern was a holy grail. Very few make it into CCC.

But the people I met along the process is where the real blessing lies. Ankita Pareek became the Outreachy Intern for CCC, an equally deserving candidate. She helped me with the project as well although we were contributing for the same role. We worked as a team even though we were competitors.

The Dusk

After a tough summer, LFX winter term came. Hopes were up once again and I gave it a shot. Every organization has its own criteria and application process standards. Mine was the following:

THE APPLICATION PROCESS

1. Updated Resume/CV

2. Cover Letter

(this is very very important in terms of your selection so cover everything in your cover letter and maybe add links to your projects, achievements, or wherever you think they can add great value)

The cover letter should cover these points primarily

• 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?

Plus your previous contributions matter a lot.

And fingers crossed. But this time, I was not anxious at all. I have faced failure before I was not afraid of it this time. Joking. I was.

Meanwhile I got selected for GHC conference. I did an unpaid internship as well. Got Kubecon virtual ticket for attending the conference. So clearly, getting exposure into the world of open-source was a treat. It never felt like an extra effort because I loved knowing more about it. (PS thats not the case with everyone, just do what you heart follows).

All that goes well, ends well.

I got the selection mail as you can see I shared it somewhere above (I am a Taurus, OFC I will reveal my surprises first 😂). I was the happiest I've ever been in a while. So really thanked Nick on the first place. I'll always be grateful to him for believing in me and giving me the opportunity to be a CCC Intern.

Rejection = Redirection

The Dawn

I got the opportunity to work on Project Veraison under a GREAT GREAT MENTOR Thomas Fossati . We worked on rust-ccatoken , an implementation of the Arm CCA attestation token (§A.7 of the Realm Management Monitor (RMM) Specification) in Rust. I would not say the project was easy but rather it was my mentor who really understood and gave me my time and space to get under the rug. It made me realize how much I can research and depend on my own. The ownership and credibility I got from this experience is surreal. Cloud Computing has always been a favorite topic and I can surely say it will always be a subject of awe for me.

There were moments where I felt its just overwhelming but it was Thomas and Nick who guided me from time to time. Here is a snap from weekly meeting. Thomas made this experience more fun and less hectic. Although the time-gap between Switzerland and India is of 5 hours but he made sure to solve my queries at the earliest. So Grateful.

Not only we discussed about the project but we discussed about his work experience in the industry and future aspects of my career as well. The knowledge I am taking away both professionally and individually makes it a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

All the good things come to an end and so did this beautiful experience. I would always be grateful to Thomas and Nick for making this mentorship as amazing as it could be.

Also, how can I miss the reward⭐. Every mentee gets stipend💲 according to the country region (ft. Purchase Power Parity) which compensates for all the effort and hard work you've put in. So believe in yourself and give your best.

La Fin❤️

Reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter for any queries. I'll be happy to help.