Forem: Grace Gong

I'll be speaking at Major League Hacking (MLH) Hackcon 2024!

Grace Gong — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 16:52:23 +0000

Hi everyone! This year I'll be speaking at Major League Hacking (MLH) Hackcon 2024 on "How to Build a Campus Community!"
I'm excited to share learnings and a high level rundown of the event in a future post.

More info on Hackcon: https://hackcon.mlh.io/

Join Hundreds of Hackathon Organizers.
Hackcon brings together 300+ hackathon organizers and campus tech leaders for two days of interactive sessions on community building, event planning, and the hacker experience. Come for the learning, stay for the camp activities!

Meet Community Leaders
Hackcon is a unique opportunity to meet like-minded individuals from across the country. It’s where friendships are formed, partnerships are started, and tech leaders meet all together in-person one last time before they go off into the real world.

Enjoy the Great Outdoors
Unplug from your devices and enjoy the beautiful scenery of upstate New York. Enjoy a range of fun outdoor activities like swimming, s’mores, and tie dye! By the end of the event, you’ll feel relaxed and recharged for the new school year.

Learn from the Best
There is no better place to learn how to organize a hackathon and run a community on campus. At Hackcon, you’ll have the chance to meet like-minded individuals and hear from the most experienced leaders in our community.

Join us at Camp Pontiac
Located in Copake, New York, Camp Pontiac is an active summer camp that becomes the venue for Hackcon. This scenic location creates the perfect atmosphere for community talks, discussion groups, and lasting friendships.

Get Tickets here: https://ti.to/mlh/mlh-hackcon-2024

Making Chatbot Applications with Dialogflow: My HackItTogether 2024 Project

Grace Gong — Sat, 20 Apr 2024 20:41:14 +0000

I participated in a hackathon in nyc earlier this term! As a highlight, I was able to work with a team of students from brooklyn to create a chatbot. We were given the challenge and objective to work on an Individualized Recommendation System that leverages AI
techniques to understand users' preferences and recommend similar content.

I conducted research on various Google Cloud Services to help support this project, and ultimately decided to work on a chatbot using Dialogflow to help achieve this.

Things that I considered during our project:

Architecture for the chat, db &/api
If we want to use dialog flow / azure openai as a templated UI for the chat or coding the interface ? (which would be time consuming GCP pros: we had credits)
Which API’s to use, and if we use multiple, how to consolidate/aggregate the data in one unified chat
Which UI to use for the website, and how to customize it? A premade template would be ideal
Which data sources we want to take and how to integrate this data
Are we enforcing guardrails (tell it to not give info) only picking from specific sections of info and prevent hallucinations

The other members in my group used other api's such as spotify api to help provide traditional recommendations to a search bar.
The earliest iteration of our UI looked like this:

The Dialogflow CX documentation was simple and easy to follow - I added our data sources through a combination of docs, website links, csv and files. After, I tested the chat application by asking questions to ensure the data was retrieved and provided adequate responses.

The Chatbot Application was simple to integrate into our React UI -> it appears on the bottom right corner of our site.

While the cloud credits have paused so the chat might not be loading at the moment, you can still see the UI for our project here: https://your-north-star.netlify.app/ {UI done in react}

Inspiration
The North Star has been a symbol of guidance and direction for centuries. In ancient times, navigators and travelers used the North Star as a way to determine their location and navigate the seas. We think that our web-based project with the help of AI will help the users navigate the quiz to find their way to their favorite book, movie or music.

What it does
The website will present a welcoming page to “Your North Star” ChatBot where it asks the user what they’re looking for. They’re presented with three buttons: music, book and movie. This leads to the next question which allows the user to specify the genre of their chosen media. The input given by the user is fed to an API. The APIs return the recommendations as a list, where each recommendation provides metadata, such as: title, cover, rating, overview, etc. We chose the constellation-theme because this is meant to be a journey to imagination. Your taste will bring you to the destination.

Challenges we ran into
The challenges we faced were with the implementation of a chatbot into the website.

Accomplishments that we're proud of
Being able to successfully implement the APIs from Google Cloud and Spotify Web.

What we learned
We learned how to customize APIs; how to navigate on different errors when using javascript or react. Most importantly we learned how to negotiate between team members and try to make our best based on the time provided.

What's next for Your North Star
By using AI we can explore the characters of the books/movies to elevate the user's experience to the next level. The user can communicate the characters and be friends with them.

Built With

chatbot-ui
css
dialogflow-es
figma
github
google-books-api
google-cloud
html
imdb-api
javascript
omdb-api
react
spotify
vertexai-api

GitHub Field Day USA 2024: Microsoft Reactor New York City

Grace Gong — Sun, 11 Feb 2024 06:54:59 +0000

Attention all Students in the United States and Canada!
GitHub Field Day USA 2024 will be taking place on March 15, 2024 at Microsoft Reactor New York City.
Please Apply here: https://githubfieldday.com/nyc2024/

An unconference for leaders of technical student communities
Friday, March 15th, 2024 at the Microsoft Reactor in New York City!

Hosted by GitHub Education

A day of discussions
Field Day brings together a group of student leaders for a day of conversation in the form of lightning talks, discussions, games, or whatever suits the topic best.
**
Schedule**
10:00 am Registration Opens
11:00 am Welcome to Field Day
11:20 am Keynote
11:50 pm Icebreakers
12:30 pm Talks/Discussions 1
1:05 pm Talks/Discussions 2
1:40 pm Talks/Discussions 3
2:10 pm Lunch
3:05 pm Talks/Discussions 4
3:40 pm Talks/Discussions 5
4:15 pm Closing Remarks
4:30 pm Goodbye + Networking Event

Topics
Inclusivity in your community
Internships
Building your community
Inter-community connections
Finding events near you
Open source
Apply to contribute your discussion topic!
FAQ
Who can attend Field Day?
Field Day is for student leaders of technical communities. Most attendees will be undergraduate students and young professionals.

What's a student leader?
A student leader is someone who's actively involved in improving their local technical community. They might be the president or chairperson of their school's tech club or be one of the organizers of the annual hackathon. They might run the student hardware group or be actively involved in introducing other students to programming.

What's an unconference?
A loosely structured conference emphasizing the informal exchange of information and ideas between participants (to quote the Google definition). Most content at Field Day will be in the form of lightning talks and discussions conducted by attendees.

I'm not in New York, but this sounds cool! Can I come?
If you're based in North America, you're welcome to apply!

So I registered to attend, what happens now?
We're just screening applications to make sure you're eligible to attend, you should hear from us within a few days. Once confirmed, all you need to do is show up at the venue that will be sent to you on the day of the event and take part!

How much does Field Day cost?
Field Day is free to attend!

Is financial aid for attending the event available?
We expect to have travel reimbursements available for students in areas surrounding New York City, we encourage you to apply. We will be notifying accepted students with the status of their travel reimbursemens within one week after acceptances are released.

What COVID restrictions are there?
We'll be following local guidance and will announce more specific details closer to the event.

Will there be food?
Yes! We will be serving a light breakfast and lunch! You will not go hungry.

Will there be swag?
Yes!

When can I find out if I'm receiving financial aid?
We hope to send out confirmations of travel reimbursements within 1 week of acceptance.

Is there a Code of Conduct for this event?
Yes! You can view it here.

Who is organizing Field Day?
Field Day is organized by GitHub Campus Experts, and technical student leaders.

About me
My name is Grace, and I’m a computer science student and GitHub Campus Expert for Western University based in Canada. As a GitHub Campus Expert and Developer Student Club Lead, we organize technical and career development events, creating opportunities for our communities to leverage GitHub and Student Developer Pack. We strive to build diverse and inclusive spaces to learn skills, share our experiences, and build projects together. Some of our flagship events that we host at Hackathons include Intro to Cloud, ML API's Workshops, and GitHub Workshops, where we help students get started with GitHub and share the GitHub Student Developer Pack.

Earlier this November, I had the opportunity to go to GitHub Universe in person in San Francisco, thanks to the GitHub Education team.
We met at the GitHub San Francisco headquarters, where we did a tour of the HQ, and attended Sessions at the center.

Throughout the Semesters, I collaborate with tech clubs across campus at Western University to organize workshops on GitHub, as well as other technical topics. We share resources, share events with our broader communities, and aim to inform and educate students so they can utilize these skills to work on impactful projects in and outside of school.

How I became a GHC (Grace Hopper Conference) Speaker, from a 2023 GHC Speaker

Grace Gong — Sat, 23 Dec 2023 02:36:52 +0000

I’m excited to have spoken this year at the Grace Hopper Conference as a computer science student! My talk was focused on empowering individuals to build a campus community. I shared my experience starting the women in computer science committee and how I leverage the resources from partner organizations, clubs, and my school to create compelling, engaging, and valuable events for the student population.
I also went through how I marketed the events and got hundreds of students to attend these events this year and join the community.

I will try to keep this article concise, short, and sweet in honor of GHC approaching - I know everyone is preparing for exams or the upcoming holiday season, and if anything, I hope this article can potentially be a catalyst for future conversations at the event and beyond!

My process was a bit unique, and I hope it can provide some insights for others interested in getting involved in the GHC community. (This is virtual, and I am sure there will be other requirements for the person)

I had just finished my sophomore year of CS and realized there was no significant in-person presence at my campus. On campus, I mean, when you walk up to the doors of the computer science building, there is a rush of people immediately, but there is no commonplace that you can call "community.” The classrooms upstairs are mostly unknown to most students, with the exception of labs, and the space itself feels foreign even after having spent years here.

There was a new room where people could study in groups, but it holds probably 20 people max and is usually filled with students on a time crunch doing group projects or empty throughout the day, and no significant space is created for those who are in computer science and want to meet others in the community.

Some clubs would hold virtual events and generally fall under the area of technology, but for computer science specifically, there was no common community. Noticing that there were many women in CS clubs on campuses across Canada, such as Waterloo and UBC, I wanted to bring this energy to my university specifically with a focus on collaboration with the school faculty for increased sponsorship, and applied for the AnitaB Pass It On Grant.

As a DSC (Developer Student Club) lead, I believe this strong partnership between our committees would enable us to deliver even more impact, and it for sure did - that year, we were able to organize numerous workshops with corporate partners like Salesforce on Technical, Behavioural DSA, and General Interviews, and give students a community to learn from each other. We organized an International Women’s Day event in partnership with the Ivey Business School and their Hackathon event in March, where we were able to support students in navigating the new normal as emerging technologies continue to evolve - students were able to learn from Ada, a TPM at Google in ML, as well as other Developers from the Google Developer Community to facilitate workshops on Flutter, a cross-platform mobile application development SDK which enabled students to develop their skills during the challenge.

I also had multiple discussions with the chair of the department of computer science, the chair of the faculty of science, where we discussed the experiences of marginalized students in science and computer science and how we could partner to improve the student experience.

I was the campus lead for the Percentage Project, a data-driven campaign to

This is among the many events we had during the school year with DSC, and I’m proud of our progress as the membership grew from 100 to over 450 members.

My GitHub Universe 2023 Experience with GitHub Campus Experts & GitHub Education

Grace Gong — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 08:16:17 +0000

Attending GitHub Universe 2023 was amazing!

Whats GitHub Universe?
GitHub Universe brings together the world's developers, enterprise leaders, and security professionals for two days of interactive sessions on AI, security, and the developer experience. Come for the learning, stay for the fun. We'll see you there!
How Did you get the opportunity to attend?
As a GitHub Campus Expert, this year I had the opportunity to attend GitHub Universe in person and the sessions and discussions I had there were impactful, inspiring, and a great testament to the incredible work and progress the Github Community has put together to improve the developer experience this past year.

How was the experience?
As my friend Harsh from OurTechCommunity (OTC) said - All the Campus Experts were so inspiring! It was so good to talk about each other's hardships openly, hear about their efforts and goals, see their drive and hard work, and learn from their experiences and knowledge.
We were also able to learn from the overall tech community from Universe, whether it be about Open Source, or what other companies are doing to adopt and adapt to the current evolving tech landscape. I am so grateful for GitHub, the GitHub Education Team, and everyone who worked to make this possible. Big Thank you to Luis, Juan, Dyson, Stormy Peters and everyone else who worked to make us, as students feel heard, and give us spaces to learn and bring our learnings to our overall communities.

What activities did you attend?

GitHub Open Source Pre-event Networking @ Minna Art Gallery
GitHub Platform Engineering Talk @ MoMa
Telus GitHub Actions Talk @ MoMa
Developer Experience @ Discussion Lounge
VSCode Productivity @ Discussion Lounge
Observability Solutions @ Discussion Lounge
Education Panel @ Hyatt
Ignacio's Panel on AI In Education
Keynotes, Chat with Stormy + Martin
Booths: Microsoft, Datadog, Postman, Arm, GitHub CoPilot, Security,
Demos: GitHub Security, CoPilot
GitHub Certification
GitHub Women in Tech Event

What did you learn from attending GitHub Universe?
I learned additional ways to support and engage my community and how to uplift marginalized/underrepresented communities. Specifically, through the panels on specific GitHub Actions and Features that I can now talk about in the workshops and at my internship companies who use GHE, specific actions I can take to expand and make my community more consistently engaged.
Through conversations with those in open source (leading communities or as an active contributor), I was able to learn about current open source projects, how to get involved, and how OSPO's work(An open source program office (OSPO) serves as the center of competency for an organization's open source operations and structure.) I was able to learn about the operational / logistics side of these groups and how to keep these communities alive and engaged. The key themes continued to tie back to Developer Experience and how understanding the Developer + being able to take steps to make it easy for developers to know how and when to contribute is often key to success in maintaining or making it accessible for the community.
The GitHub Women in Tech event enabled me to learn how to support and uplift other marginalized genders, create safe spaces for discussion, and continue to be involved and immersed in my community. This conference was life-changing because it enabled me to be connected with inspiring women at GitHub + Beyond and from various walks of life. I learned from women of diverse backgrounds and their experiences/strategies in the workforce. I also learned about the struggles they faced in the process and some things I need to look out for / consider in my career.

Who did you meet?
Story Peters, Martin Woodward, Michael Hanley, Joseph K, Ingrid Yan @github Security, VPs of Product, PM @ GitHub Sponsors, Anjuan from GitHub Sponsors, Thomas Dohmke, GitHub Education Team, Datadog Employees (PM, PMM, Sales), Open Source Contributors (CS50, Huan Li, Employees from Slack that work on Electron, etc) David Malan, Demetris Cheatham,(Chief of Staff, GitHub) and of course, the Campus Experts! Workshop Speaker-> Telus, Tech lead from Platform Engineering Talk (Leslie @ny Times)
-The Women in Tech workshop had various women from students my age (I wasn't able to get her name but she is a masters at UWashington doing a PhD to senior / VP positions) and a Bootcamp grad from 2016 who is now a tech lead at HubSpot, IBM VP, A Digital Assets and Workplace Activation Lead at Aristocrat, GitHub Business Ops Staff, Robinhood Developer Advocate

Best thing about the event?
The opportunity to learn from others in the field from diverse backgrounds (technical + nontechnical) and hear their experiences working with their communities and achieving positive impacts.
Learning from the developers and community leaders about their projects, their contributors, their ideas for the future, and what is happening with emerging technologies
The GitHub Women in Tech Event, where I had the opportunity to meet inspiring women and their career journeys
Developing my interpersonal and technical skills through valuable workshops and in-person demos. I was even able to have my code reviewed at the Microsoft booth because at my internship, I was using an SDK they had released as Open Source. I learned from the Dev Advocates on best code practices and made advancements in my code's bugs
The Dev Advocates + other employees also gave me valuable advice and motivation by sharing their experiences and career journeys. This conference and talking to others enabled me to see that these and other issues, whether systemic or

All of GitHub Universe keynotes, announcements, and most popular sessions
You can now watch 40+ on-demand sessions from GitHub Universe!
https://reg.githubuniverse.com/flow/github/universe23/sessioncatalog/page/sessioncatalog?search.deliveryformat=1692799009854004CQlx

The highlights

GitHub Copilot Enterprise: a new subscription tier that culminates the entirety of our Copilot offerings and personalizes them with the context of your organization's codebases, available in February 2024.
GitHub Copilot Chat, an AI companion that'll allow you to write and understand code using whatever language you speak, will be generally available in December 2023 at no additional cost. We're also integrating Copilot Chat directly into github.com and mobile, so developers can code from anywhere.
Now available in preview: Code scanning autofix and secret scanning for generic secrets provide new capabilities to help you prevent and detect more security vulnerabilities across your organization.

How to get started with MongoDB as a Student

Grace Gong — Thu, 14 Sep 2023 04:00:32 +0000

As student with a passion for the developer community, I have participated in varous hackathons, and gotten involved in my student community.

Throughout these experiences, I have had the opportunity to learn and develop projects using the MERN stack (MERN stands for MongoDB, Express, React, Node, after the four key technologies that make up the stack. MongoDB — document database. Express(.js) — Node.js web framework. React(.js) — a client-side JavaScript framework.) More information can be seen on their blog here.

As a software engineering intern, I have had the opportunity to also see how often MongoDB is used within projects, and how its capabilities have contributed to more efficient and reliable projects.

Finally, In my previous semester, I had the opportunity to take a course on unstructured data, (for any students at western, CS4417 is the course!) where I was able to learn more about unstructured data, noSQL, and work on an assignment involving MongoDB, Aggregation, and MapReduce. Im happy to make seperate blog posts about these projects as well for any students interested in exploring applications and ways to use MongoDB in their own projects.

Overall, MongoDB is a great tool to be able to leverage in your projects! Now you might be wondering, how do I get started?

MLH (Major League Hacking) is a large hackathon organizer and a community that I have been involved in since the summer of 2020.

As mentioned in their website post,

MongoDB Atlas – Best Database Platform for Your Next Hackathon
MongoDB Atlas is a multi-cloud database with an integrated set of related services that allow development teams to address the growing requirements for today’s wide variety of modern applications, all in a unified and consistent user experience.

MongoDB Atlas is more than a general-purpose database, it’s a full developer data platform – easily deploy and manage databases on-demand when and where you need them.

Below are some ways you could use MongoDB Atlas in your next hackathon project.

1) Simplify the way you integrate database functionality into your hackathon project by starting a free cluster or using your introductory $50 Atlas credits for students.

2) Take your hackathon project to the next level, and deploy a database to the cloud in minutes. Signing up is easy and hassle-free with no credit card required!

Key Benefits for Students
MongoDB is one of the most prevalent database providers in the world, and we’ve got a range of opportunities to help you get started building on their platform.

1) Receive $50 of free MongoDB Atlas credits through the GitHub Student Developer Pack, along with a MongoDB certification ($150 in value). The Forever Free Tier is available if you are no longer a student.

2) Enter the “Best Use of MongoDB Atlas” challenge at an upcoming MLH event for a chance to win a M5GO iOT Starter Kit. To participate in the challenge, check out our website and register for an upcoming event!

Interested in taking advantage of your MongoDB Atlas perks? Check out their website here.

MongoDB also has developed "MongoDB University" a series of courses and ressources to support the learning and application of those learnings! I have taken some of the modules and can confirm the videos and tutorials go in depth and with the interactive nature of their tutorials, you will be engaged with the content.

Finally, MongoDB has User Groups
which bring people together to learn from and connect over their shared interest in MongoDB technologies. These are communities of developers with various skill levels and an interest in learning new technologies and applications including MongoDB and beyond, and are a great opportunity to get involved! Whether you are a beginner or a skilled individiaul, this is a safe space for users and novices to come together, learn from each other, and share what theyre doing with mongodb and other tech.

I recently became involved as a co-organizer for the Toronto User Group and confirm the community is welcoming for people with diverse experiences and has enabled me to meet and learn from people around the company and community.

These are just starting points - there are many options for ways to get involved with MongoDB beyond this!

You could build an application or library you've built using MongoDB, contribute to open source related to MongoDB,
talk at a local MongoDB event, create a video or tutorial sharing what you've learned or created about MongoDB,
get involved and provide support through Stack Overflow, the MongoDB Community Forum or elsewhere, and more!

If you had any questions feel free to leave them in the comments!

Toronto MongoDB User Group Meeting Sept 5

Grace Gong — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 01:46:08 +0000

I had a great time co-organizing the Toronto MUG event this past week!

Event Summary
Toronto MUG Organizers: Chris Dellaway, Grace Gong
Agenda:
6:00PM Doors Open, Supper and Networking
6:30PM Prashant (MongoDB) Amplifying Retail Operations with Generative AI: The Untapped Potential
7:00PM Lachlan (Community) - Company journey with MongoDB
7:20PM Devang (Community) Using MongoDB Clustered Collection to Boost Query Performance
7:30PM Networking

The event was held at the Microsoft Toronto headquarters from 6-8pm on Tuesday September 5 2023 with the aim of fostering connections and sharing knowledge among members of the MongoDB Community.
The crowd was truly engaged, and the diversity of the attendees resulted in vibrant discussions and insightful questions.

Learned

Attendance Accuracy: Future events should either emphasize the importance of accurate RSVPing or anticipate a specific turnout percentage to prevent underutilisation of space.
Improving Check-in: An advanced and digital check-in system can greatly improve the event’s commencement process.
Balancing Time: A clear mechanism to ensure speakers stick to their allocated time can make the event more streamlined.
Loved

Speakers: They were highly informative, and their sessions were greatly appreciated by all attendees.
Community Connection: Attendees left the event feeling more connected with the MongoDB Community and inspired.
Feedback: The considerable number of feedback forms received demonstrated the attendees’ involvement and commitment to improving future events.
Diverse Discussions: The diverse background of attendees enriched the discussions and questions during the event.
Ideas/Action Items for the Next Event

Allocate budget for name tags and markers to facilitate easier recognition and networking. Also next time we can introduce volunteers and have the slide for them as well
Explore advanced check-in systems for a smoother start to the event.
Liaise with adjacent event organisers to coordinate and ensure both events run seamlessly without confusion for attendees.

Part 1: Intro to serverless

Grace Gong — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 17:59:03 +0000

As Im learning about cloud computing and reading up on various sources including aws, I thought I would share some of my learnings.

Why serverless?
Building Secure Reliable and Cost effective architecture is important for IT professionals. Many organizations are replacing monolithic methods with microservices methodology.

What are Microservices?

Architectural and organizational approach to software development.
Software is composed of small independent services.
Communicate over well-defined APIs.
Owned by small, self-contained teams.

Tightly versus loosely coupled

Monolithic application (tightly coupled)
In a monolithic application, if one piece were to fail, the entire application would crash, as this example illustrates. If there is a spike in demand, the entire architecture must be scaled. Adding features to a monolithic application becomes more complex as time goes on. Pieces of the code base must work with each other to sync properly.

Microservices application (loosely coupled)
In a microservices architecture, an application is built as independent components that run each application process as a service. These services communicate through a well-defined interface by using lightweight APIs. Services are built for business capabilities, and each service performs a single function. Because they are independently run, each service can be updated, deployed, and scaled to meet demand for specific functions of an application. If one component fails, the other components remain active, as illustrated.

Benefits of microservices

Use public APIs
Microservices communicate over APIs. In fact, doing so is the only way to realize the benefits of microservices. Don't be tempted to circumvent that rule. By communicating with APIs, you can modify a database and maintain it without affecting communications or having to repoint interfaces. The public API is a contract between your microservices and its clients.

Use the right tool for the job
Because every service is built for explicit functionality, you can choose the right tool for the job. The development team for Microservices B can add Amazon Aurora Service or change to Amazon OpenSearch without affecting Microservices A. You can also make changes to the entire language framework, which gives you the flexibility to code in the language that is best suited to an application. By choosing the programming framework that works for the team, the development team for Microservices B can avoid depending on other teams for their knowledge of specific frameworks.

Secure your services
Microservices must be architected to provide security at every step. The defense- in-depth approach is a common method of reviewing each step of the application to determine areas where additional security controls can be implemented. In a microservices environment, this arrangement includes the application level, API level, network layer, and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) configurations. The API is the entry point. Amazon API Gateway can perform authentication and authorization for services and act as security control for microservices by enforcing throttling and obfuscation of internal resources.

Be a good citizen
As this environment of microservices grows and expands, it becomes important to be a good citizen. As a service owner, you must understand how other services are calling you. The service owner will identify the client's use case and register them in the service registry. As a client of services, you must understand the service that you are calling.

Company transformation
Going from a monolith to microservices is more than a technological transformation. The shift requires transformation in the organization and communication mechanisms between teams. Automation is the key to rapidly deploying stable applications. Small development teams ("two-pizza teams" or no more than the number of people who can be fed with two pizzas) focus on producing a single microservice. They can send the service through an automated delivery pipeline and release a service into production with everything, from the build step forward, being automated. By organizing the software as a grouping of microservices, the development teams are decoupled and can efficiently release updates to their microservices on their own.

Automate everything
Some examples of some tools can help with automation.

Downsides of monoliths

All processes are tightly coupled and run as a single service.
Adding or improving a monolithic application's features becomes more complex as the code base grows.
Dependent and tightly coupled processes increase the impact of a single process failure.

Serverless applications dont require you to provision, scale or manage any servers.

You can build them for nearly any type of application or backend service, and everything required to run and scale your application with high availability is handled for you.

Why serverless?

developers dont need to worry about managing and operating servers of runtimes and can focus on other areas, thus can focus on core product

Event-driven architectures

Uses events to initiate actions and communication between decoupled services.
Change in state, a user request, or an update.
Information published for other services to consume it.
Events are the primary mechanism for sharing information across services.

• Microservices is a method of building your architecture.

• Serverless is a service that is used to build your architecture.

• Microservices is the method of loosely coupling sections of your architecture.

• Serverless services are the tools that you use to build out those sections of your architecture.

• It's common to use a blend of both serverless and nonserverless services.

Cloud Computing 101 for Beginners (Part 1)

Grace Gong — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 17:19:18 +0000

In this article we'll be going over:
• Defining cloud computing
• Describing the basics of cloud computing
• Discussing the benefits of cloud computing
• Identifying cloud service models and cloud deployment models

Why cloud computing?
Cloud computing is used prevalently as IT assets can be used as programmatic resources to quickly set up and tear down resources.

With cloud computing, you can access resources dynamically for agility and flexibility to meet customer needs. It can be pay-as-you-go to test and use the system without being fully committed.

What is cloud computing?
Cloud computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources over the internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. On-demand delivery, IT resources over the internet and Pay-as-you-go pricing are some of it's key defining factors.

Client-server model

A client can be a web browser or desktop application that a person interacts with to make requests to computer servers.

A server can be services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), a type of virtual server.
For example, suppose that a client makes a request for a news article, the score in an online game, or a funny video. The server evaluates the details of this request and fulfills it by returning the information to the client.

What are the benefits of cloud computing?

Trade upfront expense for variable expense
Stop spending money to run and maintain data centers
Stop guessing capacity
Benefit from massive economies of scale
Increase speed and agility
Go global in minutes

What are some cloud service models and cloud deployment models?
Cloud service and deployment methods provide different levels of control, flexibility, and management.

Deployment models include
Infrastructure as a service (laaS)
Infrastructure as a service (laaS) contains the basic building blocks for cloud IT. It typically provides access to networking features, computers (virtual or on dedicated hardware), and data storage space. Infrastructure as a service provides the highest level of flexibility and management control over your IT resources.

Platform as a service (PaaS)
Platform as a service (PaaS) removes the need for organizations to manage the underlying intrastructure (usually hardware and operating systems). They can focus on the deployment and management of applications. These tools give developers the ability to be more efficient because they don't need to worry about resource procurement, capacity planning, software maintenance, and patching.

Software as a service (Saas)
Software as a service (SaaS) is a completed software product that the service provider runs and manages. With a SaaS offering, you do not have to think about how the service is maintained or how the underlying infrastructure is managed. You only must think about how you will use that particular piece of software.

Deployment strategies include
Cloud
In a cloud-based deployment model, you can migrate existing applications to the cloud, or you can design and build new applications in the cloud. You can build those applications on low-level infrastructure that requires your IT staff to manage them. Alternatively, you can build them by using higher-level services that reduce the management, architecting, and scaling requirements of the core infrastructure.

For example, a company might create an application that consists of virtual servers, databases, and networking components that are fully based in the cloud.

Hybrid
In a hybrid deployment, cloud-based resources are connected to on-premises infrastructure. You can integrate cloud-based resources with legacy IT applications. You might want to use this approach in a number of situations. For example, you have legacy applications that are better maintained on premises, or government regulations require your business to keep certain records on premises.

For example, suppose that a company wants to use cloud services that can automate batch data processing and analytics. However, the company has several legacy applications that are more suitable on premises and will not be migrated to the cloud. With a hybrid deployment, the company would be able to keep the legacy applications on premises while benefiting from the data and analytics services that run in the cloud.

On-premises
On-premises deployment is also known as a private cloud deployment. In this model, resources are deployed on premises by using virtualization and resource management tools. Increase resource utilization by using application management and virtualization technologies.

For example, you might have applications that run on technology that is fully kept in your on- premises data center. Though this model is much like legacy IT infrastructure, its incorporation of application management and virtualization technologies helps to increase resource utilization.

Google IO Extended 2023: Event, Updates and Ressources

Grace Gong — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 16:33:29 +0000

I had the opportunity to host a Google IO Extended 2023 event where I marketed, and presented the material in collaboration with 3 GDSC’s members. We had 70 attendees and are gratful for the turnout for our event. Today I will be summarizing the key info that you can use to get started to learn more about the latest updates and ressources.

To get started, Ill provide an overview of Google IO Extended.

Google I/O Extended is the community led counterpart to Google I/O, our annual Google led conference where the world hears about Google’s latest developer solutions, products, and technology.

Google I/O Extended is a series of community led tech meetups, that bring the knowledge and excitement of Google I/O to developers on a city level, all around the globe.

Technologies
Dive deeper into the new Google developer products. Google I/O extended meetups will bring developer content announced to life locally — technical talks, Q&A sessions, Google Developer Experts presentations, discussions with local tech enthusiasts.

How does it work?
Register
Check for upcoming Google I/O Extended events below and RSVP to an event that you are interested in.

Join
Attend Google I/O Extended Watch Party or Meetup.

Learn
Learn about the latest Google products from Google Experts and local developers in your community.

You can find the events here: https://gdg.community.dev/ioextended/

and see the summary of Google IO 2023 here: https://io.google/2023/

I had the opoportunity to attend Google IO 2023 and have made an article post as well with the experience.

If you have any questions feel free to post them in the comments below!

For my event, I had the opportunity to share with the group the various products and features in the topics of Mobile, Web, AI and Cloud. I shared some of the links, including the articles and areas where people could sample or demo the technologies. Afterwards, we gave everyone some time to go into the links and check out the demos and tools for themselves, followed by a Q&A. During the Q&A I shared how students could get involved with GDSC in the upcoming year, and addressed any issues about how they can potentially learn in the platform.

I hosted this concurrently as a Cloud Study Jam, so that participants could instantly get access to learning modules to kickstart their learning journey.

If you are interested in organizing an event or being an organizer, feel free to let me know in the comments any questions you may have and I can do my best to answer!

My GitHub Campus Expert Ambassador Application Experience

Grace Gong — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 16:23:26 +0000

This year I was selected to be a GitHub Campus Ambassador, and Im excited to write this post to provide a little more insight into the process and how you can bring your best foot forward into the upcoming school year if your interested in applying.

I have been excited to be a Campus Expert ever since I was in my first year, as I was intrigued by the student programs and initiatives offered, and ever since the summer of my grade 12 year I had started using github to venture into different projects, and wa familiar with the platform.

I got the chance to learn more about the program after meeting a few of the Github Campus Experts at a local event and I was so inspired by each one of them — they had diverse backgrounds and experiences and it was great to hear their journeys and initiatives in their communities.

I had the chance to connect with some of them again at the Field Day in Toronto this year, which solidified my interest. At the event I was able to meet with one of the organizers of the program.

The process I went through after the main application is as follows, which is also same as on their site.

The main takeaway or advice I would say is to show your engagement and experiences. I think that after being declined the first 2 times, I worked on developing my experiences over the year which helped me to solidify my application this year. Im excited for what I can contribute to this year!

For more context and straight from their site:

Enrich your college technical community
Learn the skills to build and grow diverse technology communities on campus with training, mentorship, and support from GitHub.

WHO WE ARE

Students leading campus technical communities

Campus Experts are student leaders that strive to build diverse and inclusive spaces to learn skills, share their experiences, and build projects together. They can be found across the globe leading in-person and online conferences, meetups, and hackathons, and maintaining open source projects.

WHY YOU SHOULD JOIN

Get training and support from GitHub

As local leaders, Campus Experts know the challenges students on their campuses face. With the GitHub Campus Experts training, you’ll learn technical and professional skills — like public speaking, technical writing, community leadership, and software development — that will help you build a strong technical community, teach valuable skills, create new opportunities for your student community, and position your institution within a global community of student leaders.

Process:

Get the GitHub Student Developer Pack
The GitHub Student Developer Pack gives you access to more than 100 premium developer tools for free. It is essential for you to have the Pack to apply to the program.

Complete the application form
Complete the application to help us learn about you and your interest in the program. Applications are open for a month in February and in August. Two weeks after applications close, you’ll be notified of your application status.

Submit a video resume
If your application was successful, you’ll be invited to submit a 5-minute video introducing yourself and your community. Let us know your motivations, community vision, and goals.

The video needs to be submitted within two weeks after receiving the invitation. We’ll take a week to review your submission and notify you of your application status.

Welcome to the program!
If your submission was approved, Congratulations! You’ve been accepted to the program. You’ll go through the GitHub Campus Experts Training. The training has six modules and takes 12 hours to complete in a span of 6 weeks.

Complete the training
At the end of your training, you’ll submit a community proposal that will serve as a guideline for your community and you’ll become a GitHub Campus Expert.

FAQs
Who can apply to the program?

Any student with the GitHub Student Developer Pack can apply to the program. We welcome students from all backgrounds (designers, journalists, mathematicians, etc.) to apply.

What are the eligibility requirements?

Be at least 18 years of age.
Validate your student status through the GitHub Student Developer Pack.
Be enrolled in a post-secondary formal education institution.
Have more than one year left as a student before graduating.
Be a GitHub user for at least six months.
Not be enrolled in the GitHub Campus Advisors Program.
How many Campus Experts can there be per school?

The program will generally only accept one GitHub Campus Expert per campus. Depending on the size of a campus student population, we may open additional spots.

When do applications open?

Applications to the program open twice a year, in February and August. The application remains open for a month and you can apply once every application cycle.

What happens when I graduate?

Once you graduate you’ll become a program alum. Alumni are Campus Experts who have made valuable contributions in the past and may no longer be able to commit to the same level of participation or have graduated. To honor their contributions, we add them to the Campus Experts Alumni site for the program so they can remain connected to the community.

What if I have additional questions?

You can reach out for more information through our support form.

My Major League Hacking (MLH) Hackcon 2022 Experience

Grace Gong — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 16:12:57 +0000

Hi, nice to meet you! My name is Grace, and I participated in 2022 MLH Hackcon. As a part of 2022 MLH Top 50 class, and event organizer for eHacks last year, I was invited to participate in Hackcon. Now, you might be wondering what is Hackcon? On the official site, the definition:

“MLH Hackcon X is an in-person conference and retreat that takes outside New York City and takes place at a summer camp organizers skills to build their communities and hackathons.

Hackcon is the only conference where hackathon organizers and hacker community leaders can come together, learn from each other, and build relationships. This is a unique opportunity to meet community leaders in person after the past two years of virtual collaboration.”

This year, (I believe it was around 400) students who organize hackathons and lead tech initiatives in their community from across the world gathered to develop their leadership skills in bettering their community organizing, whether it be for hackathons, community events and more. (I met a few individuals from Slovakia and India in addition to Canada and the USA)

We learned skills in making hackathons and events more inclusive, and diverse, how to iterate and improve, pitch to sponsors, build better teams and host more effective meetings, amongst other topics. Of course, I also met a lot of inspiring and amazing peers (younger and older than me, both offering a different perspective) who I now look up to, and who have given me a lot of insight into the experience of being a software engineer intern, and working in other areas of tech.

I love participating in conferences and community gatherings like this, because everyone comes from unique backgrounds and walking around new york city and exploring new areas is super interesting me. 2 weeks ago at the impact labs summit at columbia university was my first time travelling alone in a different country and it was an eye opening experience. Again, at that summit I was able to learn a lot and meet really cool people. I was also able to get a lot of inspiration and that article is also published if your interested in learning my experience as well.

Now, onto the key takeaways:

-> Although often as comeptitive as some as can be, it can be argued that the goal of hackathons and other events like these is not just to win, but to learn, be surrounded by a supportive community, and have fun

->when making inclusive events, it is important to consider what else students can get out of it beyond hacking (although hacking is an important part) and to make / have options for individuals to pick what to do

-> Pre—event ressources can make more inclusive events because often the fear of uncertainty can often make or break the experience for first-timers and beginners due to the overwhelming demands of learning new languages, frameworks in addition to making a new project in a short period of time

-> Guidebooks / youtube q&a prior to large events can help

-> If you do nothing, nothing changes. I was at Governess’ workshop and not only was it inspiring to hear her story, but being able to learn about how to get and receive feedback constructively, and improve after events has definetly helped me to develop frameworks and consider more factors when it comes to anything really. Hackathons or life, being able to prioritize and make decisions with the longterm vision in mind are important, and it was great to learn about the types of factors to consider, and how to approach those conversations especially the ones that may be hard to have with yourself and others.

When getting Feedback, take it constructively. Talk to other people during AND after events and ask for feedback.

If actions don’t match your perspective of yourself, then you should reflect on that — why, and how you can align it towards improving next time. prepare early.

-> At hackathons, Emotional support is also important. (As worded on one of the slides- People are going to cry.)

->Not always about winning , community / learning is just as important.

->Celebrate completion, not just winning. Little wins.

-> Quality (Retaining and developing participants) is just as important as quantity.

-> Time + preplanning are important. For example, If your going to host an event during exam season, you might anticipate a dip in participants/organizer availability.

Ive also had a lot of conversations with other individuals at the conference, and although Im not able to share those, I would like to highlight some general things that were cool.

ability to meet with MLH coaches, and icons from the tech community
I had read their bios from the mlh top 50 description and I was blown away by the commitment, contribution, and ambition of all the people there. These individuals inspire me to think bigger, work harder, and not give up when things get hard.

support systems, positive affirmations and clear action items for making more inclusive spaces
As a women in tech, its hard to find that representation in school. I was at cabin “Mouse2” and my cabin mates were really kind, and it was great to hear about their experiences in tech, and hearing about their experiences from their respective universities and tech communities. There were also workshops on this topic, where learned on how even wording and how we address different audiences can play an important role in drawing in the right people and retaining them.

speaking with other youth organizers
with the pandemic, it has been hard to participate in in person events, and the ability to connect with other peers has been quite limited. This experience enabled me and others to chat with each other, and help each other out. whether it be about school, careers, or hackathon organizing, this event gave space for youth to be genuine and have a safe space to get support and form connections, whether it be directly or indirectly.

with the rise of social media, there are many youth who are leveraging it for positive change. I was able to meet with a few. It was also mindblowing to think about how just 2 weeks ago I was watching their video on a particular tech concept and next thing I was talking to them in person. As someone who also loves sharing my experience and helping others, I hope to also develop those channels to bring more clarity.