Forem: Deepa Prasanna

Reflecting my hacktoberfest journey

Deepa Prasanna — Mon, 04 Nov 2024 06:30:49 +0000

This is a submission for the 2024 Hacktoberfest Writing challenge: Contributor Experience

Every year, developers across the globe wait for this month of October to celebrate the open source. Newbies to experienced ones eagerly wait to contribute; some win prizes and others proudly display the work they had been doing.

I participated in hactoberfest many years ago but this year, I was inspired to join after seeing the oss.gg competition during the hacktoberfest. Their approach to open source contributions was something that was interesting and excited me - Gamifying open source contributions. Yes! You read that right! Like a game you will approach the issues and you will be rewarded with points.

Of course, winning prizes during this hacktoberfest was exciting but more than that, I wanted to contribute as much as possible to make myself a worthy candidate for employers.

Earlier, I only did open source in few repos, but this time, I contributed to new repos such as Formbricks, Papermark, TwentyORM, and Dub. I felt I am solving daily leetcode challenge. Yes, i can proudly say that I worked on code each day and night, fixed much more than bugs and worked on even feature requests.

During this time, I kept myself open to tech stacks, not confided by one language/framework. It made me really confident what I achieved. Like going on a quest, each day felt like a quest—I woke up eager to solve new issues, and I did. And guess what??

I greatly reduced my mobile screen time. I always wanted to work on reducing mobile screen usage during my leisure time. The past month I was able to utilize my time in a good way and be proud of that.

Reflecting on this journey, I realize how impactful Hacktoberfest can be, not just for the community but also for personal growth. It pushed me out of my comfort zone, honed my skills, and provided a sense of accomplishment. Even if you are a beginner, don't worry—there is always a community to help and guide you in open source.

I look forward to continuing my open source contributions and embracing new challenges in the future.

A month long code quest: oss.gg hackathon

Deepa Prasanna — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 14:48:18 +0000

As I am on the last day of October 31st, I can't help but reflect on this entire month. This month has been filled with ups, down, excitement and surprise. I am happy I am ending on a good note :)

This all started when I joined the community of oss.gg repo. Their approach to open source contributions was something that was interesting and excited me - Gamifying open source contributions. Yes! You read that right! Like a game you will approach the issues and you will be rewarded with points.

Little did I know that they will be taking this up to another level this October: the month of hactoberfest in the tech world. They announced exciting prizes for those who win the lottery with their points. Sounds interesting right! I believe you know the feeling of being rewarded after you complete a quest. 😉 Some of the prizes are Macbook, Iphone etc.

Of course, I wanted to win a Macbook, but more than that, I also participated in hope of completing as many quality code contributions and make myself a worthy candidate.

Earlier, I only did open source in few repos, but this opened the door to many repos which I didn't even thought of. I contributed to new repos such as Formbricks, Papermark, TwentyORM, and Dub. I felt I am solving a daily leetcode challenge. Yes, i can proudly say that I worked on code each day and night, fixed much more than bugs and worked on even feature requests.

Like going on a quest, I woke up to each day with what issues to solve and I did. And guess what???????????

I greatly reduced my mobile screen time. I always wanted to work on reducing mobile screen usage during my leisure time. This entire month, I contributed to code, working on different tech stacks and really utilising my time in a good way. Now I can show my contributions and be proud of that.

I am also amazed on my achievements. I mostly work on backend development, but this month I also contributed to frontend tasks and it made me really confident of what I achieved this day.

Winning and losing is part of the life but much more than that is the experience one goes through. I learned and worked on various tasks and am much more grateful today. I am confident that in future, when I look back I can proudly say my efforts during this October were not in vain :)

Shout out to oss.gg for this wonderful hackathon. 🙌🙌

From overwhelmed to organized: My experience with Twenty CRM

Deepa Prasanna — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 13:01:53 +0000

As a layman earlier unfamiliar with CRMs, those used to sound very heavy. I always distanced myself to not explore that uncharted territory. But we all know, life happens. You explore things that you never knew and only later after experiencing, you realize and wish if you had known earlier. After knowing what does a CRM accomplishes, I understood and am grateful for all those brilliant brains behind them.

A CRM as we all know is a centralized hub for managing our leads or customer relations. Of course, our plain very old google sheets might help, but working smarter is the way to go when there is such advancement of technology. Why do one wants to be left behind? Thus, I love to use ones which eases our lives, helps us automate the daily routines and finally the most important thing: improve our sales. :) At the end of the day, that is what it matters.

So, today on that quest I am reviewing TwentyCRM. I have worked and heard various vendor lock-in CRMs but it was the first time, I heard an open source CRM. Thank you Open source! As soon as I hear open source, that gives a relief because you can be assured of what happens to your data. No more those vendor lock-ins and no more nightmares of your precious business data! I liked that Twenty CRM apart from paid feature had the self hosted option which gives US the freedom. As users, the freedom lies to us. So that's a plus for me!

Once I had to work on a CRM which seemed quite boring and that made my tasks more mundane. Who doesn't loves to see a good UI, a UI which is pleasing to our eyes and would raise the excitement and curiosity levels! The first time I saw Twenty's landing page, I really liked it. It's not boring. It has a good balance of colors and texts which seemed pleasing. I also liked the fact that all the necessary information was easily navigable. A good UX, I will say!

I also found it bit similar to Notion, so it did gave me a feeling that I already know, I am familiar. The data model view and kanban feature was something that I did not expected from a CRM. It seemed a good visualization experience of my data. I hate those CRMs which seems daunting to explore but in Twenty it did not seemed so. I can be assured of any team mate who is unexperienced in CRMs to understand the usage of this app and my flow of data in a very easy and quick manner. That's another big plus for me. Because if a product is easing the work of a team, it saves a lot of time!

Another feature that I liked is I can not only integrate their REST APIs, but also the GraphQL ones too, which is good for the developers. Ofcourse, how can I forget about documentation when APIs come? Twenty's good and friendly documentation helps the developers to understand to integrate any tools that one might require.

And last but not the least, their good community and the support that they provide.

I hope this reading makes you feel one step closer in understanding twenty. May your leads/sales grow!! :)

Note: These are my personal opinions

Credits:
Cover image Photo by Kindel Media: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-in-the-office-discussing-a-project-7688336/