GSoC Alumni Camp Delhi 2026 – My Experience

I attended the GSoC Alumni Camp in Delhi, it was an amazing opportunity to make people who are already familiar with open source aware of KDE Community and I was actually able to do that. The event itself was from 8:00 A.M. to 10:30 P.M. at night. The event started off with a formal opening session. Soon after was the scavenger hunt (we were hunting people!) it was a 5x5 grid where you needed to get signatures of people who fit the question in the box. A few of them were :

• I was born in July (I signed a lot of them )
• I have held a koala
• I know 3+ languages
• I can juggle
• I prefer go/Rust and so on. In all honesty it was an amazing ice breaker and something to get to know people. After that there were a few unconferences followed by lunch and then more unconferences till 6:00 P.M. after that lightning talk sessions started and fortunately I got to represent KDE.

Unconference Session – From GSoC Student to Maintainer/Mentor

I also hosted one of the first unconference sessions titled:

From GSoC Student to Maintainer/Mentor

I wasn't expecting a large audience, but at one point the room was at its capacity around 40 attendees.

The audience included:

• GSoC Organization Administrators
• Mentors
• Open source employees
• Existing contributors
• Google code-in students

The discussion focused on contributor retention after GSoC and how organizations can better support contributors beyond the program. It led to some interesting discussions where we found out what some organisations are doing.

Discussion Points (Noted by an org admin)

Leverage Contributors as Subject Matter Experts

GSoC contributors naturally become subject matter experts for the components they build. When new issues, bug reports, or pull requests relate to their work, proactively invite them to participate in the discussion or review. This helps contributors feel that their expertise is valued and keeps them engaged with the project beyond GSoC.

Improve Communication Around Pull Request Reviews

Complex pull requests often require focused reviews and may take longer than isolated bug fixes. While taking the necessary time for a thorough review is important, mentors should acknowledge review requests and, where possible, communicate an expected timeline. Even a brief acknowledgment improves the contributor experience.

Using Organization Stipends for Contributor Retention

Explore using the GSoC organization stipend to support promising contributors after the program ends. This could fund continued maintenance or feature development through a transparent platform such as Open Collective, allowing contributors to invoice for their work and remain actively involved with the project.

Recognizing Mentor Contributions

Mentoring requires a significant investment of time in reviewing code, guiding contributors, and providing technical support. Consider allocating a portion of the organization stipend to compensate mentors, recognizing their efforts and encouraging long-term participation.

KDE's Community Support

Another topic that generated considerable interest was KDE's support for its contributors.

I talked about how KDE sponsors some students to attend Akademy, and how I was also sponsored to attend the event, which a lot of people agreed organizations should've done (some did, a lot didn't) but a lot of people agreed that when an organization consider these things contributors stay.

After all the unconferences ended a lot of people came up to me saying mine was the best and I managed and engaged everyone in the best way possible ( I was on cloud 9).

Lightning Talk

One of the highlights was being selected to give a lightning talk. Only 18 participants were chosen, and I was one of them.

My GSoC project Join KDE is an advertisement for KDE itself, so the project itself became an easy conversation starter. It was a great opportunity to introduce KDE and make more people aware of the organization.

Although I did fumble the last part of my presentation it was more of me being confused where my slide went (some slides were misplaced) aside from that it went as any other informative talk but hey I was funny on the stage (refer to the pics) so people remember me! You win some you lose some, oh well.

Conversations Throughout the Event

Outside the sessions, I had some interesting discussions with contributors from different organizations. Some contributors showed interest in working wwith us while some showed interest in our eduction/science side but honestly it's hard to bring contributors over as they're in different domains, org admins/mentors or they're busy with their careers.

SU2 Foundation

I had a conversation with a maintainer from the SU2 Foundation, whose work focuses on computational fluid dynamics.

We discussed KDE's scientific and educational initiatives, including KDE for Scientists and several education-related projects. I also shared the KDE For You website as an introduction to the wider KDE ecosystem.

After Party

The conversations continued during the after-party on the following day.

I met a group of students who had become interested in open source after interacting with contributors throughout the event. They had originally attended as friends of another contributor.

One of them is now actively looking for a project to begin contributing to within KDE. YAYYY!

New Contributors

Several first-time contributors approached me asking about projects suitable for beginners.

I introduced them to a number of KDE projects and explained possible contribution paths.

But the same issue they're busy with the beginning of their careers.

Overall Thoughts

The Alumni Camp was one of the best ways to make people aware of KDE and I tried my best while i had fun ( we played uno there! Will bill the cards to the organization jkjk), a lot of people seemed intrigued and asked me to share some stuff about KDE to them or they'll try it on their own. Met someone from GNOME (they didn't get any lightning talk HA! I know, I know no inter project fighting that's bad) had some good conversations, teased the person from GNOME, had breakfast with them, and tried to make the most of the unconference session and the lightning talks to at least get people to know the name KDE!

Event Gallery