Year in Review 2021 - Google DSC, Microsoft LSA, Accrue Inc 📸💥

Last year, I wrote my first year in review, and I find this practice quite helpful to sit and get a flashback of my whole year and get insight from where I started and now where I’m standing. If you are interested in reading about my 2020 version, click here. Now let’s begin my 2021 journey, Sit tight; it will be a bit long.

2021 proved a completely unpredictable year for me. Things that I started in 2020 start paying off in 2021. I grew unexpectedly, got a chance to attend various conferences and meetups, and had the privilege to meet some fantastic people. I did lots of things which I can’t imagine. In short, 2021 is remarkable for me.

Rejections😥

Failure is an essential part of success. No one in the world succeeds on the first attempt, whether Edison or Turing. So, I started this review with the failures and rejections I faced throughout the year. Each time I fail, the more resilient I become. A significant rejection of mine in 2021 is MLH fellowship rejection. I applied in November and selected the summer cohort. Fortunately, my application got selected, and I received an email for scheduling my interview but the interview did not go so well, as it was my first, and I was rejected, but I learned a lot during the process. After that, I didn't stop applying; I applied for various positions in different companies, gave different hiring tests, but in most roles, I was rejected due to less experience, less score and some other factors. Still, I kept improving, and this didn't last long. I started receiving calls after tests/applications and even direct placement offers (but didn't proceed on them because all are in-person, and I'm still in the university). At last, I got a remote job in an international firm. The point to mention all this here is if you keep trying, nothing remains impossible or unachievable, but if you don't start, you don't succeed.

Google Developer Student Clubs⚡

Google Developer Student Clubs is a community-based program by Google for university students interested in tech. GDSC has been successfully operating in our university for the past two years. When the application for the 3rd cohort opened, I decided to apply for the GDSC lead but when I saw a video requirement in the application, I decided to quit my decision. One of our seniors, founder of GDSC in our campus, Saad Irfan motivated me to apply for the GDSC Lead. I applied and got the email of selection for the next round (interview), which was most challenging for me, but again a huge shoutout to Saad Irfan and Iqra Fatima (Lead of that time) for motivating and preparing me for the interview 🙌. About a month later, I received an email stating congratulations you are selected as a GDSC Lead of your campus 🎉🎉.

The next big thing was the GDSC summit, where all leads around the country gathered, but due to covid, it was held online ☹. Although it was a good summit, the element of face-to-face conversation is still missing. So, Ma’am Hafsa Munawar, Google Community Manager, arranged a dinner with the collaboration of GDG Lahore for Leads of Lahore and nearby, where everyone gathered around and spent a fun evening✨.

Microsoft Learn Student Ambassador🔰

In June, I applied for the Microsoft Student Ambassador program. Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors is a program to bring together all the students from all over the world who have a passion for technology and help the community. There are four positions in the program New, Alpha, Beta, Gold. Those who are selected in the program start with the New position, the lowest rank in the program. Every Student Ambassador has to complete certain things to get promoted into Alpha and then to Beta. I also started as a New ambassador, and now I’m a Beta level Ambassador. The MLSA program allows me to meet amazing folks and help me to grow my network both personally and professionally.

Launch My Personal Website🚀

In October 2020, I attended a webinar on tech profile building, where the speaker emphasized the importance of a personal website and its necessity for a developer. After realizing this fact, I decided to create a website for myself. So, I started visiting personal sites for inspiration and started developing my website in November, but I was not satisfied with the initial results so, I decided to redesign everything. I did this almost three times and finally achieved my desired design. I built this website in Reactjs and SCSS with animations.
Website Link: https://meerhamzadev.web.app/

Diving into Nodejs 🛠

In the Sept of 2020, I started learning to react, and I have almost mastered it at the start of 2021. So I decided to move further and explore more on the tech ecosystem. I decided to learn the flutter and start my journey but soon realized that flutter was not for me. So I decided to dig more into the JavaScript ecosystem and start learning Nodejs. My Nodejs journey is divided into two sections: Automation and Backend Development.

During my automation journey, I automated many small tasks and made small tools like jpg-to-docx converter, email-sender, create-react-app clone, etc., for practice purposes. I also made plenty of open-source contributions to such tools. Many people started asking me how to do automation and create such tools, so I decided to write the whole procedure in the form of an article and also create a template for this purpose. You can check out both Article(Building CLI tool using Node) and Template(Node CLI Template).

The backend journey is a great one too. I start from small CRUD apps with express and MongoDB. I also created some big projects using express, mongo, mysql, web sockets (implement real-time chat in it), and Kafka (for real-time data used for maps in a semester project). While learning the backend, I learned a lot about the working of the web and its core components. It helps me in understanding how things work under the hood. I plan to go deeper into the backend and its technologies in 2022.

Hacktoberfest 2021🎃

In 2020, I participated in the hacktoberfest for the first time. You can read about my first experience of hacktoberfest here. I was eagerly waiting for hacktoberfest 2021. So, when it came, I utilized it well and contributed code to some quality repos. My hacktoberfest contributions consist of implementing map tracking for the ISS(International Space Station), Making a Website PWA, Converting a template into a full-fledge CLI tool, and fixing bugs in the green-press CLI. I not only finished my hacktoberfest but also organized a workshop for students from the platform of GDSC with ACM, where a good number of folks participated and started their hacktoberfest journey.

OpenSource Journey🥂

Last year, I started my open-source journey after the hacktoberfest. Since then, I have been actively contributing to Open Source. I explored a variety of stuff this year and tried to implement my learning to benefit others. My most contributions are in the JavaScript ecosystem, where I contributed to technical documentation, front-end, backend projects, and command-line tools. I raised almost 24 pull requests in different repositories throughout the year, and all got merged 🥳.

Joining Accrue Inc💥

I have been working in react and front-end technologies from the sept of 2020, and I got into the industry soon in the form of ArcCode, but as it's a service-based startup, I didn’t get many chances to polish my skills. So, I decided to move on and find new opportunities. Luckily, I found my way into Accrue Incorporation in November.
Accrue is a US-based fintech company that builds financial market software by making complex analytics feasible and taking nothing for granted. I got a chance to work as a front-end developer with a fantastic team of developers. I worked on the almanac-chatteau project of the company. Unfortunately, I got to work there only for one month because the company has abandoned the project due to the high consumption of resources. Still, the whole working experience and the environment were tremendous.

Devfest'21👨‍💻

DevFest, The developer festival is one of the larger-scale community-driven tech conferences organized by the Google Developer Group (GDG) around the globe. This year, GDG Lahore organized the devfest physically. It happened in the mid of December at the University of Central Punjab (UCP). It was my first major physical event after covid; I and some other GDSC Lead from Lahore helped the GDG team to organize this mega event 😁.

The whole event was a great experience. I got a chance to meet some internet friends face to face and also got the opportunity to make some new friends 🤞.

Talks🗣

Google Developer Student Clubs and Microsoft Student Ambassador provide me a platform to conduct workshops, deliver talks, organize boot camps and speaker sessions. I have spoken in various sessions in my, and other universities. The list of my talks are:

• GDSC UET Info Session
  Once I was selected as a GDSC lead, I decided to spread awareness in my juniors about this incredible community. For this purpose, I organized an introductory virtual session about GDSC and what it will bring for students. This was my first session, and I was excited and nervous simultaneously, but everything went well, and I received an overwhelming response from my juniors. Those who attended and those who didn’t show the same interest and were equally excited to become a part of our GDSC family.

• Q/A session about GDSC CUI
  One of our fellow leads, Ansar Javaid from the Comsats University Islamabad, Abbottabad Campus, approached me and asked me if I was available for a Q/A session related to GDSC as it was their first chapter. I and three other leads were the speakers, and we talked about different things related to GDSC. Everything went well, and we received a great response from attendees.

• Webinar on Git/Github
  Version Control is one of the essential skills for a developer. So, I decided to equip our community with this. For this purpose, I organized a session on the basics of version control and its tools, Git and Github. I talked for almost 2 hours about git&gitHub and demonstrated how to use them. It was a great session, and again, we received a pretty positive response. My friend Ansar approached me again and told me, “We want to organize a workshop on the same agenda and want to have me as a speaker”. I agreed and also talked about version control from the platform of GDSC CUI Abbottabad.

• Android Seekho
  Android Seekho is a newly launched android study jam by Google. When our community manager Hufsa introduced us to this program, she advised us to spread the word in our communities. So, I organized an information session related to android seekho and kotlin, where many folks participated and started their android journey through android seekho.

• HTML/CSS Workshop
  Many of our new members are interested in the domain of the web. So, we decided to organize a Web Bootcamp for them. On our first day of the boot camp, we arranged a session on Career in Web, where our guest speaker Saad Hassan gave a detailed overview of the field of web and web industry in Pakistan. The second day we arranged a session on the topic Basics of the web, where I talked about how the web works and also demonstrated a hands-on workshop on HTML and CSS.

Despite these workshops, I also helped many students who approached me via LinkedIn and other platforms.

Wrapping Up🙌

No doubt, 2021 was the most different year of my life. For me, It was one of the best years. This year, many things happened, but I only mentioned the most significant parts. That's all for my 2021, and I’m super excited for my 2022 and hope this year will be better for me ✌.