177 GSA’s from all across India experienced something akin. When we backpacked our little knowledge of the world and embarked the enlightening journey of GSA-PUNE SUMMIT 2014.

Selecting as a Google Student Ambassador is as a dream come true. The day I got a confirmation mail on selecting as a GSA 2014 I was surprised and kept on confirming with other that whether this mail was authentic or not? . Seriously I was at cloud no. 9 when I got assured about my selection. The Journey begins with the Google India Summit at PUNE from 28-31 August 2014.

Day 1:

It was the day I woke up early (I usually don’t wake up early unless there is an exam.) as I was too excited to meet other GSA from north India at Delhi Airport. I reached airport early in the morning and met all GSAs from different places who were having boarding from Delhi and after sometime we all departed for Pune. Google India has managed our stay at Infosys campus, Pune. Thanks to SaltMarch team for providing such awesome facilities.

We all were welcomed and team provided us our Ids and key.

We all checked in our room at campus, like the campus room were awesome too. Here is a glimpse of my room.

We kept our luggage in room and rush towards dining area and had an awesome food of Pune (I am bit foodie :P) with variety of dishes and sweets (Yummy!). Then moved towards Seminar Hall, and everyone was pleased to see the beauty of the place. See it for your own eyes

Today,  I realized how self obsessed we are about photography and that  when it comes to taking “pics” one is either a professional model with a pose for every click or a professional photographer with greed to capture each moment. My favorite photography spot was the bean bag area and the youtube cut out. How perfectly was all that crafted and designed. Or rather how “Googly” was everything, even the Gmail bags that we received.

The cosy room  and gorgeously delicious food was enough to make me fall in love with the place. But as the saying goes: it was just the trailer, because what followed was really encapsulating. And to spice things up was Kenny’s humor sprinkled with the maddening excitement of our GSAs!!

The sessions introduced us to various Google oriented groups and communities available to help us. From what and how they are formed to how they conduct events in GDGs, GBGs, GEGs etc. The heart of day’s session was the 10x thinking talk by William. A guy whose energy and ease of communication is something to reckon.The manner of his  delivering  the need and implementation  of Big ideas made me feel on how less I have been thinking on thinking Big.

The day ended with yet another of their great dinners. Followed by chit chats with my newly found friends. And could there have been a better way to ease out than to sit under night sky and have long  conversation with people who are nearly stranger but became friends in a very short period.

Day 2:

We woke up and had a lavish breakfast once again and moved towards learning hub for a power packed sessions.

First inspirational keynote was given by Mr. Rajan Anandan (the Head of Google India), he told us the insights of Google’s User First Policy  and its approach towards trending projects and innovations. The best policy of success being WHY->HOW->WHAT, this was followed by a very interactive session by Gururaj Ravi who left us tips on need for capitalizing one’s idea and whom to approach for the same.

Next session was taken by Jade Bessiere, she described about Top Contribution Program where how an individual can help a lot of peoples around the world by answering them on Google Forums.

Next we were humbled by Mr. Rahul Kulkarni, he gave us a must know tools deployed by industry and demanded highly , categorized as Deployment,Storage,Computing and Designing.He covered a lot of features that can add value to one’s skill set provided we dedicate time doing hands on projects on them.

The evening set in soon and all were exhausted but then Carson Page brought in so much energy in his presentation that we were on the edge of our wits, brainstorming the problems and solutions for enhancing the “First time online shopper’s experience”.His practical methodology of teaching us the baby steps of prototyping will help me in many more aspects of life.  The cycle being gauged by degree of empathy, definition, brainstorming, prototyping and testing again and again until failure turns into success. He left with the alchemy of converting a base idea into a revolutionary product.

And on that high note the day ended.

As they say life completes its full circle, so did we get to enjoy the dinner as good as the breakfast we had. Oh! how much I wish I could afford an extra pair of sweet tooth !! .

Day 3:

Continuing with the learning process , the day kicked off on a technical note.

Before that there was a punishment time for late comers. Thank God I woke up early that day too.

Ok, back to session. The first session on android helped us understand the setting up of emulators and deploying some basic applications through it. Moving on with the technical wagon the next session staged by Patrick Martinet; took us through a “cloudy” ride. He simplified the definition of cloud computing, making cloud deployment a child’s play, when in reality it is not. But then we have Goggle at our service, with storage and security integrated at place, we as developers need concentrate only upon design and usability.  Not to forget the ever powerful user scripts that can be tapped in with little code to enhance and automate user tasks.

These two sessions were followed by a brief questionnaire put up by the students facing issues with the work they are currently doing in the field of app development. The most profitable outcome of all these sessions was the chance to view and hold the Google Glass. Yes, indeed it was for real and closer than belief !!!

The next two sessions were oriented towards Digital Marketing .It started off with sharing of success stories by ex-GSAs on how they got people involved into the exciting field of Social Media Marketing via training and certification and participation in the Google Online Marketing Challenge. The Hangout session with Aida further elaborated the program.

What followed next were insights into how the whole framework works so effectively keeping up the challenges of legal policies, punched by rule books from time to time. Also to add to the knowledge the whole cycle of product design was seamlessly explained , highlighting at core the importance and kind of work done by the developers and testers at the days end.

The final set of session wrapped up in form of the most lucrative sessions we have had over the days. This is the dream that every CS graduate secretly craves for, wanting to be part of the Google family. And so Sagari outlined the various technical and non technical opportunities available at Google. From  various scholarships to women oriented events to sitting through codejam for placement . She laid out the importance of practical knowledge and a well balanced CV. And although being a  GSA might not land me at Google but nevertheless it has opened new doors for me.

Carrying the determination in heart we went to prepare for the Bollywood Theme Party organized at J.W Marriott.

All the way to the hotel we enjoyed and sang along, while photography followed without saying. Each one dressed to the best, eager as to what surprise Kenny holds for us. His opening performance if not for the laughs taught us to compose songs out of any crap we are capable of producing. And making it sound “beautifully romantic”. The surprise soon followed in form of stand up by Kannan. We could barely breath from laughing , each of the situation he described was just so true, pathetically true to be honest. His understanding of underlying behaviour and highly spirited imagination made us forget which century we are in. For once each one laughed to their hearts content and even more. The shrill laughter rented the air for long. Until it was subdued by the the loudness of the DJ. Here once again we got an opportunity, the golden one, to groove it up on latest numbers and literally burn the dance floor. As if the Gods wanted to be more generous, we were offered  one of the best dinner we shall ever have. The taste shall linger on for long.

And even though each datum of the body wanted to just catch up, the mind was still pumping adventures which continued late until night with friends ,back at Infosys.

Oh! it almost 3 A.M must try sleeping.

Day 4:

“What life can carry is a mystery,rest is a sweet journey”

And I am back home at Delhi.

Morning I was away  in Pune, enjoying my last day of summit, observing as much as I could of the awesomeness that the oozed around me. I work up a bit late , owing to the last night’s party. But nevertheless was on time to enjoy a full fledged breakfast.

The session as usual begun at the auditorium but with a twist . For the next few hours that followed the top three teams selected for prototyping , presented their innovative solutions to the audience and the panel of judges. It came as  a great learning experience for us, from teaching us how to  project ideas and pitch it in favourable manner  to pointing out the dos and don’ts of communication skills. As time was running out , no winners were declared. What followed was a short message of appreciation by Deepak, Kenny and the ex-GSAs, all of whom graced the stage with their heart touching and inspiring words of wisdom.

After settling the backpack and reimbursement for travel we sat for our last set of meal at Infosys. I cherished each bite of it knowing sadly that this opportunity and this food will not be back again. Filling my soul with the last dessert of luxury.

And yes, as per tradition we went for our final round of photography.

While waiting for our buses to arrive goodbyes were shared with all the GSAs. And soon the calmness and gloom of Infosys transformed into rush of Airport. As we managed to catch the flight just on time. Not having anything else to do, I compiled my photo album and as I scrolled through the pictures, it seemed so ethereal. True they say ,the most beautiful experience in life are ephemeral. You are one moment appreciating the colorful intricacies and next moment life as black as monotonicity.

As I clicked our last group photo and said my last goodbyes at the back of my mind something whispered “Alas, its over!!” .But as I walked out through the airport I remembered the faces of our speakers, of the 10x thinking, of all success stories people shared.For the fact that I am a GSA and have my chance to prove my worth . I smiled at myself with hopeful pride.

“The journey has hardly begun.There are milestones to achieve and revolutions to seek.”:)

The session was started with a clippings from Google I/O 2014 on the new design concept which is to come with new Android L followed by an short intro. on android it’s history and it’s versions by Aditya Shubham.

Then the session was taken over by Hitesh Verma on Android rooting, where he told students about how to root their android phones?, what is custom ROMs and Stock ROMs and how to install ROMs into their android devices?, he ended his session by telling student how to unroot their devices if needed.

Then the stage was in the hands of Lavish Aggarwal(me) for an introductory briefing on android app development  where I told students about development of Android Apps and how to set-up environment for developing android apps that included installation of ADT bundle, plug-ins, etc. And a quick demo of app was given.

Then the next session was taken by Khushbu Parakh and Aditya Shubham where they informed students about top utility and technical apps that are basic necessity and an idea was given that how they can develop such apps. At the last final end-note given by Ashwin Devarajan.

Group picture in the end of session.

This workshop was suddenly planned and maximum output was given by each member of the club to make this workshop a success. Thanks to each member of OpenMoz.

Doing good is part of our code

Flashing can be done via Windows as well as Linux and I will be explaining both the ways:

Point to be remember:

1: You have remote debugging enabled on your device.

2: Screen lock should be disabled, because when screen is off, device is disconnected.

For Linux user:

Step 1: Navigate to this link and select stable build. you can check build status to flash stable build.

Step 2: Download all files and extract all files into home directory.

Step 3: Open your terminal and navigate to your home directory by this command.

$ cd

Step 4: Install adb and fastboot package into your system.

$sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb
$sudo apt-get install android-tools-fastboot

Step 5: connect your device through usb and type $adb devices in terminal.

$ adb devices
List of devices attached 
FLATFISH_123456    device

it would show your device name.

if it doesn’t echo anything then try running these commands

 $sudo killall adb

$sudo adb devices

Step 6: Final Step, remember that you are in the same directory where you have extracted your downloaded zip files i.e home directory, now run this command.

In this command we have to run script named flash-flatfish.sh with two command line argument i.e. <path_to_images> ,<path_to_b2g_root> Basic syntax of this command is :

$sh [script_name.sh] [<path_to_images> [<path_to_b2g_root>]]

and we have extracted all images and scripts file in same directory i.e home directory so we will run this command where ~/ represents current directory.

$sudo sh flash-flatfish.sh ~/ ~/dev_fxos/a31-b2g

most probably it will complete without any error. If any error occurs ping me anytime because I have gone through many ups n downs while doing so.

If there is an issue like “the udev rule for the device may not be well configured. Will request the user to run in sudo mode“, then you can add udev rules to your devices (use idVendor 18d1 and 0bb4). For that open your editor and edit file which is at path /etc/udev/rules.d/android.rules , Here I am using vim editor.

$vim /etc/udev/rules.d/android.rules

add these two lines in this file

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev

Once you’ve saved the file, and closed it,  make the file readable:

sudo chmod a+r /etc/udev/rules.d/android.rules

Now that the udev rules have been updated, restart the udev daemon.

Ubuntu

sudo service udev restart

Fedora 20

sudo systemctl restart systemd-udevd.servic

Now you can repeat Step 6 again, now that issue will not arise.

You can also leave comments if any issue exists.

For windows user:

There is a post written by Caspy, I would recommend to follow those steps.

Here is the link to his post : Flashing the Flatfish bootloader

And this is how your home screen will look like after flashing.

Hell yeah its damn sexy!

Don’t forget to comment on this post if you got stuck any where or find an issue. I will surely help you out.

Bugs you will face:

Bug 1: screen will quickly turn off, so try to set screen time out from setting > display.

Bug 2: After installing new application from marketplace, screen one icon will overlap screen second icon, so try restarting your device, it will properly align all the icons.

I have reported all the issue in bugzilla, and will be fixed soon.

“DOING GOOD IS A PART OF OUR CODE”

The plan was to share and gain the approaches and techniques for the APP development, agenda Included :

HTML5 – The real power of HTML5 was unveiled. Our HTML5 knowledge stack was updated with

• In-browser Database – We all new that we have in browser database in HTML5 browsers, but the day we actually used it and tested it cross-browsers, also covered window.localStorage and window.sessionStorage tweaks. Ref : https://www.tutorialspoint.com/html5/html5_web_sql.htm
•  Various Input types which removed the necessity of validations mainly number, URL, email. The highlight to me was RANGE( woah HTML5 creates slider for U)
• Geolocation – Getting your current location in terms of latitude and longitude

CSS3 – The CSS3 seriously somehow reduces basic requirement of JS, it provides an awesome UI itself. The tech stack included

• Transforms – Awesomeness  of CSS3, various transforms as rotate, scale, matirx etc.
• Transition – The smoothing element.
• Keyframe Animation – This bowled me over, completely eliminating JS for continuous animations.

JQM – The marvelous tool for creating apps, adorned with en-numbered features, this equips a developer with ready to use elements like, list views, slide transitions, popups, dialog boxes, forms, etc. Ref : https://www.w3schools.com/jquerymobile/

And Finally master stroke to an awesome meet (required a sacrifice of a night)

FIND ME GOOGLE – A firefox app which tracks your current location and retrieves the nearest cafe, bar, hospital, mall, ATM etc. on google map. An Awesome GUI.

• Osho Parth
• Varun Kaushik
• Lavish Aggarwal

Workshop was started sharp at 10:00AM, all speakers were welcomed and workshop was initiated by Mr. Osho Parth. He told student about Open Source, FOSS, how they can get code of any open source softwares and can work on it, he also told them how mozilla is part of open source and what students can do for mozilla.

Next session was taken by Mr. Lavish Aggarwal (Me), introducing mozilla, its mission and other products of mozilla which were new to students as they were only aware about Firefox Browser continuing with this they were also told them about Open Web and philosophies of Open Web.

Putting the next step forward, next session was taken up by Mr. Varun Kaushik. He told students about SUMO covering AOA, ln10, QA, Support Forums and writing an article. Students were keen to know about such convenient way of contributions.

Keeping the continuity of workshop, me and Osho introduced students about one of the sexiest tool of mozilla i.e; Mozilla Webmaker. Students were amazed by seeing online editing of websites using X-Ray Goggle, live rendering of html pages using thimble and video mixing tool i.e; Popcorn.

Next session was taken by Mr. Osho, in which he introduced students about Firefox OS,  its different layers and why it is useful and many advantages of OS.

Students were eager to see this new OS in there hands ASAP

Here comes the time to develop apps for Firefox OS, In this session I told students about how to develop app in simple 4 steps that were:

• Install Simulator
• Create a Launching Page
• Create manifest.webapp file
• Execute it on simulator

Students were amazed to see that how easy it is to build app in Firefox OS by simple HTML5.

Bringing the workshop to the end an interesting session about cracking was taken by Mr. Osho, where he told students about system hacking, grub hacking and many more cool stuffs.

SWAGS were also distributed to all interactive participants.

Sketch of Firefox by one of the open source enthusiast during the workshop.

At last how can we forget to have a group pic

You can find all pics at Flick.com

DOING GOOD IS A PART OF OUR CODE

• Dron Rathore
• Lavish Aggarwal
• Osho Parth
• Adit Bharadwaj
• J. Raj Rohit
• Ashish Seervi

Workshop started sharply at 10:00AM, and was started by School Director Mrs Rachna Ma’am introducing all speakers and telling student about agenda and main purpose of this workshop.

First session was taken by Mr. Dron Rathore informing student about what are the benefits of this workshop and how they can be a part of this community by doing awesome work and contribution. He told them about mozilla credits page and how they can add their name in that credit page. He also told them about mozilla, its mission and products of mozilla.

Students were eager to see their names in credits page ASAP

Next session was taken by Mr. Osho Parth introducing students about Open Source, realizing them to feel true freedom than their actual freedom in this tech world. He also told them about Linux OS and its power rather than other OS. He also told them about FOSS and mozilla as a part of it.

Next session was taken by Mr. Raj Rohit, telling students about BugZilla and how to make products better through simple steps of bugzilla. He also tell them about Data Science and other Open Source project in which interested students can contribute.

Next session of Webmaker was taken by Mr. Lavish and Mr. Adit, they told students how easy it is to edit any website or create new website through live rendering of the code and video mixing by the awesome tools of mozilla i.e. X-Ray Googles, Thimble, Popcorn. Students were amazed by live editing of website through these tools.

Last session was taken by Mr. Ashish Seervi, he told them about how to get involved in mozilla community through SUMO contribution and also told them about FSA program.

Had a great time with these school students and also had great response from them.

Group pic with team

Doing good is a part of our code