Image Credits:
http://neofytosk.com/post/kdes-onboarding-sprint-making-it-easier-to-setup-a-development-environment/
Back when I was selected as a Google Summer of Code 2019 student for my project Porting KDE Connect to Windows, it was a sheer stroke of luck when incidentally I got invited by my mentor Simon Redman, to come to the Nuremberg Mega sprint for hacking on KDE Connect with the team!
It was an awesome opportunity, but to be able to get to the sprint, I had to travel abroad, which needs the most difficult document I had to procure till date- a Schengen Visa. There are multiple kinds of Visa- short term, long term, and some schengen states have more or less categories of short term Visa that you can apply through. You can read more about schengen Visas here.
I did not get the visa to Germany even after applying TWICE. On the bright side, I learnt a lot about VISA applications. But still, it did cost me a bit of money to get that knowledge! ๐
While I did not make it to the sprint, I was able to meet the team virtually over a video call.
I finally met the team in real life (well, almost ๐) and shared my current progress on KDE Connect for Windows with the team in real time, demonstrating the progress of Notifications Plugin and the SFTP Plugin. I shared a new build with the team to try out, so they could try it out at their leisure.
This little hiccup taught me tons about VISA procedures, and just prepared me for my next opportunity- <b><u>Akademy 2019</u></b>!