This week we had a lecture centered at discussing open source projects in multiple fields. It was an interesting activity. I got to know many unfamiliar projects and also learned that the impact of open source might be stronger than we expected. Apart from that, in this week, my group focused on preparing for the final presentation on May 1st.

Open Source +

For this part, my proposed open source project is Blender, a 3D modeling software. I used it in my freshman year on a 3D creation class. It is always great to see that an open source project can grow into such a popular software. It can handle basic 3D modeling smoothly, adding texture to objects, defining movement of objects and implementing codes like python into a project. One of my classmates also add a source comparing the render result of Blender to a similar paid software. It is very helpful. With such comparison, we can vividly see that Blender is of really high quality.

One field that impressed me was open source and food. Though we were not talking about fancy, complicated projects, I like the idea that we build an open source project helping us keep track of, and share basic, warm things in daily life, such as recipes. Personally I would love to have such a platform.

Open source Microsoft Office alternatives also interested me. Though I am a Mac user, I’ve always been using student’s free Microsoft Office account, so I actually didn’t consider finding an alternative. After hearing the introduction of several alternatives, I found that these softwares are quite powerful. And I would consider downloading one after my student account gets expired.

##Final Presentation Preparation

By Thursday, we had divided the works and we decided to focus on interactions with the community as well as our contribution without going too deep into codes. Currently we have accomplished most part of the slides and we are going to have an alternative meeting on Sunday evening for the final polishing.

During the preparation, I personally found it challenging to arrange the interactions and contributions in a logical way. There are many potential things to talk about. But we managed to put them into several categories after discussion. Also, sometime it is hard to trace the proper conversation. In our live log, we mainly focus on keeping track of pull requests, without paying a lot attention to conversations. So it took a while for me to find those conversations among tons of issues and PRs. Therefore, I am thinking that if I were asked to do this again, I would also write down information about conversations we made in the live log.

But generally, I am confident in delivering a great presentation on the upcoming Monday.