A guest talk reaches whoever's in the room that day. Mentoring through a public open-source project reaches a different, often larger group — anyone who finds the repo, opens an issue, or submits a pull request, indefinitely, asynchronously.

What this form of mentorship looks like

  • Reviewing a student's first pull request with specific, kind, technical feedback rather than just approving or rejecting.
  • Labeling issues as 'good first issue' deliberately, so newer contributors have a clear, low-risk entry point.
  • Writing contribution guidelines that actually explain the reasoning behind conventions, not just listing rules.

Why it's worth doing alongside talks, not instead of them

A talk builds visibility and a first connection; an open-source project turns that connection into an ongoing, hands-on mentoring relationship at scale, without needing a scheduled session for every interaction.

See why I write and publish.

— Pranjul Rathour, GenAI Engineer from Kanpur, India. Open to GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks at any campus: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com.