KOCHI: Abishek V Ashok's passion for computers grew immensely over the last six years. And Google acknowledged it and opened its doors in California to the 16-year-old from Panangad, Kochi after he became the Grand Prize Winner of the tech giant's Global Code-In competition from Kerala.
Abishek, a Plus-One student of SNDP HSS, Udayamperoor emerged victorious after competing with 3,555 students, from 78 countries, who completed 16,468 tasks with a record 25 open source organisations. Abishek did 93 tasks for Fossasia.
"It was a global contest conducted by Google and this year, 25 open source organisations took part in it. Google chooses more than a dozen of them to participate every year. The organisations create a long list of tasks for students to work on. They are categorised as code, documentation, training, outreach, research, quality assurance and user interface," said Abishek.
Google has invited him and his family members to its California campus for the award night and to interact with its top engineers.
"I'm really excited to meet the Google heads. I've been passionate about computers and I want to pursue my studies in computer engineering," said Abishek, who is doing Plus-Two in computer science.
According to Google's official page, the 50 Grand Prize Winners from across the world completed an impressive 1,739 tasks between them while also helping other students. Abishek participated in the contest after working on 93 tasks in 49 days.
"At the end, each open source organisation reviewed the work of the students with the highest number of tasks completed during the contest. The works were reviewed considering quality, creativity, thoroughness, complexity and community involvement," he added.
Of the 50 Grand Prize Winners, Indians contributed the highest, 16, followed by US, 12, Poland, six, UK and Canada both three.