I am a bachelor in technology student from India. I applied for GSOC in 2016 for Unitex/GramLab without any prior knowledge. I was rejected. After that I subscribed to the IRC channel and took updates on regular basis. Also I learnt about various NLP techniques and Machine Learning techniques in this one year. Also I have coauthored a paper which throws light on NLP using finite automata. I am saying all this to give you the assurance that you are not wasting your time behind a not interested student.
During this time, the updates which came from this IRC are mostly uncrackable for me. So I was unable to contribute positively. So I am asing for an approach which will be help me in contibuting and to become a part of open-source society.
I was unable to get any mentor contact, hence I am using IRC to get some guide.