Victoria’s Experience

Hello, my name is Victoria Poromon, and I am a Microbiology graduate from the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. I have been contributing to the BugSigDB project since March 2024, and you can read about my experience as an Outreachy June2025 intern here.

Over the last few months, I’ve completed individual tasks, collaborated with fellow contributors and my co-intern, participated in peer reviews, written several blog posts, including one I’m especially proud of: the Step-by-step Guide to contributing to BugSigDB. More recently, I even took my first step into co-mentoring!

Each encounter and milestone has taught me something new, broadened my perspective, and supported my personal and professional growth.

Here are the lessons that have stayed with me:

• Take your time: I’ve always believed in not rushing important work, and this project reinforced that mindset. Because it demands careful attention to detail and accuracy, moving too quickly can easily make you overlook what truly matters.
• Collaborate, not compete: It’s natural for others to know things I don’t, but what isn’t acceptable is choosing to remain ignorant. Collaboration has allowed me to both learn from others and share my own knowledge in return.
• Know when to ask questions: If you’ve been stuck on a task for hours despite troubleshooting and research, it’s the perfect time to ask your mentors for guidance. Doing so demonstrates curiosity, helps you overcome challenges more efficiently, and often leads to deeper learning.
• Know when to ask for help: I’ve learned from my mentor, Svetlana, that asking for help is a valuable skill. It is not a sign of weakness, but a demonstration of strength, self-awareness, and a willingness to learn.
• Always speak kindly: It’s not enough to simply know how to communicate; it’s equally important to do so kindly and with consideration for others. As both a contributor and co-mentor, I’ve come to value this quality deeply. Thoughtful communication not only shows respect but also helps create a safe and supportive environment.

My journey with the Bioconductor community has been guided every step of the way, from the big things, like reviewing my tasks, teaching me new skills, and offering guidance on my job applications, to the small details, like dotting my i’s and placing my commas correctly. Every day, I’m reminded why I chose to stay.

By the end of my internship (June 2025 cohort), I not only strengthened my technical abilities but also gained confidence, built a meaningful network, and laid a solid foundation for my continued involvement in open source. You can find all my contributions here.

I am super thankful to everyone in the Bioconductor community for giving me a chance, especially to my mentors Svetlana, Chloe, and Kate, for literally holding my hand every step of the way and my brilliant co-intern Anne-Marie Sharp. I’ve grown tremendously and become a better contributor because I learned from the absolutely best.

Anne-Marie’s Experience

Hello, I am Anne-Marie Sharp. I am a Biomedical Scientist and an aspiring bioinformatician. In late 2024, my curiosity led me to learn about the Outreachy internship for the first time and then to the Bioconductor project – Microbiome Study Curation (BugSigDB) where I contributed as an intern in the June 2025 Outreachy cohort.

I was completely new to the world of open source and it took extra effort for me to catch on quickly to not just the different online communication platforms but also to the art or rather science of microbiome study curation; but my curiosity and passion for science kept me going during the Outreachy contribution phase. I was also excited about the new skills I was learning such as data-curation, analysis and literature review. And I was fascinated by the collaboration within the community. Thanks to this collaboration, I was also able to learn fast as I freely asked questions and got answers from mentors and fellow-curators, and I often teamed up with other curators which gave me different perspectives and insights on curation.

As an avid learner, I was and I still am excited that there is always something new to learn working on the project. Whether in the core microbiome science, in improving my R-programming language skill, in curation itself or even in improving my soft skills. Indeed, it only gets better.