[dot] aKademy 2007: Summer of Code

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1183741483/

From: Jos Poortvliet <>
Dept: summers-are-cool
Date: Friday 06/Jul/2007, @10:04

aKademy 2007: Summer of Code
============================

   On Tuesday, the Summer of Code BoF was held at aKademy 2007
[http://akademy2007.kde.org/]. I conducted an interview with Emanuele
Tamponi about the session and his first experiences of aKademy. Please
read on for the article.

     Emanuele Tamponi revealed many details about the meeting, as I had
been unable to attend. Emanuele is from Italy, and was also involved in
last year's Summer of Code (SoC). He got involved when he was asking for
a Krita feature on IRC, and Bart Coppens suggested that he write it
himself through a SoC project. He applied and was accepted, and wrote
the feature.

     He enjoyed the work and liked the community so he applied for a
second SoC this year, and got accepted again. This is his first aKademy,
and he has very much enjoyed the experience so far.


  I. THE BOF

     The Summer of Code BoF, led by Thiago Macieira
[http://behindkde.org/people/thiago/], started with a question about the
general status. Thiago responded that there were the expected delays,
mostly due to many university exams, which are still ongoing in June in
many locales. Google knows this, and the students expect to be able to
catch up later on. Then Thiago asked how the students liked the project
until now. Some students expressed concerns regarding the amount of
communication with their mentors. One student from India has a mentor
who lives in Los Angeles, so it is easy to understand these
difficulties.

     Apart from these small issues, students enjoy working with the
community. There was some talk about applying with more sub-projects
next year, like a separate KOffice entry, but this was not determined to
be a good idea. Under the umbrella of KDE, the projects have good
infrastructure, and slots are appointed based on the quality of
submissions, rather than a fixed quota per project. The example given
was Marble, which was awarded 3 slots, and which would not have been the
case had Marble been an independent entity.

     Last year, a big problem was that the trunk of KDE SVN was closed
during development, thus the code could not migrate to its native
location easily. This has led to the 'loss' of some code, and other code
still has to be ported to trunk. Luckily, this year the situation is
much brighter, and most code being written is immediately committed to
trunk.

     Emanuele and others expressed how they were impressed with the good
organization of the Summer of Code within KDE. KDE has clearly done a
better job compared to last year, and having 5 co-ordinators is really
paying dividends.

     The next topic was spreading KDE in the coming year. Especially at
universities, some more promotion would be a great idea. Setting up a
'Students Behind KDE', similar to the People Behind KDE
[http://behindkde.org] was proposed, and accepted by Danny Allen, editor
of the series. Look out for this series in the near future.

     The final discussion was of how to best keep students interested in
KDE after their project has concluded. This is an important goal for the
whole Summer of Code project, and we can do better here. The conclusion
was that the mentors should try to keep in touch with the students after
the SoC has finished. This has the best chance of keeping them involved.

     Emanuele was happy to note the rest of the KDE community was as
friendly as the Krita community was, and he is glad to be here at
aKademy. I think I speak for all of KDE when I say we are glad to have
both him and the other SoC students here!