GSoC org application time

[Valorie Zimmerman]

On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 12:25 AM Paul Brown <paul.brown at kde.org> wrote:

> On Thursday, 17 January 2019 08:24:37 CET Valorie Zimmerman wrote:
> > Hi all, I've started our application.
> >
> > The deadline for applications: February 6, 2019 at 12:00 (PST).
> >
> > By the deadline, we need to have an absolutely *splendid* Ideas page (1).
> > Before the deadline, I'll remove all the placeholders such as teams with
> no
> > Ideas listed, or ideas with no mentors listed. Teams which have
> > participated in the past but are empty still: KDE Partition
> > Manager, Kopete, Choqok, Peruse, KGpg, KWin, Plasma, WikiToLearn,
> KDevelop
> > and Xdg-desktop-portal-kde.
> >
> > So far, I'm the only admin listed. Anyone game to help administer this
> > year? It works well when we have a team, so that any of us can have an
> > off-week (or week off) sometimes. There are two aspects to being an org
> > admin: working with mentors, and working with students. "Paperwork" is a
> > very small part of the job.
> >
> > The mentor work is all about helping mentors and their teams work well
> with
> > their student. Some need coaching on communication, poking to do their
> > evaluations, etc.
> >
> > The student work in the beginning is coaching students in getting
> involved,
> > creating their devel environment, helping them craft their proposals and
> > get linked into the teams, and so forth. Later, it will be helping them
> > through the tough spots, especially when their mentors aren't being
> > helpful, or even helping withdraw gracefully.
>
> Hi Valorie,
>
> Apologies for asking what may be obvious to others, but what sort of
> technical
> knowledge does a mentor require to carry out the job effectively?
>

Each team publishes "ideas" on the Ideas page which gives a general outline
of what the team envisions for their software, and notes what technical
skills will be necessary, how to contact the team, and who the probable
mentor(s) will be.

We always try to have two mentors per student; sometimes they specialize in
entirely different areas, and sometimes are members of the same team and
have the same focus. It depends on the idea and eventual student proposal.
Sometimes we have projects that span teams and even have shared students
with Gnome and other orgs, in which case we have mentors from each.

At minimum, a mentor will need to be able to advise the student and review
their code, along with the social skills to deal with a young student who
perhaps has scant FOSS experience.

Would posting something like this to the Dot help to get the word out do
> you
> think? How else can Promo help?
>

I don't think so. The teams who are not wanting to participate shouldn't do
so. I just need to prod those who already have ideas in mind to get them
onto the page. :-)

We'll want to announce the opening of the contest around February 26 when
the accepted organizations are announced, and again when Student
applications open up March 25, and then when we get students accepted May
6.  The rest of the time I just borrow Lydia's pointy stick and poke
people. :-)

Thanks,

Valorie

Cheers
>
> Paul
>
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