2011/3/21 Vincent Untz
Hi,
Le lundi 21 mars 2011, à 09:26 -0500, Bryen M. Yunashko a écrit :
Pavol and Vincent,
I had a conversation with Manu yesterday and reviewed some of the material that's out there. Manu had some concerns about getting enough mentors to step up, although i think that's pretty much the nature of the game. I've struggled with exactly the same thing on any student-mentorship program I've worked on (beyond just GSoC) so I'm not too surprised such concerns exist.
As I understand it, we have applied for 20 slots and according to Manu, we have 5-6 students applying thus far. And the deadline for student applications is April 8.
I've said 20 slots just because I had to put a number. We'll update this number depending on the number of mentors we get, and depending on other factors.
Also, students can't apply before next week. We do have students interested in applying.
I cannot see anywhere that indicates our progrss thus far (am I missing some page) on number of applicants, etc. Although, I think that's because such data exists on the Google site, if I recall correctly from helping out Zonker in 2009 with GSoC coordination.
This is all tracked inside the GSoC website. If you want to track progress wrt students, please apply to be a mentor. If you want to track full progress, you can become an admin -- but keep in mind that this will involve work for you during the next 6 months.
I would like to figure out how we can generate more noise to get more applications, more mentors and more chatter in our appropriate channels.
Just talk about GSoC on blogs, twitter, etc. Talk to developers to see if they want to mentor. Talk to students in case they don't know GSoC. That's really the "usual" stuff for GSoC.
Earlier today, a student came into the -project channel to speak with MMarek about getting a mentor and seeing that he was having a hard time locating a mentor. I quickly recommended him to post his project on the -project mailing list as that reaches more people broadly. This is pretty much the main function I performed in 2009 with keeping an eye out in the channels for "lost" students and helping to connect them to potential mentors.
That's most useful, thanks for that.
This function seems missing this time around and though i'm happy to help out, lack of data about our progress hinders me a bit, and more eyes watching the channels to help guide the students to good mentors is needed as well. How do we resolve this?
Hrm. I don't think people should feel they have to ask before helping students. Everybody should feel empowered to help students find projects, mentors, etc. If we need to explicitly allow everyone to help, then something is deeply broken :-)
Additionally, what can you see the marketing team doing to help out with promoting and getting a lot of attention to GS0c-openSUSE in the next two weeks? We seemed to not even need much marketing back in 2009, and yet this time, if Manu's numbers are correct, we're having the opposite effect.
There's not so much to worry, really. Again, this is only the beginning. And for many organizations, it's not unusual to not make tons of noise about GSoC. We do make noise, and that's good. I always welcome more positive noise. So I wouldn't say we're in a bad shape, and the numbers we have as of today are kind of meaningless; numbers we'll have in two weeks will mean something. And yes, we can do things now to improve the numbers we'll have in two weeks.
If the marketing team wants to help, you're most welcome. Things I can imagine:
- series of posts about GSoC to explain how it works for students, mentors, etc. => educate our community - interviews with potential mentors to explain GSoC ideas listed in our wiki - ... probably more things...
I already made an article in Greek and I found a couple of students and a guy who was in an older GSoC and now wantas to become a mentor for the opeSUSE. But I am in for (short) interviews so I would like at least one that has done mentorship for an older GSoC and a student( for that I could use the Greek but I would like someone who has done it with openSUSE so that we promote the openSUSE 'love of the game'. Also I could make an interview either with Vincent or Pavol about this years GSoC and use those interviews in English and also translate them to some other languages too, either to give them on online magazines, either for our members to post them in their personal blogs. Please let me know if you like the idea and let me know who is available for interview. If we move a little quick I can probably them in the next couple of days and be ready to publish them in the weekend.
Cheers,
Vincent
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