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On 20:34 Sun 27 Feb , Donnie Berkholz wrote: |
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> Hi all, |
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> |
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> Welcome back to this year's edition of the Google Summer of Code |
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> (GSoC)! |
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Gentoo was accepted for our 6th summer in GSoC! Last year, we had 19 |
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students, which made us one of the largest organizations in GSoC. I'd |
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love to see our program grow again this year to become even bigger. |
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I've updated our Summer of Code website [2] and copied our ideas list |
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[3] over from the wiki, which was proving unreliable. Tomorrow I'll work |
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on news and blog postings. If you have any suggestions or comments on |
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improvements to this year's program, please let me know! |
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I'm planning to make some small changes to our program based on |
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experience from last year and discussions at the mentor summit, and I'll |
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describe these changes in the remainder of this email. Please note that |
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this isn't cast in stone, but the previous experience of many other |
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large organizations suggests these are good ideas. |
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First, we'll work even harder to keep strong communication going between |
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mentors, students, and administrators, since this is critical to a |
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successful program for students and the rest of us: |
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- Beyond our weekly progress reports from students, we'll begin asking |
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mentors to submit a simple multiple-choice question every week so |
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admins can ensure every project is on track in a scalable way. |
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- To make sure nobody fails by surprise and give students an |
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opportunity to catch up, we'll have informal evaluations of the |
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students at 1/4 and 3/4 of the way through the program. |
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Second, we should make some changes to the application process: |
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- We now explicitly state the expectation of GSoC being full-time |
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work, which is common across the entire GSoC program [1]. (For |
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students, it's also worth reading the rest of the guide.) |
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- Our requirement of a patch submission with a proposal will require |
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that students fix real bugs rather than making useless cosmetic |
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changes. |
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Other changes I'm considering: |
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- Delaying the requirements portion of the "application template" |
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until after students have applied. This lowers the initial bar to |
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participation by waiting until students have already gotten |
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enthusiastic about the program to ask them to spend a little bit of |
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time on it. |
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1. http://www.booki.cc/gsocstudentguide/_v/1.0/time-management-for-students/ |
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2. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/userrel/soc/ |
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3. http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/userrel/soc/ideas.xml |
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-- |
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Thanks, |
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Donnie |
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|
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Donnie Berkholz |
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Admin, Summer of Code |
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Gentoo Linux |
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Blog: http://dberkholz.com |
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