Google Summer of Code 2017 Administrative

 @


 * Back to the main OSGeo Google Summer of Code 2017 @ OSGeo wiki page.
 * Visit our Google Summer of Code 2017 Ideas and our Google Summer of Code Recommendations for Students pages

This is the central page for OSGeo administrative information in Google Summer of Code 2017.

GSoC general information

 * The official timeline
 * Google's FAQ on the program
 * Official 2017 GSoC site
 * Roles and Responsibilities

Contacts

 * Would-be mentors and students: you are invited to sign up to the OSGeo SoC mailing list right away. The list is the central communication channel for mentors, students and administrators. It is used for general GSoC announcements, specific OSGeo announcements, and for clarification about the program. As soon as you subscribe it, you are encouraged to introduce yourself and your role. We look forward to hear from you!


 * To contact OSGeo's GSoC admin team directly:
 * send an email to [mailto:gsoc-admin@osgeo.org gsoc-admin@osgeo.org]
 * join the #osgeo-gsoc channel on irc.freenode.net (connect directly in your browser via webchat)


 * Margherita Di Leo acts as chair of the Admin team, which includes Florin-Daniel Cioloboc, Anne Ghisla, Helmut Kudrnovsky, Werner Macho, Jeff McKenna, and Guillermo Pizarro. Feel free to email us with any questions, we're here to help mentor the mentors as much as anything else!



.

Mentors
If you're interested in mentoring / supervising a student for one of the software participating this year under OSGeo's umbrella, please add your name, email, OSGeo/guest software and the projects you're interested in mentoring here:

A Mentor's Responsibilities
Being a mentor can take anywhere from 2-10 hours a week of your time depending on the student (it really is in your best interest to take on the strongest students you can find). You must have the time to be responsive and an advocate for the student. No matter how cool the project is and how much your team needs the job done, if you can't commit to supporting it, experience shows that the best thing to do is not start it, i.e. even with the best of intentions don't set a student up to fail. Long story short, student projects simply can't go ahead without proper mentoring support.

Every student project will also have a backup mentor, this person should come from your dev community and should at minimum keep up to date with the student's weekly developments.  Both mentors need to appoint themselves officially. The best way is if the student is well integrated into your development team from the start, it lessens the workload on you and betters the buy-in from the rest of the community once you're ready for the final code merge.

You must be available at some time during the evaluation periods. If you will be away during these time periods please arrange with the OSGeo org admins and your backup mentor so that one of us can fill in your answers for you. These are hard cutoffs -- evaluations must be filed within these dates. There are 3 evaluation periods this year where mentors are required to complete an evaluation of their student. After the first 4 weeks of coding, after 8 weeks of coding and then at the end (after 12 weeks of coding). The evaluation forms are shorter than previous years so they should take less time to complete.

Guides for mentors

 * The GSoC Mentoring Guide - A must. Do get all useful info and tips from many years of experience from GSoC mentors.
 * GNOME GSoC Mentoring HOWTO
 * An excellent summary of mentoring, from A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

Tips for mentors
This section is for collecting suggestions on best practices, from mentors to other mentors. If you have good / bad experiences in mentoring, please share here! Remember that this is a public page, respect the privacy of the people.

Good ideas

 * Test students before selection. Challenge them with small programming tasks or bug fixes. This will help them getting familiar with the dev environment well before GSoC starts, and helps mentors understand if they are capable. Think to a task much earlier to the timeline, and connect the task to the idea in the ideas page.
 * Time management tip: Try not to mentor more than one project per year. In any case, you can be primary mentor only for one project. Consider carefully the time that you can allocate on GSoC.
 * A earlier mentor reported: "In my experience, it's most effective to require an accepted pull request of developed code by end of summer and write the proposal in terms of getting there."
 * It is key getting to know the student before the project starts, in order to adapt the workload to his/her capabilities. It can be good to get in touch via hangout and make a sort of general interview, beside challenging them with a code test.
 * If the student struggles during the gsoc, get in touch and try to understand what is wrong and try to adjust the objectives according to what is possible for the student to achieve.
 * If the student doesn't feel oppressed with nearly impossible requests, (s)he is more likely to learn with a fresh mind and stick in the community afterwards and perhaps become a mentor or somehow helps out with the gsoc subsequently.
 * Talking in conferences does attract quality students to apply to GSoC
 * GSoC lasts all year long, beside the coding, there is advertising the program, attracting students, drafting proposals, thinking about mentor capacity



Learn more

 * Previous years SoC involvement: 2016 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008


 * OSGeo GSoC wiki pages: 2016,2015,2014,2013,2012,2011,2010,2009,2008


 * OSGeo Applications: 2016,2015,2014,2013,2012,2011,2010,2009