Google Summer of Code 2020 Mentor Summit

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Google Summer of Code 2020 Mentor Summit

The GSoC 2020 Mentor Summit was a virtual summit comprising announcements, Q&A, lightning talks and breakout sessions. The virtual unconference event was hosted online on October 15, 2020 and was open to participation for all the Mentors and Org Admins of the GSoC 2020 organizations.

Highlights of the Virtual Summit

• Multiple lightning talks (17) were presented and parallel breakout sessions were organized for discussion on topics ranging from How can I be a better mentor? to Open Science Open Source and Welcoming new students to the community.
• Opening announcements about the evolution of GSoC was chaired by Chris DiBona, Director of Open Source at Google and Stephanie Taylor, GSoC Program Lead.
• Subsequently, a discussion on future of GSoC program was conducted followed by Closing Announcements and live Q&A session.

Noted Important Anouncements for GSoC 2021

The GSoC 2021 was announced as a part of the GSoC 2020 Mentor Summit. We present below, the relevant reference links -

• Program Website: Google Summer of Code 2021
• Announcement on Google Open Source Blog
• GSoC 2021 Timeline
• Marketing Materials/Flyers/Slide deck about GSoC
• Frequently Asked Questions
• GSoC Guide for Students and Mentors
• GSoC Videos

The noted modifications in the GSoC 2021 program are as follows:

• Shorter sized projects - All student projects should be ~175 hr projects (earliar ~350 hr) and the time duration to complete the project should be 10 weeks (earliar 12 weeks).
• Update in eligibility - In 2021, the students need to be enrolled in (or accepted into) a post-secondary academic program (including university, community college, PhD program, licensed coding camp, etc.) as of May 17, 2021 or if they graduated from a post-secondary academic program between December 1, 2020 and May 17, 2021 they are eligible to apply.
• Two evaluations (earliar 3): 1st evaluation towards the mid of the project (~5 weeks) and 2nd evaluation towards the end.

The mentoring orgs for 2021 shall be announced on March 8, 2021 and the student application opens March 29, 2021.

Reflections

The changes proposed for the GSoC 2021 program could be attributed to increase the involvement of the student contributors post GSoC. The shorter projects would definitely attract more number of applications and enable the opportunity for students who cannot commit for longer duration projects.

It also calls for planning smaller sized project topics for the OSGeo projects participating in the GSoC 2021. Also, we envisage increased number of participation from the OSGeo GSoC Projects and encourage OSGeo projects, OSGeo Guest projects, OSGeo Community projects and Incubating projects to be prepared for the upcoming GSoC 2021.

Talk at the FOSS4G Korea 2020

Our OSGeo Board Member and OSGeo pgRouting Mentor - Vicky Vergara, would be presenting a talk entitled Students on Open Source Code OSGeo + GSoC in the upcoming FOSS4G Korea 2020. Please follow https://foss4g.osgeo.kr/track-english-01 for more details about the talk and conference. The talk will emphasize on the OSGeo's GSoC Initiative and present GSoC 2020 student contributions.

Signing: OSGeo GSoC 2020 Org Admins and Mentors Team