GSoC 2010 plan

This document is the plan for project administrators and mentors to understand how the GSoC 2010 is working in the Fedora Project and JBoss.org.

Publicity plan

Being intentional about generating and directing interest between Fedora and JBoss.org sub-projects, contributors, and the Google Summer of Code project.

There are different audiences we need to speak with: students; mentors; sub-projects; upstreams; SoC program administrators.

Each audience needs to understand slightly different parts of the Fedora/JBoss.org GSoC effort. This publicity plan outlines what each audience needs to read. The actual publicity is put on the page GSoC 2010.

Advertise pre-proposal Timeline.

Students =

This section is about what we are telling students and how we are telling it.

What

• We have lists of ideas you can look at
  • Mainly use cases so you can design your own solution
  • The best ideas are student generated
  • But taking our ideas and working with them is also very successful
• We are experienced working with new contributors
  • Helping new people be successful
  • Many long time contributors are around
  • People who stay around and do good work are noticed; people get hired by e.g. Red Hat all the time from the communities, including 4 former GSoC students
• You can bring many, many different types of ideas to Fedora and they may fit.
  • Fedora may be a place to work through integrating ideas with other upstream projects with the assistance of Fedora experts helping with upstream communication.
• If you are involved in Fedora or JBoss.org already, your chances of success at having a winning proposal are much greater.
• Here is the timeline on working with JBoss.org/Fedora, including the pre-proposal time period.

How

• Campus Ambassadors
• users@lists, devel@lists,
• Point at GSoC 2010
• IRC, #fedora-devel, #fedora-* (any channels relevant in particular?)(#fedora-campusamb)
• Campus LUGs
• Campus JUGs
• Fedora main page during the application window
• Fedora banners on rotation during the application window
• Fedora Planet
• JBoss.org front page
• JBoss.org blogs
• Fliers at events leading up to the summer (LFNW, TLF)
• Word of mouth

Mentors

This section is about what we are telling mentors and how we are telling it.

Mentors are the people who interact directly with the students, making evaluatations, and being responsible for helping with communication between the student and other parts of the project.

• You may be able to find a student who works as a sort-of intern who an implement a solution to an use case you have
  • It is harder to find success where you are completely certain of how an idea needs to be implemented; finding a student with the skills and interest to implement a specific solution is a lot harder than finding a student with enough skills to respond to a use case need.
• You are an essential part of the student's success, the project's success, and the success for your overall organization (Fedora, JBoss.org, or another).
• You may be an interface for an identified sub-project or SIG in Fedora or JBoss.org.
• You help students communicate with the overall project and any upstreams.
• You are the final, accountable person for deciding if the student is successful or not, which affects payment.
• There is a timeline for working with Fedora/JBoss.
  • There is a pre-proposal time that you should be involved with..

Sub-projects

This section is about what we are telling sub-projects and how we are telling it.

Sub-projects are the parts of Fedora and JBoss.org such as: packaging, infrastructure, Hibernate.

What

• You can gain a lot of value from students working via GSoC in your sub-project area; take a look at GSoC report 2009 for details.
• Your sub-project may need to identify a single mentor to work with the student, if the mentor doesn't come from somewhere else in Fedora/JBoss.
• If you have ideas/problems you want students to work on, they are best served to the students as use cases
  • Student projects have a higher success rate for all involved when more of the initial idea is from the student.

How

• Fedora Planet
• FWN
• devel@
• (devel-)sub-project@
• IRC
• opensource.com article derived from GSoC report 2009

Upstreams

This section is about what we are telling upstreams and how we are telling it.

Upstreams are any project where the code/content output is integrated in the Fedora Project or JBoss.org. Student projects may draw upon or contribute to your code, through Fedora or JBoss.org.

What

• If you have a student with an idea where you don't want to participate in the GSoC, you can have the student propose the idea through Fedora or JBoss.org if your project is already integrated with Fedora/JBoss.
• If you want your project part of Fedora/JBoss, a student working for GSoC may be able to do that.
  • However, you may need to be the main, long term contact with Fedora/JBoss if the student doesn't stay on as a maintainer.
    • Another option is a handoff to another packager, for example.

How

• Via packagers
• Fedora Planet
• Word of mouth
• opensource.com?

Campus Ambassadors

Campus Ambassadors should work to guide new interests through this process. They should work in both generating interest in Summer of Code within the Fedora Community and also generating interest in Fedora within Summer of Code contributors.

Campus Ambassadors should then guide new contributors in helping them get set up with mentors and helping submit their GSoC proposal.

What

• Students can have a quality intern-like experience working with Fedora/JBoss.org.
  • Money! Code! Fame! Success! Community!
• Sub-projects in JBoss.org and Fedora are ready to work with students.
• This is right in your pocket, you can run with GSoC participation and make your school very successful.
• You can make more students successful by being an additional mentor for students through the process.

How =

• Ambassadors mailing lists
• Fedora Planet

Upstream

Upstream needs to entice contributors with bacon!

If you're an upstream project looking to get student help this summer, post your ideas to the Fedora wiki at LINK NEEDED. Students can browse these ideas and will get in contact with you about them.

Don't forget, the best projects are ideas the student comes up with. Be willing to have an open ear to what suggestions the student may want to make. Anecdotally, one success story is a student submitting a project to work upstream. This helped bring the Gentoo and Fedora communities a bit closer and got better cross distro support for an upstream project.

Workflow plan =

1. Mentors with ideas/problems link to use cases from designated area of wiki.
2. Mentors and sub-projects who want students from GSoC.
3. Student may have pre-proposal discussion in #fedora-gsoc and/or redhat-summer googlegroup.
   • Goal is to send students to individual sub-projects or mentors immediately
4. Student submits proposal via Google proposal application "Melange".
   • Refer to Google-hosted GSoC FAQ for more information.
5. Mentors sign-up for redhat-summer group, redhat-summer-mentors group, and as mentors in Melange.
6. Mentor contacts student to conduct coding test.
7. Students take coding test; passing is a requirement to have proposal considered.
8. Mentors review proposals.
9. Students iterate on proposals based on mentor input.
10. Mentors have discussions in private mentor list to reach consensus on order of proposals
    • Order of proposals matter. Google makes a cutoff on student slot count, which we don't know until the final moment; mentors need to agree the culling order.
    • If mentors cannot reach consensus, admins make the final decision.
11. Final proposal list order is made by mentors.
12. Students whose proposals are accepted begin working with mentors.
13. (Extrapolate out standard GSoC workflow from here.)

Documentation needs

• Plan
• How to for sub-projects
• Admin help docs

Infrastructure needs

• test servers (a lot) - special needs for more?