Process
- Organize a team to vet mentoring sub-projects - Selecting GSoC 2010 mentoring sub-projects.
- Mentors need to commit to working with students to develop the student's proposal.
- Raw ideas around a use case are good to have to interest the students, but don't represent the end-point of the idea.
- All of this needs to be in a visible location, such as a wiki table with links to fuller use cases, etc. - Potential GSoC 2010 mentoring sub-projects.
- Mentoring sub-projects may include upstreams.
- Work with JBoss/Fedora sub-projects to identify, contact, and get commitment from the upstream in advance.
- The team vets the raw use case ideas from sub-projects to ensure:
- They are doable in the project time allowed (bounding limit).
- Even if peripheral to project missions, they are not entirely oppositional to the communities involved.
- The SIG defines and administers pre-qualifying coding/community tests to interested students - Student pre-quals for GSoC 2010.
- In general, passing the test is a pre-requisite to being allowed to submit a proposal for an existing or new idea.
- People developing and running the test could be the same team or a new one.
- By the time students are able to use Melange for proposals:
- Students should be pre-qualified.
- Their project ideas should be pre-discussed with the identified mentoring sub-project(s) - GSoC 2010 mentoring sub-projects.
- At least one mentor should be ready to work with the project.
- From that point, Melange and the private mentor list are used for final project choosing.
- Only projects really ready to go are approved by the committee to be voted on by mentors.
- Mentors work in an open discussion on the private list to sort the viability of projects in to an acceptance order.
- Work includes upstream, cross-stream; this keeps sub-project loyalties in check; focus on quality projects produce better results for your favorite project.
- Admins are the final arbiters of setting the order of proposals in Melange - GSoC 2010 SIG team#Admins.
FAQ
One thing we need to do is build up a bit of a community between all the participants. Since all our students and mentorees are working on widely different projects, there isn't alot of social common ground. Finding icebreakers and neutral conversation points will help create a better community between the mentors and the students. This will also encourage better cultural awareness from the students from different backgrounds.
If we get the students on the platform right after they are accepted, it can be a great tool to help in the community bonding process. We could have an open space where other community members can join and 'meet the new students'.
Platform requirements and suggestions:
- Low Bandwidth
- Both Real Time and Stored communication
- English - we all assume the participants have some base level of english skills
- Free Software
- Source Code can be fixed by the students, increase a sense of ownership
- Ice breakers and other catches to keep the conversation moving
- Incentives to encourage usage at least once a week
- Continue to be open after the summer so that students can check up on each other socially.
We may also want to encourage integration with other social networking platforms. Remember, this is where all the cool kids hang out.