Re: Google Summer of Code 2010

[David Chisnall]

On 2 Mar 2010, at 22:41, Markus Hitter wrote:

> What I didn't find out yet is, where the burden of being a mentor comes from. 
> Looking at the Mentor Organization Participant Agreement 
> <http://code.google.com/soc/2008/mentor_step1.html>, the only work beyond 
> normal day-to-day etiquette is writing a final evaluation. In case a student 
> comes along with a ton of questions, mailing lists are the perfect place to 
> handle them. No additional mentor work needed other than to point the 
> student(s) to the right list.

Having mentored in the past, and talked to a few people who mentored on other 
projects, the biggest problem is absentee students.  We need to be more 
aggressive about failing students half way if they haven't produced anything.  
We also need to make it clear to students in advance that the mentors job isn't 
to chase or motivate them, it's to help them when they have problems.  

Last time, I spent more time chasing a student who kept saying he was about to 
be productive than I would have done if I'd implemented the project myself.  If 
we give priority to students with an established track record as contributors 
then this is much less likely to be a problem.  

One other thing to watch out for is term times.  The GSoC is very US-centric.  
The US terms don't seem to line up with most of the rest of the world, so for 
most non-US students the mid-term evaluation comes a week or two after they've 
finished university for the year, so they haven't had time to do much work. 

If there is interest, then I'm happy to put together a 'GNUstep Umbella' 
application for GNUstep, Étoilé, and any other organisations (GAP?  OG.o?) that 
want to join in.

David