[Sugar-devel] GSoC mentors. Also ideas for projects and community-cementing processes.

[Jameson Quinn]

We now have about 3 weeks (until March 13th) to get together a Sugarlabs
application to be a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code. As the
FAQ<http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2009/faqs.html#0_1_org_app_08250740394219425_>says,
the application consists of the following parts (emphasis mine, the
rest is mostly filler):

In addition to anything else your organization would like to submit as an
application, Google will be asking (at least) the following questions as
part of the application process:

   1. Describe your organization.
   2. Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2009? What do
   you hope to gain by participating?
   3. Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please
   summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your
   participation.
   4. If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, have you
   applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)?
   5. What license(s) does your project use?
   6. What is the URL for your* ideas page*?
   7. What is the main development mailing list or forum for your
   organization?
   8. What is the main IRC channel for your organization?
   9. Does your organization have an *application template* you would like
   to see students use? If so, please provide it now.
   10. Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please include
   Google Account information.
   11. *Who will your mentors be?* Please include Google Account
   information.
   12. *What criteria did you use to select these individuals as
mentors?*Please be as specific as possible.
   13. *What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?*
   14. *What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?*
   15. *What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your
   project's community before, during and after the program?*
   16. *What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with
   the project after GSoC concludes? *

As you can see, much of the quality of the application hinges on the quality
of the ideas page and mentors list; the rest is primarily quality of
community-building and follow-up.

I propose that we require two mentors per project, but allow especially
committed people to act as double-mentors (preferably across two projects).
Main mentoring responsibilities should be clearly split up beforehand
between co-mentors (ie, alternating weeks), but both should keep read up
with all communication and be ready to cover for each other (or just add
extra advice) should the need become clear. A "single" mentoring commitment
should expect to be able to handle an average of at least several hours per
week of GSoC-related work; let's say, 4 hours/week minimum available time.

So, our most important need right now is for quality mentors. If you (or
someone you know) would make a good mentor, please nominate yourself (or
them), both here on the ML and on the
wiki<http://sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/Mentors>(if you can't
handle a little redundant paperwork, you're probably not a
good candidate :). Include relevant information such as:

Name/contact
Timezone
What kind of projects could/would you mentor?
How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially
solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments
over the summer?
What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at
most)?
What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?
Anything else you think is relevant.

...Aside from mentoring applications, our needs are for [more detail in the]
project ideas <http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/ProjectIdeas>
and community-building
ideas <http://sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code#Community-building_ideas>(questions
15&16 above). For those, or for discussion of how mentoring can
work, you can just reply in this thread, we'll put it on the wiki when
discussion winds down.
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