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

[Nirav Patel]

> 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.

The Google end of GSoC is really quite structured to having one mentor
per student, in that only one mentor is officially paired to that
student, and only that mentor (or the org admin) can submit
evaluations.  However, I personally experienced the mild frustration
of having a disappearing mentor during GSoC 2008, and it is certainly
a problem needing solved.  Perhaps rather than something like
alternating weeks, we could have an official mentor and a "hot spare"
mentor who also stays in contact with the student and remains up to
date in the event the official mentor disappears.

I'd be interested in mentoring.

> Name/contact

Nirav Patel nrpatel at gmail

> Timezone

UTC-5

> What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

Pygame or PyGTK based Activities

> 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?

Graduating and no job prospects, so it is likely I will have quite a
bit of free time as of early May.  5 hours a week is certainly doable.

> What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at
> most)?

Some Pygame/PyGTK Activity development and a module for Pygame.

> What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

Teaching Assistant and miscellaneous mentoring experiences at school.

> Anything else you think is relevant.

I survived GSoC on the student end of things in 2008.

Nirav