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 <a href="http://code.google.com/opensource/gsoc/2009/faqs.html#0_1_org_app_08250740394219425_">FAQ</a> 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: <ol style="margin-left: 40px;"><li> Describe your organization. </li><li> Why is your organization applying to participate in GSoC 2009? What do you hope to gain by participating? </li><li> Did your organization participate in past GSoCs? If so, please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges of your participation. </li><li> If your organization has not previously participated in GSoC, have you applied in the past? If so, for what year(s)? </li><li> What license(s) does your project use? </li><li> What is the URL for your ideas page? </li><li> What is the main development mailing list or forum for your organization? </li><li> What is the main IRC channel for your organization? </li><li> Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. </li><li> Who will be your backup organization administrator? Please include Google Account information. </li><li> Who will your mentors be? Please include Google Account information. </li><li> What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible. </li><li> What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? </li><li> What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? </li><li> What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program? </li><li> What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes? </li></ol>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 <a href="http://sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code/Mentors">on the wiki</a> (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] <a href="http://sugarlabs.org/go/DevelopmentTeam/ProjectIdeas">project ideas</a> and <a href="http://sugarlabs.org/go/Summer_of_Code#Community-building_ideas">community-building ideas</a> (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.