[scribus-dev] "Engaged students are a better bet"

[JLuc]

'o

soon 2013...
here are quotes of the GSOC mentor list
i found interesting in case the team wants to go for a new GSOC round...

JL

===========
Abstract  :

Failing students happen more than wished.

The students who do best and are more likely to stick around are the
ones who get involved before March, who have time to lurk in IRC and
on the mailing lists, and get invested in the community.  That's my
experience and the experience of most mentors at this year's Summit.

And this is why NOW is a good time to start your outreach for GSoC
2013.

So if I could summarize how to get the best from the gsoc I would list:

     start engaging students (and not only) with anticipation, engage them often, even if you are not 100% sure you'll 
participate to the gsoc it will be still beneficial to your community
     choose and focus on the most active students, the one who show up often, ask questions, and propose things
     engage the students also during and after the gsoc, make them feel part of the community
     if the student proved to be valuable, it might be a good idea to propose him a part time job for the winter ;-)


===========
1st mail

Sujet: 	[GSoC Mentors] Engaged students are a better bet, and what you can do now to get them

A cautionary tale.

One candidate for our project this year did not send an email about
his proposal to our developers' list or hang out in our main channel,
even though that step was strongly encouraged... but he impressed a
new mentor via an IRC conversation, and impressed him enough that we
accepted him anyway.

I had requested a phone number in the automatic acceptance message,
but because all replies to those automatic acceptance messages went to
/dev/null, I don't know whether he sent one.  He only responded to my
direst emails towards the end of the Community Bonding Period, said
that he was going through personal issues, and didn't give me a phone
number.

In late May he stopped responding to all contact.  I eventually sent
this message to the public GSoC discussion list
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/google-summer-of-code-discuss/iljrWpT4uQk
and that did finally get a response from him.  He said that he had
been willing to try to work outside of GSoC since he clearly would be
unable to meet the deadlines, but that I had made it difficult for him
to find the motivation to do so.  He was unhappy that I had called him
out publicly and was worried about future employers seeing my note.
He never sent another note to me or to his mentor, and we failed him
at midterm.

As my community reviews our GSoC participation
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2012-November/064498.html
and engages in other mentorship programs, I see that I could have
prevented all of this by simply *not accepting his application* at the
start.  Someone who had not posted to our developers' mailing list,
despite all our directions and encouragement and instructions, is just
a terrible bet.

The students who do best and are more likely to stick around are the
ones who get involved before March, who have time to lurk in IRC and
on the mailing lists, and get invested in the community.  That's my
experience and the experience of most mentors at this year's Summit.

And this is why NOW is a good time to start your outreach for GSoC
2013.  Give a talk at your local college in January.  Spruce up your
"how to contribute" instructions.  Get leaflets ready for
linux.conf.au and FOSDEM and SCaLE.  Get your patch review backlogs
down so you have time to review the new contributions when they start
trickling in.  If you do that now, then you'll get more students
interested in your project, get to know them, and be better prepared
to nurture successful applicants in the spring.

Happy new year!

-- 

===========
2nd answering mail

Sumana, thank you for all this valuable information.

I agree, I also learnt this year that the best students are those ones who show up often, engage in the community, 
participate in the activities.

In our community we do many activities, some even require physical active participation to build nodes of a wireless 
network: http://blog.ninux.org/2012/12/26/potenziamento-rete-zona-san-giovanni/ so we are have been very happy when many 
of our students participated in our extra gsoc activities.

I think that if my community will be given another great opportunity to participate again next year we will focus on the 
more enthusiast students only, mainly because our energies are limited so we should try to make the most out of it.

And I agree, now is the best moment to engage students to join your community.
Here in Italy my community participated at the "linux day" in several cities talking about our activities and the gsoc, 
plus we now organize monthly free workshops about technology and programming, the first one we did was about the git 
versioning control software, that we use for our gsoc projects, many of the gsoc students participated and enjoyed the 
workshop.
And bytheway, for those of you who are in the US, I would like to get you to know this initiative from which we got 
inspired: http://detroitdjc.org/discotech/ (checkout the pdf "one-sheed educational tool").

So if I could summarize how to get the best from the gsoc I would list:

     start engaging students (and not only) with anticipation, engage them often, even if you are not 100% sure you'll 
participate to the gsoc it will be still beneficial to your community
     choose and focus on the most active students, the one who show up often, ask questions, and propose things
     engage the students also during and after the gsoc, make them feel part of the community
     if the student proved to be valuable, it might be a good idea to propose him a part time job for the winter ;-)


FC