-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 In the shakeout of things at the end, we didn't end up with at least one student for each proposed idea. This is typical. Also, we had multiple students for each idea. This is typical. There are a few of you who did not get students making proposals against your ideas. There are others with multiple proposals. The mentors without proposals have a few things to consider. 1. The GSoC program is highly recognized as being beneficial for open source projects to learn and grow in how to bring in new contributors, especially around shorter-term desires/goals. 2. A range of actions/options: * Would you like to help make this Summer's pool of projects be great? * - You can read over other interesting proposals and make comments to other mentors (private) or the students (public.) All students are able to read (aiui) so can learn from comments in other proposals. (And students who show they are doing this are worth ranking higher because they understand learning from others and transparency better.[0]) * Would you like to help mentor another project? * - Although Melange only recognizes one mentor per project, it's long been practiced in projects that multiple people can act as mentors. I like the description KB said to me today, "One is technical, the other spiritual." * Can you be a back-up mentor for another mentor who becomes unavailable to help? * - As above, you can 'shadow' (track) a project and be ready to step in for another mentor for anything from vacation to needing to drop out of the project. - Us admins appreciate this greatly, it's not uncommon for grading periods hitting during vacations or life-events making mentors have to leave mid-Summer. If you are tracking, you can step in with our help, otherwise us admins are doing our best while making stuff up. * What if a student's proposal can blend with your idea in to a new project? * - We may get an amazing student who doesn't quite line up with one idea, at this point we can modify/morph their idea with yours in to something serious. - An existing idea may need splitting in to two or three ideas. You can work with that idea's mentor to split to multiple proposals that tackle different parts of the problem (and can arrive at success independently), then mentor one branch of that idea/project. * Mentor a new idea? * - Sometimes a student proposes an idea that wasn't on our list. You can work with that student to make it something you can mentor. Thanks for your care and efforts here so far! Regards, - - Karsten [0] Although the the GSoC program is about turning students in to open source contributors, it is realistic in a few things. One is that it's good to try to teach any willing student about how to work the open source way. Two is that projects and students have the most success when the students show acumen to working the open source way. - -- Karsten 'quaid' Wade .^\ CentOS Doer of Stuff http://TheOpenSourceWay.org \ http://community.redhat.com @quaid (identi.ca/twitter/IRC) \v' gpg: AD0E0C41 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAlUd8KoACgkQ2ZIOBq0ODEGzMACcDfbLfrejR3reSg15byKP/CM5 MlYAoOD9Cda5G3j4xiybl9ykXKO9OpRe =rvj7 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----