[OSGeo-Discuss] A little help with the Google SoC Application

[Cory Horner]

Jody Garnett wrote:
> I filled in a few blanks with respect to what we did for GeoTools last 
> year. We did not have any disappearing student; and I am not sure what 
> action *could* be taken.

It is relatively common.  The question is really asking what your means 
of persuasion would be -- but something along the lines of keeping in 
constant contact with the student would be good, as well as getting a 
home phone number and such.

We should only accept students which are committed to the project 
full-time -- "i want to take a few classes too" doesn't work.

> - We could try and contact other applicants and see if they are 
> available to complete the work (my guess this would be the 
> responsibility of the mentor assigned to the student that went missing).

This is not allowed.

> - We could drop that slot (and associated Mentor would not get paid)

There are 3 phases of student payment, and the mentor must approve each: 
initial acceptance, mid-point, and final.  If the mentor is dissatisfied 
with the student's performance (ie can't deliver), the student is 
dropped from the program and payment stops.

At the mentor conference last fall, someone brought up that they had 
served their students a very clean document outlining exactly what their 
expectations were (weekly progress reports, blogging, public emails, 
etc) -- we should try to dig this out of the google wiki and use it.  It 
would be useful to have during the application phase, so students know 
what they are getting into.

Aside, we should also note that we are willing to take on unpaid 
students, if someone *really* wants to work on something but doesn't get 
accepted.

Cory.