[OSGeo-Discuss] Call for Google Code-in mentors - OSGeo-Live

[Cameron Shorter]

Vicky suggested the Google Code-In at our last OSGeo-Live weekly IRC 
meeting.

OSGeo-Live could be a good starting point to initiate tasks for 
activities. In particular, I think we could invite students to create a 
video for each of the OSGeo-Live quickstarts (1 task = 1 application's 
quickstart video).

The task could be:

* Download OSGeo-Live.

* Review and run one of the OSGeo-Live quickstarts.

* Discuss progress with community

* Identify any errors you might locate in the quickstart text. Raise an 
issue if required. (Bonus points: fix the issue and create a pull request)

* Record running of the quickstart with voice over, using the existing 
script as guidance.

* Update our index documentation page to include a link to the video and 
add the student's name to the project contributor's page. Create a git 
pull request.

--

What the student will learn:

* How to engage an open source community and mentor via an email list.

* How to download and run an image in a virtual machine

* How to work with a linux gui. (Lubuntu)

* How one OSGeo application works

* How to do QA and raise an issue in an issue tracker

* How to make a simple change to HTML and create a git pull request

* The student will additionally have their video linked from our main 
web page (assuming it is good), and will have their name added to the 
OSGeo-Live's list of contributors.

--

Mentoring requirements would be relatively light for each student, 
however we have ~ 50 projects, so handling that many students would be 
best done if we were to get 10+ mentors to help with basic git and bug 
reporting.

We would need a mentoring champion to lead this. Anyone interested?

--

A variant on this task we floated was to create Jupiter Notebooks for 
each project on OSGeo-Live, but that would require a lot more setup from 
the OSGeo-Live end, more work from the students (in particular in 
writing scripts) and more mentoring in teaching students how to program 
Notebooks. My gut feeling is that Notebooks is a bit much.

Warm regards, Cameron


On 29/9/17 6:52 am, Helmut Kudrnovsky wrote:
> Dear OSGeo Community,
>
> a few days ago we had a virtual kickoff meeting about Google Code-in. [1]
>
> * What is Google Code-in [2]:
>
> "Pre-university students ages 13 to 17 are invited to take part in Google Code-in: Our global, online, contest introducing teenagers to the world of open source. With a wide variety of bite-sized tasks, it’s easy for beginners to jump in and get started no matter what skills they have. Mentors from our participating organizations lend a helping hand as participants learn what it’s like to work on an open source project."
>   
> * How it works [3]:
>   
> 1  Students search for a task that interests them and claim it. They have at least three days to complete it.
> 2  The student works on the task, getting guidance from mentors, if needed.
> 3  Once the student is ready, they submit their work for review through the contest website.
> 4  Mentors from the organization evaluate the work, provide feedback, and if it's complete, accept it! Otherwise, specific feedback is provided, and the student goes back to step #2!
> 5  Go to step #1 and repeat!
>
> * Example tasks may be:
>
> ** Coding
> - Add a new (simple) option to a GRASS python module
> - ...
>
> ** Documentation/Training
> - Make a video introducing the various projects under OSGeo
> - ...
>
> ** Outreach/Research
> - Write a fancy blog post about the new cool QGIS 3D capabilities
> - ...
>
> ** Quality Assurance
> - Add a Test Case for xyz to the GDAL testsuite
> - ...
>
> ** User Interface
>
> - Add icons for specific GIS task
> - ...
>
> * Time effort of the tasks should not be longer as 3 to 5 hours!!!
>
>
> Members of other orgs, which participated in the last years, have joint our kickoff meeting.
>
> Lessons learned from the last years' participations:
>
> * a strategic plan needed to generate a pool of tasks doable in 3-5 hours (beginner to advanced tasks); from ~50 up to ~100 tasks!!
> * a large enough mentor pool that the contest can going on over the period to tackle evaluations of about ~ 100 tasks!!
>
> If you are a willing mentor, just write to gsoc-admin(at)osgeo.org and a form to fill in will be sent to you.
>
> At the moment, the mentor pool seems not be large enough to apply for Google Code-in.
>
> What we have heard from other orgs already participated: Google Code-in is fun, nice results for e.g. outreach, though the workload has to be planned
>   
> Kind regards
>
> Helmut (on behalf of the OSGeo GSoC admin team)
> OSGeo charter member
>
> [1] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Code_In_2017#Kickoff_.28virtual.29_meeting
> [2] https://developers.google.com/open-source/gci/
> [3] https://developers.google.com/open-source/gci/how-it-works
> [4] https://developers.google.com/open-source/gci/resources/example-tasks
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

-- 
Cameron Shorter
Open Technologies Consultant
Geospatial & Software Architect
Open Source Developer

M +61 (0) 419 142 254
http://shorter.net