[QGIS-Developer] Post-mortem of application to Google Summer of Code

[Julien Cabieces]

Hi Valentin,

I'm really sad to hear that you were not selected.

I was really happy to meet you in person in Grenoble, and thought at
that time that you really deserved to be choosen. Your proposal was of
high quality, and you prove to have a great maturity for your arge (and
this post-mortem mail proves it even more, I share all of your
conclusions).

I think that we fail something on our side (Oslandia side) regarding the
lack of mentors, and thought that this matter was addressed.

I encourage you to continue your effort and hope to see QGIS pull
requests in near future.

Regards,
Julien



> Hi devs,
>
> Last month, I applied for Google Summer of Code (GSoC), unfortunately
> I was not accepted into this year's program.
> I know it's disappointing, since we all would like to see an open
> source alternative to existing ETL, and I feel like the stars were
> aligned here.
>
> So here my little post-mortem, and few tips and suggestions to help
> futures applications:
>
> What went well
>
> - First QGIS community was very enthusiastic and supportive, I am very
> grateful to the community. I was also incredibly well received at the
> local contributor meeting in Grenoble.
> - We had two rounds of feedbacks to taylor the proposal one by mail,
> and a second in person with local contributor meeting
>
> What went wrong
>
> - Despite the enthusiasm around the proposal, my proposal was
> rejected. I am only making a guess here, but I suppose it was because
> of the lack of mentors.
>
> Tips and suggestions for future applications.
>
> *For students*
> - Be proactive to look for mentors
> Git commands like 'git log' and 'git blame' are your friends to find
> people with common interest in your proposals.Gitk can also be used to
> get a more friendly graphical interface
> with 'gitk -- ./path/to/directory, you can see all the contributor who
> committed in that specify directory for exemple to search for
> processing related
> use 'gitk -- ./src/core/processing/' or 'gitk -- ./src/gui/processing/'
> - QGIS participates in GSoC under the umbrella of the OSGeo
> organization. You don't only need to convince QGIS devs but also
> OSGeo. So don't only submit proposals on the GSoC platform, and also
> post your proposal on the Soc mailing list[0] dedicated to coordinate
> at OSGeo level ( soc at lists.osgeo.org )
> - Remember that mailing lists are plain text only, I had the surprise
> to discover that all the formatting for quoted text didn't work,
> because I sent my mails as html( which is the default in gmail) and
> not as plain text (And I'm yet to find how to properly justify plain
> text mail). The migration from mailing list to discourse should
> however fix these issues .
>
> *For mentors*
> - Volunteer as a mentor early on the SOC mailing list. There is
> usually a call for ideas and mentors[1] around the end of January ~2
> month before the application deadline for students. However at this
> point you don't have the full picture, you don't know which proposals
> students will submit. Some years there are multiple volunteers for
> QGIS, this year there was no volunteers for the QGIS project
>
> *For both mentors and students*
> - Communicate on SOC mailing list, I can't stress this enough. I think
> it's the key point why my proposal was not accepted. It's unfortunate
> because I discussed with multiple mentors/companies that were
> interested in mentoring me, but we never formalised it on an official
> channel of communication.
> - Since OSGeo handles a lot of projects, it means we need to be really
> vocal. So if there is a match between a student and mentor post it on
> the SoC mailing list as well !
> -  There is a minimum of one mentor per student, but it's possible to have
> more than one mentor (usually two), and other mentors can be added
> later on.
>
> *For the QGIS project*
> - Improve documentation, if you search for QGIS and GSoC on google you
> are redirected to an old page on the former QGIS bug tracker
> website[2]. This page was last updated in 2016, and contains a lot of
> broken links, and ideas from 2016. There is existings page on the
> OSGeo wiki[3] with recommendations for students, suggested ideas, and
> former projects, but it might be worth having a dedicated page for
> QGIS in the developer documentation.
> - Suggest ideas to the OSGeo organization, during the call for ideas.
> These ideas will be displayed on the OSGeo page on the GSoC platform
> and on the OSGeo wiki and will help influence the proposals submitted
> in a direction that fit the QGIS project.
> QGIS doesn't lack of ideas that could be a GSoC proposals, we could
> pick two or three QGIS Enhancement Proposals each year (ideally
> ranging from short  ~175 hours to long ~350 hours project)
>
> *For OSGeo*
> I don't know the volume of applications OSGeo received so it might be
> difficult to answer to everyone, but it's always appreciable to get a
> personalized answer instead of a generic email from Google platform.
>
>
> Lastly, I'd like to end with a positive note, even though I was not
> accepted, I still plan to stay around and maybe work on a smaller
> portion of my proposal on my own.
>
>
> [0] https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/soc
> [1] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/soc/2024-January/005129.html
> [2] https://issues.qgis.org/projects/qgis/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code
> [3] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_Recommendations_for_Students
>
> Regards,
> Valentin
> _______________________________________________
> QGIS-Developer mailing list
> QGIS-Developer at lists.osgeo.org
> List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer


-- 

Julien Cabieces
Senior Developer at Oslandia
julien.cabieces at oslandia.com