[SoC] Google Summer of Code 2010

[Wolf Bergenheim]

Google Summer of Code startup 2010

The annual Google Summer of Code is indeed here again! Welcome back to
help make this the best GSoC yet!
Hello all people interested in Google Summer of Code!

This email is mainly for mentors, would-be mentors and admins. If you
would like to be a mentor this year, pay attention to this email and
you will find out how! If you are a student who wants to apply again
this year, this email might still be interesting to you, so keep on
reading.

The whole administration team is going to focus mainly on
administration and probably won't have any students this year. That
means more time to help out you, dear mentors. In the past I feel that
the whole process has been a bit confusing for mentors, and would like
to make it less confusing, and more collaborative :) One of my
personal reasons for signing up as an administrator is to network.

We are going to start a closed mentors-only mailing list where you can
talk freely about everything to do with mentoring and your students.
We are doing this partly because the Google provided mentoring
mailinglist is extremely high volume (hundreds of emails per day) and
partly because we think that if you mentors get a chance to share
thoughts and ideas about the whole mentoring thing, the whole
experience will be a lot more enjoyable to all. Also for the students
it will be better since more people can chip in and help struggling
students  back on track, and to be frank, help us spot the trouble
spots sooner rather than later. Also the veterans can show the ropes
to the new mentors. Sort of be a mentor to a mentors. On that note, it
would be great is a new mentor could pair up with a veteran, so the
student would I think benefit most.

How do I sign up as a mentor?
=================
Just follow these steps:
1. Sign up to soc at lists.osgeo.org [1]
2. Present yourself on soc at lists.osgeo.org
3. Sign up to Melange [2]
4. Fill in the Mentor form [3]
5. Apply to become a mentor for OSGeo (link will be posted later since
this is not yet possible)

Do this sooner rather than later!

Once you have signed up, please start working on the ideas page, so
that we can have it up-to-date as soon as possible.

Please make sure that a) you have set your real name in the soc
website[2]  profile we won't be accepting any anonymous mentors nor
mentors whom we are at the least unsure who they are. In unclear cases
contact the admins and give us your melange id so that we can then
accept you.

Each accepted student should have two mentors assigned to them (I hope
we have enough mentors for this). As mentioned before one new mentor
and one veteran.

All mentors have to give contact information to the admins (including
a phone number where they can be reached DURING THE SUMMER). This is
done via the sign up form [3]. I don't want to go around asking for
people if they know this and that mentor, and if they could please
call them since the mid term survey deadline is approaching. It is ok
to be away during the mid-term, especially so if the other mentor is
able to fill in, and if not, then TELL THE ADMINS about your planned
or unplanned absence, so that we can work out how to fill in the form
FOR YOU. We are here to help YOU. Also it is a question of giving a
good impression to Google. They do pay attention to who does things on
time and who doesn't. Might be that next year GSoC is not going to be
as pleasant*, if we don't behave. ;)

*) We might not get accepted or get fewer slots or don't get the extra
slots we need...

I guess that is it for now, I hope this SoC will the best one yet!

Snowy regards,
Wolf Bergenheim
OSGeo GSoC Administrator

PS if you want to help out, feel free to help with the SoC application form [4]
PPS Feel free to distribute this email or its info to the project
devel lists or any possible mentor candidates ;)

[1] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/soc
[2] http://socghop.appspot.com/
[3] https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dEpKRDUzZEU4dXRxdHd5MVhCRWlSZXc6MA
[4] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_Application_2010
[5] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2010_Ideas