[SoC] OSGeo's GSoC 2017 - what's next

[Helmut Kudrnovsky]

Dear students,

as part of the your acceptance into GSoC, you are expected to actively participate in the Community Bonding period (May 4 - May 29). the *Community Bonding period* is intended to help get you ready to start contributing to your organization at full speed starting May 30th.

Community Bonding activities may involve:

* Becoming familiar with the community practices and processes,
* Participating on Mailing Lists / IRC / etc,
* installing the dev environment,
* reading relevant documentation regarding your project,
* redefining your project idea with more detailed weekly goals, with the help of your mentors and the feedback of the community, embedding the 3 evaluation periods in your timetable, adding more detail, figuring out potential issues, etc.
* start coding for bug fixes not necessarily related to your project,
* setting up your repository, wiki page for your project, blog if you wish, etc. 
* asking your mentors for guidance on how to commit to the project repository. Bear in mind that you should commit often, not just at evaluation periods.

please get in touch with your mentors and the community at large. 

join the project developer mailing lists and introduce yourself and your project to the community. also make sure you join the OSGeo Summer of Code mailing list [1], if you are not already a member.

now it's a good time to study again Google's GSoC students guide [2] and OSGeo's specific instructions [3] [4], they contain useful advice from past years.

public interaction is important -- it is a key principle of open source -- work happens where everyone can see it.

have a fun and a productive summer!

kind regards,
OSGeo GSoC Administrators
	
[1] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/soc
[2] https://flossmanuals.net/GSoCStudentGuide/
[3] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_Recommendations_for_Students#What_to_expect_after_application
[4] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_Recommendations_for_Students#What_to_expect_during_the_summer