116
edits
Difference between revisions of "Summer of Code/Application/2009"
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
m
Summer of Code/Application/2009 (view source)
Revision as of 20:10, 11 March 2009
, 20:10, 11 March 2009→What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes?
(→What criteria did you use to select these individuals as mentors? Please be as specific as possible.: be more specific as possible :-P) |
|||
| (4 intermediate revisions by the same user not shown) | |||
| Line 125: | Line 125: | ||
=== What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? === | === What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? === | ||
We know that the students can do that. | We know that the students can do that. We learned this the hard way the first time 'round the GSoC ride :-) The measures we set in place last year effectively erradicated this problem. | ||
As for this year, we will firstly enforce certain rules at the program start. That is, we will clearly explain that this work should be considered as full-time, and that in any doubt we will not let the student enter the program. | |||
Second, we are going to introduce new policy, that is, the students have to provide status to their mentors on a bi-daily basis at most. If a student disappears for more than 3 days without notifying of his/her mentor, the student will fail off the project. | Second, we are going to introduce a new policy, that is, the students have to provide status to their mentors on a bi-daily basis at most. If a student disappears for more than 3 days without notifying of his/her mentor, the student will fail off the project. The students will be immediately aware of this during their applications. We have positively identified that frequent and meaningful communication goes a long way in keeping the students engaged and interested. | ||
Of course, comprehensive timelines will be required as usual, and we will accept only those students | Of course, comprehensive timelines will be required as usual, and we will accept only those of the students which will set realistic goals, thus minimizing the risk of getting intimidated. This factor too frequently leads to the student disappearing. | ||
During the program we will make sure that the students will feel | During the program we will make sure that the students will feel comfortable with their tasks. Our mentors already have experience with that. Moreover, in difficult situations in the past there was not a single person feeling responsible for a particular student, but rather the whole project was trying to help when needed. These reflexes on behalf of the mentor group but also on behalf of the active team members of ScummVM have proven to be a pretty good "tool", especially last year, and we are going to do our best this year too. | ||
=== What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? === | === What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? === | ||
For the mentors, the risk is relatively low; | For the mentors, the risk is relatively low; our past experiences verify absolutely this claim. Two of our mentors are project leads and are reachable virtually 24/7 (in case of emergencies). We all have exchanged sufficient contact information (including cell phone numbers etc.) to be able to discover our whereabouts. Should something really bad happen which precludes a mentor from fulfilling his duties (including personal reasons), we will attempt to shift students to new mentors among the existing mentors, or drawn from our backup pool of mentors. This will depend on the number of students we have to mentor. The students will not be left hanging for any reason at all. | ||
=== What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program? === | === What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before, during and after the program? === | ||
In order to help the students | In order to help the students familiarize themselves with the project, we have created several pieces of documentation for them. In particular, we have an exhaustive developer central where we describe the all-important internals of ScummVM. This is valuable as a quick reference as well as during the initial explorations of the codebase. | ||
Also | Also the development team actively uses the forums, IRC, Wiki and the development mailing list during the entire project development. We consider out students to be special, but developers nonetheless. Each developer including our students is encouraged to take part in discussions, whatever the means these discussions occur. As a pragmatic fact, on IRC any student will be able to get support literally 24/7, as our developers are scattered all over the globe. | ||
Also not only the mentors communicate with the students | Also not only the mentors but also the entire development team is encourage to communicate with the students. The students are marked with special flag on our IRC channel, so everyone know who they are. Also we require the students to write introductory letters to our development list, so everyone will have impression about them, their skills and their assigned task of course. | ||
=== What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes? === | === What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the project after GSoC concludes? === | ||
We already have a handful of students as our team members from the past two years. Our project brings both fun and challenge and suits folks who like such stuff. This is one of the prime forces which drive Open Source, and we are proud to be one of the biggest OSS projects. | We already have a handful of students as our team members from the past two years. Our project brings both fun and challenge and suits folks who like such stuff. This is one of the prime forces which drive Open Source, and we are proud to be one of the biggest OSS projects. | ||
We hope that this will be valued by our students and that if | We hope that this will be valued by our students and that if their time permits, they will continue to support the project and continue pushing it forward. We always greet new developers with a warm welcome and strive to ensure nobody feels abandoned :). | ||
<span style="color:red">+++++++</span> | |||