About SoC

Google Summer of Code 2008

What is this "Summer of Code"?

For those of you who may have been living in a cave for the last few years, here is the google FAQ regarding the event. Actually you don't have to have lived in a cave to find some of the info on this page useful. everything you wanted to know about elegibility, etc.

Google's Summer of Code page can be found here

IRC

If you are interested in talking with folks about the event you can join everyone at Freenode #gsoc.

Mailing Lists

There are four program mailing lists:

• Announcement Only List
• Program Discussion List
• Students List (private; past and current student participants)
• Mentors List (private; past and current mentor participants)

Wiki

The Google Summer of Code wiki is here. I encourage folks to visit the wiki. There is some extremely useful information there for mentors, and mentoring organizations.

Mentoring Organizations

What is the role of a mentoring organization?

Each mentoring organization is expected to provide:

1. A pool of project ideas for students to choose from, publicly published by the mentoring organization as an "Ideas" list;
2. An organization administrator to act as the project's main point of contact for Google;
3. A person or group responsible for review and ranking of student applications, both those proposals which tie into the organization's "Ideas" list and "blue-sky" proposals;
4. A person or group of people responsible for monitoring the progress of each accepted student and to mentor her/him as the project progresses;
5. A person or group responsible for taking over for a student's assigned mentor in the event they are unable to continue mentoring, e.g. take a vacation, have a family emergency;
6. A written evaluation of each student participant, including how s/he worked with the group, whether s/he should be invited back should we do another Google Summer of Code, etc.

In addition to these responsibilities, a mentoring organization should actively encourage each student developer to participate in the project's community in whichever way makes the most sense for the project, be it development mailing lists, idling in the project's IRC channel, participating in the project's forum, etc. A truly successful mentoring organization will work diligently to ensure that as many of their students as possible remain active project participants long after the conclusion of the program.

Here is a great link to information regarding the selection criteria/process. Great info there.

Looking for a few good volunteers!

Administrators

To begin with we will need (at the very least) a few good volunteers.

We need two or more administrators. What is the role of an organization administrator?

An organization administrator oversees the overall progress of a mentoring organization and its students throughout the program. Organization administrators will have different responsibilities depending on the organization, but at the very least they will need to:

1. Submit the organization's program application to Google;
2. Act as the main point of contact between Google and the organization;
3. Respond to any inquiries from Google within 48 hours;
4. Assign a backup mentor should a mentor be unable to work with a student;
5. Ensure all program evaluations are completed on time, on or before the deadlines.

If you are interested in being an administrator, please add your name below.

• Eric (Ravenlock) Schuele
• Ian (Inc/`Inc) Caldwell

Mentors

We also need some volunteers to be mentors. Being a mentor will require a significant amount of time and effort. How much is hard to say, but I think everyone can take a good guess considering each would be assisting someone (probably new to Enlightenment) with a "project" which would be more than just a patch. If you are interested in mentoring please add your name below. Please include with your name, your proclaimed area of expertise, as well as any other area you would be willing to mentor in. If your areas overlap with other developers that is a "Good Thing", as one of the things we are responsible for is "a plan for dissapearing developers"

• Gustavo (k-s) Sverzut Barbieri [Evas, Ecore_Evas, Edje, ETK] (Media Players, Embedded Systems, Optimizations)
• Michael (KainX) Jennings
• Vincent (vtorri) Torri [ Evas, Ecore, Ecore_Evas, Edje, Win32 (!) ]
• Cedric (cedric) BAIL [ Eet, Evas, Ecore_Evas, Edje, SDL ] (Embeded Systems, Optimizations)
• Nathan (RbdPngn) Ingersoll [Ewl]
• dan (dj2) sinclair [Ewl]
• Caio Marcelo (cmarcelo) (co-mentoring in Python related projects)
• Ulisses Furquim (Ryback_) (Media Players, Embedded Systems)
• Artur Souza (MoRpHeUz) (co-mentoring in Python and Edje related projects)
• Christopher (devilhorns) Michael [Anything 'E']
• Eric (ravenlock) Schuele

In addition to your time... there are a few other things a mentor needs to provide, have, or contribute. Here is a "Mentor's Checklist":

1. Must have a Google Account
2. Must commit to being available from April 15th - August 11th.
3. Please identify a "backup mentor" in case you unexpectedly become unavailable.
4. Must set measurable project milestones for the purposes of student evaluations

Here is a great article on how to be a good mentor (written by a previous SoC mentor). Please take a few minutes. I think we can all get something out of it.

More good tips on mentoring. (These from Google)

Accepted SoC Projects

The list of accepted student proposals can be found here.

SoC Project Ideas

Summer of Code project ideas can now be found on the Ideas Page

Our Application

Our mentoring organization application to Google can be found here.

Timeline

For what its worth, here is the complete timeline Google has published. (Here is a link to the official timeline.)

• February 25: Program announced. Life is good.
• March 3: Mentoring organizations can begin submitting applications to Google (~12 noon PST/19:00 UTC).
• March 6: Our application has been submitted!!
• March 12: Mentoring organization application deadline (12 noon PDT/19:00 UTC).
• March 13-17: Google program administrators review organization applications.
• March 17: List of accepted mentoring organizations published on code.google.com/soc/ (~12 noon PDT/19:00 UTC).
• March 17: We've been accepted!!!.
• Interim Period: Would-be student participants discuss application ideas with mentoring organizations.
• March 24: Student application period opens (~12 noon PDT/19:00 UTC).
• April 7: Student application deadline 5:00 PM PDT/00:00 UTC April 8, 2008.
• Interim Period: Mentoring organizations review and rank student proposals; where necessary, mentoring organizations may request further proposal detail from the student applicant.
• April 18:
  • All mentors must signed up and all student proposals matched with a mentor by 00:00 PDT/07:00 UTC;
  • IRC Meeting to resolve any outstanding duplicate accepted students (timing TBD).
• April 21: accepted student proposals announced at code.google.com/soc/ (~12 noon PDT/19:00 UTC).
• Community Bonding Period: students get to know mentors, read documentation, get up to speed to begin working on their projects.
• May 26:
  • Students begin coding for their GSoC projects;
  • Google begins issuing initial student payments provided tax forms are on file and students are in good standing with their communities.
• Interim Period: Mentors give students a helping hand and guidance on their projects.
• July 7: Mentors and students can begin submitting mid-term evaluations (~12 noon PDT/19:00 UTC).
• July 14:
  • Mid-term evaluations deadline at 12 noon PDT/19:00 UTC;
  • Google begins issuing mid-term student payments provided passing student survey is on file.
• Interim Period: Mentors give students a helping hand and guidance on their projects.
• August 11: Suggested 'pencils down' date. Take a week to scrub code, write tests, improve documentation, etc.
• August 18: Firm 'pencils down' date. Mentors, students and organization administrators can being submitting final evaluations to Google (~12 noon PDT/19:00 UTC).
• September 1:
  • Final evaluation deadline 12 noon PDT/19:00 UTC;
  • Google begins issuing student and mentoring organization payments provided forms and evaluations are on file.
• September 3: Students can begin submitting required code samples to Google
• October or November, details TBD: Mentor Summit at Google: Representatives from each successfully participating organization are invited to Google to greet, collaborate and code. Our mission for the weekend: make the program even better, have fun and make new friends.