[Systers-dev] Google Summer of Code 2010

[Robin Jeffries]

At the beginning of March, it will be time to decide whether to apply as a
mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code.  Jen and I have
determined that we need a broader pool of mentors this summer for it to make
sense for us (systers) to apply.  You folks are our obvious pool of
potential mentors.

I can tell you that it is very rewarding to mentor a student -- in some
cases you can even convince them to change their major or go on in
computing.  All the mentoring can be done via email; it's very helpful if
you are on email lots, though last year all our students were in
Europe/India, so the time overlap was not large, and responding at night
worked fine.  I think that GSOC would like primary mentors to be available
5+ hours a week; secondary mentors can be less so.

While my next question to you is going to be about ideas for projects for
the summer, here are some of the project ideas we have brainstormed and what
expertise we are looking for for mentors in this area.  If your expertise
isn't listed for any of the projects, but you want to get involved, do
contact me and I'm sure we can find a potential match (always, of course,
contingent on getting a student that wants to do that project)

    - we want to have a bug fixing project, suitable for a junior student
who wants to get her feet wet in open source. Skills: python, knowledge of
mailman a plus
    - creating better, more searchable archives (this probably would involve
a couple of students): skills: mailman code base, python, software design
and UI design (not necessarily all in the same person)
    - porting our code to mailman 3: skills: mailman knowledge, python, UI
design (there are missing UI pieces),
    - general code cleanup, turning our code into a set of mailman patches:
skills: mailman patch knowledge, python, obsessiveness
    - working with other Open Source orgs that want to attract more women,
to help them understand how they do or do not create a woman friendly
environment skills: willingness to read a lot of email, technical enough to
understand it (most any technical area -- we may have interested groups from
all over the spectrum), tactful but assertive, sensitive to what scares
women away from a forum

What does it take to be a mentor?  You don't have to be particularly expert
(but being able to find things on the web helps).  These are students;
things you have been doing in your job for years are new to them -- helping
them with debugging strategies, how to test code, how to write clear
comments and documentation.  How to set up their development environment.
These are all things they need help with, and that you likely know how to
do.  Our students from last year are welcome to volunteer to be mentors --
(they surely know what they know now that they didn't know last summer :-)
 So don't think you have to be a world famous lecturer in Python to mentor
students coding in python.  It's good for the mentee to see you learning
along side her.

We are likely to take both male and female students (we like female
students, but we really don't want to be a woman only shop, any more than we
want there to be men only projects in other groups.  The point is diversity
of perspectives, not just giving women a chance.)  We welcome male mentors
as well as women (I think it's great for men students to be mentored by a
woman and vice versa).  The number of students we can take (and last year we
got 65 applicants to our project -- I suspect every woman who applied to
GSOC wanted to work with us), depends on the responses we get.  We took 3
last year; I hope we can take a few more this year.

So let us know here on the list your interest, both generally ("I'd like to
do something but I don't see myself in any of the descriptions") and
specifically ("I'd love to help with the project on X"). And feel free to
ask questions about the summer of code. Here are the faqs for last years
GSOC
http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2009/faqs  I'd
expect things like the timeline to be very similar this year.

Oh, and there is a small stipend for mentors.  Not enough to do it only for
the money, but it does make you feel like this is "real".

So, how much interest is there?

Robin