Some thoughts about next GSoC

[Jesse Allen]

On Nov 22, 2007 10:00 AM, Kai Blin <kai.blin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thursday 22 November 2007 17:44:09 Jesse Allen wrote:
>
> > From my understanding, the SoC site specifically says that you do not
> > have to work on a project that has to be completed in the allotted
> > time. I think the idea is that google wants to encourage people that
> > were already working on a project before to apply and to encourage
> > people to continue working in the community after the session is
> > complete. Now the mentoring organization could set their own
> > requirements, based on difficulty and scope, but I would be concerned
> > with making time a limiting factor.
>
> I'm not saying that we stop people from working on their stuff afterwards, nor
> forcing them to e.g. implement the full dll if their project is "Start an
> implementation of dll x". I was talking about shrinking their proposal so
> they can actually manage to implement all the features they promise in their
> proposal in the proposed timeframe. I know that this was really hard for me.
>
> > The best alternative to the quiz would be to have the student begin
> > working on the project before the application. He can discuss it on
> > the the mailing list and hopefully show some code. This would be a
> > good way to judge coding skill and the project's scope. Now in order
> > for this to work well, we would have to encourage people to get
> > started early, which really hasn't happened before right?
>
> Well, depends on how you want to do this. I think this is overly restrictive,
> unless you're just talking about a patch or two like Maarten proposed.
>


Well then it sounds like we want better written proposals. Yeah the
goals for my project were very broad. I didn't intentionally do it
that way, but it was more like at first, get it to work, sort of
thing. And the design wasn't complete until a month in. The only way I
could have done better was to have started earlier. Mind you, I
actually did start in April almost two months early. If I get to do it
again, I will probably have a much more interesting proposal and have
goals that I will know will have specific results in the timeframe.
This is what I'm already considering, but that is because I am
experienced in the program already. For new people, we will have to
reach out to them and help them get ready early because they won't
know what to do. Maybe we need pre-SoC mentors?

Jesse