Re: GSoC 2015 mentoring organization application

[Carnë Draug]

On 11 February 2015 at 09:11, Carlo De Falco <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> On 11 Feb 2015, at 01:55, Carnë Draug <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>> I really don't think this is an issue.  The problem is not too many
>> students, or a low maintainers to students ratio.  The problem is the
>> lack of maintainers with enough interest on the project of the students.
>
> I totally agree with this. It could also be put differently, as:
>
> we need maintainers who would be willing to let a student be involved with
> their own high interest project directly.

Yes, this sounds much better.

>> I don't know about labs of Mathematics and Computer Science, but this is
>> what already happens with summer students in Biochemistry and Biology.
>> Summer students often don't have their own independent project.  Instead
>> they help PhD students or post-docs with their projects.  This has the
>> disavantage that some students feel that they're only cheap labour.
>
> I think we should check GSOC regulations about this part, there seems to be
> be a stress on independence of the student in the GSOC description ...

Where is this?  I checked the GSoC mentoring manual [1] and could not find
mention of that.  But anyway, I did not mean that we should have GSoC
students doing the work of code monkeys.  My point is that their project
needs to be closer to what the mentor is already doing for Octave, that
this will be a much more experience for the student, for the mentor, and
for Octave.

I just went through the Sumer of Code project ideas [2] and added a red
warning notice on top of all saying that it needs reviewing.  Please go
ahead and remove projects that you are no longer willing to mentor, or
add new projects.

Carnë

[1] http://en.flossmanuals.net/GSoCMentoring/
[2] http://wiki.octave.org/Summer_of_Code_Project_Ideas