Re: Google Summer of Code '07 application

From: J. Bruce Fields <bfields@fieldses.org>
Date: Mar 10, 2007, 17:39 UTC
Message-ID: <20070310173904.GD29710@fieldses.org>
In-Reply-To: <20070309153934.GA1131@spearce.org>

On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 10:39:34AM -0500, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> "J. Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org> wrote:
> > On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 09:21:18PM -0500, Shawn O. Pearce wrote:
> > > I have updated the wiki with the final draft, and taken into account
> > > the copy editing that people were trying to do last night in parallel
> > > with me overwriting their changes all of the time.  ;-)
> > 
> > I see a few more minor language fixes--do you want them by wiki or
> > email?
> 
> Wiki would probably just be quicker.  Feel free to edit away.

OK, I did a little more editing.  A couple more changes to consider:

At

http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/AdviceforMentors

they suggest that smaller completed projects are easier to pick up than larger unfinished work, Makes sense to me. That might suggest a slightly different approach here:

	"In the unfortunate event that a student abandons and does not
	complete his/her GSoC project, the Git community will try to
	pick up and continue the work without the student.  This is one
	reason why we will require frequent publishing of project
	materials to repo.or.cz."

But I'm not sure what exactly--maybe say something about encouraging small incremental steps?

Also they suggest that "students should not be forced to do anything that other contributors do not do, so if the student wants to blog, let them do so, but do not force them." So maybe we should ditch the "weekly project updates" requirement. Those might not end up being very substantive anyway. Maybe replace that with some sort of private communication with the mentor? (And the irc office hours thing sounds like a good idea too--might be worth mentioning.)

--b.