Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a mentorship program where people interested in learning more about open source are welcomed into open source communities by excited mentors ready to help them learn and grow as developers. Fedora Project’s participation in the past has been successful, and we would like to continue being a mentoring org.
We are currently looking for mentors and projects. Propose a project idea before March 30th in our Mentored Projects issue tracker.
If you want to mentor a project, things to keep in mind:
- Do you have enough time to work on this with the intern during the entire timeline? You will be helping someone else when they get stuck. You don’t want to become a blocker because you’re busy.
- It is harder to find success when you are completely certain of how an idea needs to be implemented. finding an intern with the skills and interest to implement a specific solution is a lot harder. Instead, the goal should be to focus on finding an intern with enough skills to respond to a use case need. Interns learn more when they help design and guide the project. In other words, provide guidance and direction but let the intern do some of the “driving.”
- Focus on listing use-cases and the problem statement. Where you have looser ideas, you may be able to find a student who works as a sort-of intern who can implement a solution to a use case you have In past experiences, students going after a use case are more likely to get somewhere with self-direction and support from you.
- Who can help you? Try to find a second mentor for a project. Not only they can bring new perspective, in case you decide to go on a vacation, they will be the back up.
Can I be a mentor without a project?
Yes! You can be a general mentor. You will work with all students regardless of their project. To become a general mentor please open an issue in the Mentored Projects issue tracker offering your help. Please tag the issue with the GSoC tag.
New changes in GSoC
- GSoC will now be open to all newcomers that are 18 years or older. One of the fundamentals for GSoC all along has been a focus on student participation while that requirement is being removed entirely. To help those going through a career change, self-taught, or returning to the workforce, among other possibilities, all adults can apply to be part of GSoC.
- Last year was focused on the medium size “~175 hour” projects while for GSoC 2022 those medium-sized projects will be available along with the return of the larger project with an intended time of around ~350 hours of development.
- Another fundamental change with GSoC 2022 is changing up the format. Google Summer of Code had always been on a June to August schedule over the span of 12 weeks. There will not only be the 12 week option with GSoC 2022 but it’s also opening a 22 week option for larger projects. The participants and organizations involved can work together to determine the suitability of extending the project deadline to 22 weeks.
Read a detailed post on the Google Open Source blog.
How to propose a project/request to be a general mentor?
If you’re interested in mentoring or you have a project to mentor, please post your idea to the Mentored Projects issue tracker. We strongly encourage you to find a second person to help with mentoring and to solicit feedback on your proposal. If you have any doubts or want to discuss feasibility of a project, please reach out to us (@siddharthvipul1 or @sumantrom).
Last day to propose a project is March 30th of 2022.
We discussed recently that being a mentor on the project like this is a large commitment and many contributors probably don’t feel like they can fully subscribe to it.
Do you consider the possibility of a paired or group mentorship, so that the project is mentored by several folks? And is there a way for possible mentors to publish a “call for a co-mentor” somewhere?
Hi @bookwar,
I can totally point towards the possibility of it happening. In two instances of the mentored projects of the current term of Outreachy, we have projects that are collectively mentored by two mentors per project - me and @darknao for the Mote project (Issue #113: Outreachy Proposal: Fragment - Conversation Caretaker - mentored-projects - Pagure.io) and, @misc and @thunderbirdtr for a general intern for the W&A team.
I am not sure if we were the first ones to do it, or if there have been people who have done the pair (or group) mentorship before us but maybe this is something @siddharthvipul1 and @sumantrom can shed some light on.
It’s not only possible but preferred!
It’s been like this forever. Even in this blog, we wanted to highlight this
You are 100% correct about trying to make it a group effort. Though it’s challenging to find co-mentors, maybe we can put some effort behind it this time
We have been doing this for a long time
What I take from this conversation, is to go even above just 2
It’s always good to work as a team - though sometimes it’s challenging to sync, worth a try!
Indeed, I was thinking along the lines of “how we can help possible quarter of a mentor to find other three quarters to become one”
?
Or, for example, can we pair any mentor with someone from a Join SIG by default?
I like the idea of including Join SIG here
we do have head count problem in the SIG but I like the idea of “a quarter of the mentors” focusing on the mentee being sustained as a long term contributor. It’s always challenging asking technical mentors to approach from that angle. I will discuss with Join folks if someone would like to volunteer as a general mentor (but a little more involved)
I can also imagine change in workflow on how we onboard our interns during contributor period. making join the default way of entry?
cc: @ankursinha (not because expecting you to volunteer, but because you have great insight in these)
The Join SIG can definitely help but not by providing individual mentors because that’s not how the Join SIG functions (or is designed to function). Currently, the idea is that the folks active in the Join SIG collectively help all newcomers, so it’s a many to many relationship. This is because of the reasons you all have already noted above—individual mentorship is hard in volunteer communities, especially over extended periods and we want to avoid one to one relationships.
For Outreachy, we put all the candidates (or tried to) through the Welcome to Fedora process. As usual, lots of them did drop out before the formal application process, but at least this way they had enough information about Fedora and what we do, and they had multiple avenues to speak to the community/clarify doubts.
https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Welcome-to-Fedora/issues?tags=I%3A+Mentored&status=all
For the Outreachy NeuroFedora project, we are using a tracker ticket on the NeuroFedora pagure project for everything, so the full team is always aware of what’s going on. I think that’s worked out quite well. I mean, I’m still the primary PoC, but I’m not the only one that is aware of what Vanessa is upto and can pitch in when necessary:
https://pagure.io/neuro-sig/NeuroFedora/issue/496
So, putting folks through the Welcome to Fedora process would be a good way to go even for GSoC, especially for candidates that are not already Fedora community members? That way they have access to the full resources of the Join SIG in addition to their designated PoCs.
Did Fedora get accepted in GSoC? I do not see Fedora in the list of organizations: Google Summer of Code
Hi @siosm,
Unfortunately, Fedora Project was not accepted in GSoC 2022. We weren’t aware of the requirement of having atleast 3 projects listed even before the org is accepted. We would be better prepared for future participations
We are participating in Oureachy though. Our projects for this season are listed on the website.