[Bf-committers] Google SOC stuff

[Tom M]

Tim good suggestions, I'll only comment on a bit of it...

> I disagree with the notion of providing a list of projects and/or enforcing
> that only they can be applied for.

Just to be clear - it was never my intent that it be 'only' the
projects list.  Last year we had a projects list also and most of the
projects accepted weren't on that list I don't think.

> It also stops people applying if there isnt something there which interests
> them.

I know that ODE was on the list, but I don't think the scripted help
was, nor the drawing.  And all three didn't suceed (the first two
didn't even start, the third the student was doing a project for his
school work and had planned to integrate it, but ended up short on
time so dropped the blender side at his advisors suggestion as I
recall).

> What I do think would be a good idea is to have everyone considering
> entering a propsoal for Blender, to be involved in an online forum.

Good idea

> We definitely need a stricter review of projects and the participants before
> projects are settled on, this was painfully evident last year when more than
> one project never even made it off the ground.

The two that didn't start at all just appeared to be both deeply over
their heads.  The third project seemed more of a time budgeting issue
(admittedly this is all very much a spectators view :) ).

>  I dont see why an online
> interview and/or submitted resume would be unreasonable except for the
> obvious review process rerquired of the organisers.

Last year I got the impression that contacting the projects prior to
acceptance seemed discouraged, but apparently from the FAQ it is okay.

>  That said, limiting
> participants to only those with past experience kinda defeats the purpose,
> and should probably be avoided.

Agreed - last year we seemed to have 1/3rd were experienced blender
coders, a few were newbies, and a few were blenderhead lurkers.

> I think this year our mentors also need to be far more involved. I'm not
> saying they weren't great last year, but I heard from more than one other
> person that they were having problems contacting mentors or timezone issues
> or whatever.  I understand life always gets in the way of best made pans,
> but in essence the mentors need to make the same committment that the
> participants do.

Yep good point, that is something that the Sunday meetings will
definitely facilitate.  Pretty much all potential mentors attend the
Sunday meetings regularly.  A slight issue though making the meetings
mandatory is that for Aussies the time is really bad, and I'm sure
other locations it will be too.

> In the lead up to SoC, and after the 'start gun', I really think there
> should be a couple of coder lead workshops to help familiarise people with
> the Blender codebase, where to find things, how to get it compiling
> efficiently, how to get it compiling debug builds, style guidlines, what to
> do/what not to do....and all the rest, you get the general idea.

I may have mentioned it before, but I'd like to do 'coder
documentation' days similar to how we have 'bug tracker' and 'patch
tracker' days for after Sunday meetings.  The suggestion wasn't with
SoC in mind, but that gives an added incentive to do so.

LetterRip