[Bf-committers] GSoC mentor summit

[Davis Sorenson]

Re: Universities not knowing about GSoC, I would be happy to put up posters
advertising Blender's GSoC at local universities, if someone would make one.

On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 9:18 PM, Ton Roosendaal <ton at blender.org> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Last week I attended the Google Summer of Code Mentor summit.
> 149 orgs, 320-something people attended. It took place at Google's Tech
> Corners, a new campus in Sunnyvale.
>
> I attended a couple of sessions, but most of the time I spent meeting with
> all the other open source organisations out here. It was great to talk with
> developers from VLC (they love our movies, want 3D stereo 4k movie, I asked
> for better frame stepping and scrubbing) Inkscape (small team, stable sw,
> they need OSX coder), Appleseed render (mostly Max/Maya users,
> photorealistic focus), FreeCAD (we should work with them on 1-click export
> from FreeCad to Eevee), Samba, Libre Office (they work on a Google docs
> version), KDE, Python (next year 3.0 will be really official!), FFmpg
> (Blender should upgrade to latest they say), Django, Zulip Chat
> (interesting hybrid of chat+forum+mail), etc etc.
>
> Blender is well regarded and well known in FOS circles. I met with several
> Blender users there, even one who supported the "free Blender" campaign in
> 2002!
>
> In general our own experience with GSoC is quite similar to what other
> orgs had. Some notes:
>
> - In average it looks like our GSoC projects are too complex. It can also
> be more simple like "dive in module X, bring it back to spec (+ update API
> docs) and solve or find the bugs".
> - Good students will always find things to do anyway. A simpler project
> definition can easily lead to bigger projects - students get paid for their
> time, not the target.
> - Many orgs had problems finding good students. Still a lot of noise from
> fake proposals come in.
> - Universities (especially with specialist departments) are not much aware
> of GSoC, or not aware that students can do specialist work with highly
> qualified mentors.
> - Next time, the moment you get slots we should immediately assign
> students. You can always swap or release. It's a bit of a game now - the
> first org who picks a student will get it (students are not allowed to
> know).
> - Efficient spending of mentor time is essential. Don't mentor a student
> when you could code it all yourself like in a few days.
> - One org (forgot who) had an interesting mentoring approach. "We don't
> take any initiative ourselves - we wait for what the student comes with. If
> the student doesn't convince us in the first month, we just don't pass
> him/her.
>
> Feedback sessions with Google's open source office:
> - In 2018, a student can submit max 3 proposals. Might give less noise.
> - Good on-boarding for free/open source projects is essential. It's not a
> part of GSoC to have students work on that, but it's a crucial feature for
> a successful GSoC. Google checks on ways to support orgs with this.
> - Tip for the ideas page: intro video(s)! You know, modern times, people
> don't read :)
> - Assigning two or three mentors per student is much appreciated
>
> Our main action point for a successful 2018 GSoC would be to have an
> active campaign targeted at universities with strong CG education (to
> attract phd students too). And as second action point to already start
> recruiting now - students who are currently getting involved should be
> aware of the GSoC opportunity.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Ton-
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Ton Roosendaal  -  ton at blender.org   -   www.blender.org
> Chairman Blender Foundation, Director Blender Institute
> Entrepotdok 57A, 1018 AD, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
>
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