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 <[email protected]> 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 - [email protected] - www.blender.org > Chairman Blender Foundation, Director Blender Institute > Entrepotdok 57A, 1018 AD, Amsterdam, the Netherlands > > _______________________________________________ > Bf-committers mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers > _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list [email protected] https://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
