On 15/12/2010 17:27, hareendra seneviratne wrote:
Thank you very much for your detailed and accurate reply. I'm really
encouraged.
Certainly, I’d like to explore the OpenSE. Please do introduce me to a
teaching assistant there.
Apologies for the slow response - it's been a busy time.
I will introduce you offlist to one of the OpenSE folk. Although it is
just coming into holiday season so don't expect much to happen until
January.
The first question is what are your skills?
I do developments in my work place, but mostly ad-hoc coding. I need to
improve my coding skills. - J2EE. I don't say I'm a bullet programmer,
but with some guidance and mentoring I'm sure I'll be able to get there.
No need to worry about your skills - everyone starts somewhere (I'm no
rock star programmer, trust me).
The most important thing is to be able to work with people and seek out
solutions to your problems. That is, your mentors will certainly point
you in the right direction but you need to do your homework to figure
out the details. Mentors are not here to teach you to programme, they
are here to help you understand the project and the community.
All our Java projects are listed at
http://projects.apache.org/indexes/language.html#Java
There's an incomplete list of J2EE related projects at
http://projects.apache.org/indexes/category.html#javaee
Take a look through those projects and see if any look interesting.
The second is what do you want to learn from an ASF community?
I want to know how to contribute open source projects. I want to learn by
doing.
Then you are a perfect candidate!
Ross
I want to take the first step.
:)
Hareendra
On Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 3:30 PM, Ross Gardler<rgard...@apache.org> wrote:
On 15/12/2010 04:05, hareendra seneviratne wrote:
Hi,
I recently graduated in MIS and willing to learn and contribute to the
community as a Software Engineer. From where can I start?
Three options, ranging in formality, least formal first:
You can do this informally, just find a project you are interested in and
start chatting with the devs to match your skills to their needs. Pros - you
get involved quicker, cons - it can be difficult to just start running like
this
You can work with us here to find the project that is most likely to suit
your needs and get an intro from us to your chosen project. Pros - for some
this feels more comfortable Cons - we don't know all the projects intimately
so we may not make the perfect match. We are just volunteers so this is not
the fastest option.
You can approach the OpenSE.net project as an independent learner where you
will have access to teaching assistants who are paid to help guide you. Pros
- always someone there to help you regardless of your needs. You'll be
amongst many others in the same position as you, all facing the same issues
and concerns. You'll still be working with the same mentors, but will have
peers and TAs to help outside of the ASF. Cons - this project is in its
first pilot run and is still learning how to do it.
[Note - If you would like to explore the OpenSE route then it's useful to
know that I'm a part of the OpenSE project and will be happy to introduce
you to one of the teaching assistants there]
What are the
projects or opportunuies available for me?
All the ASF projects continually mentor newcomers to their community. All
we are doing is providing a guided route into those communities.
The first question is what are your skills?
The second is what do you want to learn from an ASF community?
Once you've answered those you can start on one of the three routes above.
More friendly faces and some guidance needed. :)
You'll find plenty of those in the ASF.
Ross
On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 7:33 PM, Ross Gardler<rgard...@apache.org> wrote:
On 14/12/2010 12:11, florent andré wrote:
Hi Ross,
I'm interested in for the Lenya project.
But I'm just a commiter and I ask myself if I can be a mentor for such a
program ?
For sure, I could be a "friendly face" ! :)
"just a committer"? That means you know how the project works and have
commit access to the repo, so yes, you are certainly able to be a mentor.
Being a "friendly face" is a significant bonus.
Ross
cced d...@lenya
++
On 12/14/2010 10:25 AM, Ross Gardler wrote:
Below is the text of a mail I sent to the PMCs last night. Copied here
for information:
Over the next few weeks your project may be approached by students
participating in a European Commission funded project called OpenSE
[1].
These students will be looking for GSoC style mentors in open source
projects.
The headline info you need is:
* Mentors will not need to commit as much time as they do to GSoC
* The student/mentor relationship should be largely the same as any
other relationship with someone new to your project
* Students will, in general, work on existing issues in your project,
but some may come with their own ideas
* All work by the student should be managed and recorded using your
projects normal workflow
* Students will not be full time on the project
* Students will not be paid
* Students will have external support from teachers and teaching
assistants
The key message for your project community is that this activity should
present minimal additional overhead to your normal community support
activities.
Having said that, there are a few additional, but small, tasks we ask
you to perform during the course of a mentored project:
* acknowledge your agreement to mentor a student
* provide a brief evaluation of the students activities half way
through
the project cycle (around 6 weeks in most cases)
* provide a brief evaluation of the students activities at the end of
the project cycle (around 12 weeks in most cases)
Each of these activities is recorded in a JIRA issue in the ComDev
project. This issue will be created by the student during the
application process.
It is important to stress that we are not asking mentors to take any
responsibility for the success of the students work. All we ask is that
you act as a "friendly face" within your community and provide brief
evaluations as described above.
Unlike in GSoC these students will (in most cases) be doing this work
as
part of their formal education. All students will have external tutors
and teaching assistants helping them. Therefore, you should only need
to
help them with their direct contributions to your project (design, code
review, applying patches etc.)
Unlike in GSoC students will not be working full time on their projects
and thus the overhead on mentors will be considerably less.
The Community Development project is encouraging and supporting this
activity in an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach
to
helping students understand open source development whilst bringing
some
valued patches to our projects.
You can find some more information about the mentoring programme (which
will evolve in response to experiences and feedback in this experiment)
at http://community.apache.org/mentoringprogramme.html
If you have any questions please mail dev@community.apache.org (or if
you explicitly want to seek out students for your project).
If you agree to mentor a student all we ask is that you also subscribe
to the dev@community.apache.org list (it's low traffic) and touch base
with us now and again to let us know how things are going.
Ross
On behalf of the Community Development Project
[1] http://opense.net/
--
rgard...@apache.org
@rgardler
