GSoC 2016 will start up soon. Is anyone thinking about being a mentor?
Things I've learnt:
* Any mentor needs to be aware of the time commitment to achieve
a good output. Plan for several hours a week.
* Students should state before the project acceptance how much time they
will be committing to the work and when. Some gaps in the schedule
are reasonable but they must be known about in advance of the project.
* Insist on good communication with regular emails (several a week)
from the start. If that breaks down, it is due cause for failing
the project early. From looking across the whole programme, it
rarely gets fixed and it costs you, the mentor, a lot to wasted time.
* There is a small amount of cynical "gaming" of the system.
* Again from across the programme, not Jena or ASF, there have been
some truly amazing excuses!
Last year, the GOSoC project needed a significant amount of my time as
backup. I won't have that time available this year. I am not planning on
mentoring either.
Andy
