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>>>>> "Viksit" == Viksit Gaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Viksit> Hullo! Sounds like an interesting idea. I had a couple of
Viksit> questions about it though - and as the discussion
Viksit> progressed on IRC with Raj, we thought it would be better
Viksit> to put it up on the list. Here goes:
[I'm OldMonk here]
Viksit> -- Begin Transcript --
Viksit> vIkSiT who're the mentors going to be, incidentally?
Viksit> OldMonk uh, whoever volunteers?
Viksit> vIkSiT ah. well, small bounties - should be possible I
Viksit> guess
Viksit> vIkSiT OldMonk, I thought there would be a pool of mentors
Viksit> vIkSiT people above suspicion in their involvement in
Viksit> FLOSS for non-nefarious purposes ;)
Viksit> OldMonk well, sort of... there's a list, and you put it up
Viksit> at a college, and see who's interested in working for whom
Viksit> OldMonk working with whom too.
Viksit> vIkSiT right. and are the projects established ones, or
Viksit> are students free to choose?
Viksit> OldMonk not necessarily, though we need some way to
Viksit> monitor quality and quaitity of inputs from the mentor
Expanding on this, I suggest we look into metrics and some sort of
weekly or fortnightly review by a body that determines whether the
mentor/student relationship is working or not. To take an extreme
example, a single case of a mentor not delivering what was promised
can result in too much bad publicity and possibly this whole project
coming to a stand still.
Viksit> vIkSiT as in - indlinux/karunakar or KDE/taj vs
Viksit> i-want-my-own-to-do-stuff project/i'd like to mentor?
Viksit> OldMonk students and mentors get together and choose
What I was thinking here off the top of my head was a meeting in the
college where the students and potential mentors get together. The
mentors can present their skill sets, the students can say what sort
of projects they're looking for and then break up into smaller groups
where a number of students gets together with a potential mentor and
thrashes out whether they can do a project together or not and the
details of the project.
Viksit> vIkSiT I see
Viksit> vIkSiT and these (internships?) will be a part of
Viksit> curricula?
Viksit> OldMonk final decision has to be student's -- no point
Viksit> forcing someone to do a project in which she doesn't see
Viksit> value
Viksit> OldMonk no internships discussed yet
Viksit> vIkSiT sure - but how would you get edu-institutions to
Viksit> see straight?
Viksit> OldMonk i suggest you bring these questions up on the
Viksit> list, so we can document and clean up the idea.
Viksit> -- End transcript --
Viksit> Right. And further...
>> who are willing to act as mentors to send an email to this list
>> describing what FOSS area they are willing to mentor students
>> in, the number of hours/ week that they are willing to
>> volunteer
Viksit> What kind of mentorship is being looked at here? Draw out
Viksit> differences between mentors vs tutors. Do the mentors help
Viksit> in dev work, or ideas? Once a project is done, who shares
Viksit> the credits in these 2 areas? Does a mentor only give
Viksit> advice in his own area of specialization, or .. ?
The ownership must be attributed to the students, with credit being
given to the mentors. Since the project is FLOSS, who gets copyright
isn't that important, and the students will be doing most of the work
anyway.
>> work for such a program would also involve things like going
>> around to local colleges, and talking to teachers in order to
>> get them to accept such FOSS projects.
Viksit> Wait. Mentors should be put into a pool, endorsed by
Viksit> whatever partner organizations - that gives them a
Viksit> pedestal to stand on and be able to convince (often
Viksit> narrowminded) teachers and professors about the benefits
Viksit> and scope of such a program.
>> to involve similar projects by companies like Redhat, Novell,
>> etc.?
Viksit> Companies would step in to develop their own agendas. I
Viksit> think company sponsorship for the program itself can be
Viksit> looked at - something like RedHat's Lord of the Code (?)
Viksit> challenge, where a number of projects through this program
Viksit> might be evaluated with the same criteria as theirs (or
Viksit> even go through the first selection stage).
I'd be a bit wary of that, since then the projects and skill sets that
don't interest these organisations would tend to get less focus.
Bounties should be independent of desirability of a project by a
commercial organisation.
>> How about mentoring students in remote areas via an online
>> forum?
Viksit> IMO, It wouldnt work. Mentoring would need atleast some
Viksit> time together between the 2 individuals such that they can
Viksit> understand who and what they're dealing with. Online
Viksit> forums may of course be used for help question s and
Viksit> interactions, so that participants know how the respective
Viksit> teams are faring.
I agree that you need face to face interaction for mentoring to work.
>> (b) Problems likely to crop up at the end of colleges: How are
>> students assigned credit, how are examiners familiarized with
>> the FOSS development process, what resources can students
>> expect to draw upon and what extra work will they be expected
>> to do on their own.
Viksit> My original question - does this become some part of a
Viksit> project which people do at college? Otherwise, the whole
Viksit> effort may just as well fizzle out since people would be
Viksit> looking to cram for exams rather than contribute code to
Viksit> an open source project. Resources wise - colleges can be
Viksit> extrememly constricting. As some people were discussing on
Viksit> IRC, computer access is rather limited, and so is web
Viksit> access. These would be major areas to be looked
Viksit> at. Otherwise - books, and a cd-burner are all that would
Viksit> be required initially.
>> (c) Mentor expectations: Should they be paid? If so, would that
>> be a nominal sum, or market rates? If unpaid, how are mentors
>> held to their commitments?
Viksit> Paying mentors - good idea, which can work both for and
Viksit> against this venture. As for rates, there has to be
Viksit> consensus between the mentors themselves. I would also
Viksit> suggest a small bounty/internship for the students
Viksit> themselves, which would give an incentive to them to
Viksit> participate.
Mentors should get Rs. 5 to form a binding commitment. OK, maybe not
Rs 5, but some nominal amount to seal the contract and make it legal.
IMO mentoring must not be viewed as a revenue stream, since that would
eventually lead to mentoring quantity at the expense of quality.
Stipends or bounties for students, on the other hand, sounds like a
good idea -- bribe the buggers into doing FLOSS! :)
>> Should there be provision for a phase-in period within which
>> either side could decide to drop the collaboration for whatever
>> reason?
Viksit> No. If this is either a)Paid, b)part of a university
Viksit> project, its upto the mentor and the student to see it
Viksit> through, even if there isn't a definite conclusion of any
Viksit> sort - a partially working application is far better (and
Viksit> leaves scope for improvement) than something which doesnt
Viksit> exist at all.
What Gora meant here (as I see it, and I agree with it) is, the
phase-in period would allow you to terminate the project if there was
a major misunderstanding between the mentor and the students on either
the scope of the project or the relationship. If after 2 weeks, say,
the student and the mentor discover that they had been talking at
cross-purposes all along, or too broad or narrow in scope, they should
have the opportunity to withdraw gracefully and do another project,
perhaps with a different mentor.
Would love to see more discussion on this project.
Regards,
- -- Raju
- --
Raj Mathur [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://kandalaya.org/
GPG: 78D4 FC67 367F 40E2 0DD5 0FEF C968 D0EF CC68 D17F
It is the mind that moves
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