Interesting post! I agree with the idea of contributing even if not for GSoC :)
K. Honsali On 29/03/2008, Grant Ingersoll <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Just thought I would mention a couple of things about GSOC. > > First, thanks to all for the interest. It is great to see ML alive > and well in universities. We have several good applications already. > Since the ASF is only alloted a certain number of picks, we go through > an internal ranking process to decide which projects get them (they > try to spread them out over many projects). So, while we have 4 > willing mentors, it doesn't necessarily mean we will get that many > students. > > However, to go along with that I would encourage all students to go > through their proposals and make sure they can fill in details about > their plans as much as possible, as well as their bios, etc. Also, > please don't be shy about discussing your plans here. One of the > requirements of doing this project is going to be to interact with > your mentor and the community. > > Finally, I would certainly like to encourage those who don't get > selected to stick around and contribute. I am sure others in the > community can vouch for this: being an active contributor/committer to > a project like this is a real edge when it comes to getting a job > doing what you want to do. Think about being in a job interview for a > ML company and saying, yeah: I contributed algorithm X to Mahout which > was used to by Y on a 100 node cluster, or I contributed these 10 > patches to Mahout plus I'm an active discussion participant, go look > it up. It gives potential employers an incredible track record to > review and shows you know how to get along with others in a "work" > environment. > > At any rate, enough of the pep talk. Good luck to you all, I look > forward to evaluating the ideas! > > Cheers, > > Grant >
