On Tue, Mar 26, 2013 at 9:37 AM, Ondřej Čertík <[email protected]> wrote: > On Tue, Mar 19, 2013 at 1:23 AM, Aaron Meurer <[email protected]> wrote: >> The application period for organizations has opened for GSoC 2013. The >> deadline is next friday, the 29th (http://goo.gl/xmQMJ). >> >> I have updated the wiki page >> (https://github.com/sympy/sympy/wiki/GSoC-2013-Ideas) with this year's >> questions. I have not yet gone through the answers, except for trivial >> moving of stuff that changed in the questions this year. If you have >> time, please go through and make whatever edits you see fit. >> >> Two things of note: >> >> - For PyDy, what are your plans? We can vouch for you (see the last >> question), so we need to know. >> >> - The only significant change to the questions from last year is that >> last year there was the question, "What steps will you take to >> encourage students to interact with your project's community before, >> during and after the program?", and this year there are the two >> questions, "What steps will you take to encourage students to interact >> with your project's community before and during the program?" and >> "What will you do to encourage that your accepted students stick with >> the project after Google Summer of Code concludes?". In other words, >> the "after the program" part is now a separate question. I therefore >> think it's safe to assume that Google is putting a focus on this >> aspect this year. So I think we should expand that part, and also >> discuss here some things that we can do to improve in that area >> (because we're not perfect). >> >> Does anyone want to gather some statistics on this? My experience is >> that each year, about 50% of the students disappear after GSoC, 25% >> stay around for a few months, and about 25% stay around for longer. >> >> On thing that I think is important for this is the stuff that is >> discussed in the answer to the first question, namely, making sure >> that the students are active in the community. In 2011, we made a >> conscious effort do to this for all students, so my hope is that the >> statistics will show this. Based on what I remember, it did make a >> huge difference. > > In 2012, we had 5 students. Based on commits in sympy, two students > had last commit in August, the other two in December (so they stuck > for a few months), and one stayed till now. > > In 2011, we had 9 students. 2 had last commits in August, > 2 in october or september, and the rest 5 stayed pretty much till now. > > Aaron, could you write what things we did differently in 2011? We > need to put this into the application.
I'm not sure if we did anything significantly different between 2011 and 2012. Honestly, I think 2011 was just a good year for us. We got good students and a lot of slots (and the mentors to handle them). 2012 was closer to what I would expect the norm to be (and I would roughly expect it to be this year). One thing I don't remember very well from 2011, with a few exceptions, is how much the students did before acceptance. Maybe we should look into that, and see if there are any correlations (e.g., how many patches did they submit, how many mailing list threads did they participate in, how many issue discussions did they participate in, how active were they on IRC). That wouldn't really tell us anything to do, except for how to pick students who are more likely to stick around. Picking students is important, but we should also think of things that we can do during and after the program to encourage the students to stick around. I think that the focus on making the students be active in the community that we started in 2011 has helped with this, but I also think we can do more. As I was telling Ondrej privately, the biggest issue is that once GSoC ends and the school year starts up again, students become busy and don't have time to work with SymPy, even if they want to. But usually they are free again in the winter and especially the next summer (how do winter breaks work in non-US countries?). So we should think of ways of encouraging the students to become active again during those times. My suggestion was to ask them to help with GSoC. Certainly they can help to expand the ideas list, especially concerning what can be done to expand on their own projects. Maybe we should also ask old students to help us review GSoC applications, if they don't plan to apply again themselves (but let's be sure to make a distinction between reviewing applications and becoming mentors). Of the students who remained active from 2011, most became mentors, or at least helped review applications, in 2012. Maybe we should ask on the gsoc-mentors list for any advice from other orgs. Aaron Meurer > > Ondrej > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "sympy" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sympy?hl=en-US. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sympy" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sympy?hl=en-US. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
