On 10/22/2012 10:53 PM, Tyler Romeo wrote: > I think it's a cool idea, especially considering I'm still kicking myself > for not getting involved in open-source earlier. The real problem is > deciding what to have them work on.
In my experience, it's pretty easy to find small tasks that new volunteers can work on, and GCI allows organizations to offer a variety of tasks of different types. The much harder problem is getting enough committed mentors. Google demands "less than a 36 hour turnaround for review of each completed task submitted by a student" - see https://code.google.com/p/google-code-in/wiki/GCIMentorInformation2012 . Other projects participating in GCI have reported that this can be burdensome. Also: if you want to help teenagers get involved in open source, we have teenagers *in the Wikimedia community already* whom you can mentor and ask to do tasks. And if outreach is the goal, you can make a huge long-term difference to teenagers in your city by teaching tutorials or leading hackathons at local schools and community centers. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Tutorials has materials you can pick up and use. And if you need funding to create events or attend them, check out https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Participation:Support and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index . Google Code-In is NOT our only way to get teens into open source and nurture them. -- Sumana Harihareswara Engineering Community Manager Wikimedia Foundation _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
