Re: GSoC project mentors

["Shawn O. Pearce" <spearce@spearce.org>]

Alex Riesen <raa.lkml@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/9/07, Shawn O. Pearce <spearce@spearce.org> wrote:
> >Committing oneself to being on IRC is a time commitment, isn't it?
> >:-)
> 
> yes, but it is a smaller one. And the suggestion was to commit to specific
> date and time.
> 
> >IRC time is difficult for me; I do hang out there more often than
> >I used to now that the community is doing the same, but I spend
> >a good part of my week working from a network where IRC access
> >isn't allowed.
> 
> Me too. But I would gladly spent some time on IRC when I'm home,
> which usually is after 20:00 CET. Especially if I promised to.

Looking at the way other successful projects have worked with GSoC,
it seems to really pay to have a couple of mentors per student.
The students don't always reach out to the mailing list right away
when they don't understand something or are seeking feedback on
an approach, as they might be shy or might be afraid of getting
flamed by one of the "old hands".  This is where having accessible
mentors comes in nicely, as the mentor can help the student frame
their message and get it into the public forum.  Likewise having
more than one mentor gives the student somewhere to turn when one
of the mentors takes a week of vacation.

Most of our projects do have more than one mentor listed now (thanks
guys!).  As our group's coordinator I intend on trying to make sure
every project has at least two mentors assigned to it and actively
participating with the student.  But given the way our community
works, I fully expect the whole community to be involved as patches
are posted and discussed on the mailing list.  Students need to be
interacting with all of us on git@vger, not just their mentors.

Having a fairly consistent presence on IRC would also be good.
I'm not quite sure yet how I'm personally going to do that this
summer scheduling wise, but I think it would be good if we can
have a few individuals on #git on a regularly scheduled basis.
I'd love to see you there, along with some of our other regulars.

-- 
Shawn.