Summer of Code: Call for mentors/help

It's that time of year again!

Google's Summer of Code program is happening again this
year, and a  
few of us are actively working on getting our preliminary
stuff  
together to make this a huge success.

Like last year, our goal is to have 2 mentors available per
student.  
This has the following advantages:
- People can take vacations without leaving the student
"stranded"  
for a week.
- If you don't know the answer to something, chances are
your counter- 
part will.
- It eases the time burden on both mentors because it's
split between  
two people.
- Students always have someone to turn to for help.
- It shows Google that we're very committed to student
success.

However, there are currently only 25 mentors signed up to
the SoC  
mentors group: http://gro
ups.drupal.org/soc-2007-mentors. That means  
we could only handle a maximum of 12 students, which is
fewer than  
last year. :( And that assumes that everyone in the group is
able to  
be a mentor for whatever projects end up getting accepted.
Ideally,  
I'd love to see this number up around 50, with a diverse
range of  
skills, backgrounds, and experiences so we have all of our
bases  
covered.

So please, if you have knowledge in a particular area of
Drupal (such  
as image/file handling), a particular skillset (AJAX was
really hot  
last year, for example), feel comfortable enough to be a
"backup"  
mentor, or just plain want to help students succeed,
*please* sign up  
for the group and help us out! You can request a
subscription here:  
http://gro
ups.drupal.org/og/subscribe/2741 ... in "Additional
 
details" please specify what your area of expertise is,
what project  
proposals (if any) you see yourself being able to mentor,
and whether  
you think you have time to be a primary or secondary
mentor.

Now. What if you don't see yourself able to act in a
'mentor'  
capacity, but still want to help? For example, you're a
Drupal  
developer just kind of getting your feet wet, or you're
experienced  
with Drupal but waaayyyy too busy to take on mentoring
duties. Great  
news, you can still help! 

a) The Drupal Dojo folks are actively working on a
"Getting started  
with Drupal development" guide, which will help new SoC
students (and  
all other developers new to the project) become acquainted
with  
Drupal and its architecture more quickly. You can help with
that over  
here: http://docs.drupaldojo.org/getting-started-with-drupal- 
development - this is something that new developers in
particular can  
be extremely helpful in, because you guys know best what
tripped you  
up as you were learning, and can read the resulting text to
determine  
if it's still confusing.

b) We still need A LOT of help creating decent project
proposals:  
http://drupal.org/node
/110704. Proposals need to be:
- properly defined, including a list of deliverables. See
for example  
http://drupal.org/node/
121112
- realistically scoped, so that they can be completed in 3
months by  
someone who might know nothing about Drupal. See http://drupal.org/ 
node/120260
- do-able by a student. This means no crazy stuff like
"Security  
audit all of core and contrib" or "rewrite the
entire file API."
- interesting and beneficial to students... we don't want
them doing  
"grunt work" if at all possible... mention career
and academic  
benefits outside of Drupal that the student will gain for
working on  
the project.
- have some kind of code as a deliverable. We can't have
proposals  
that are about just creating documentation or researching
into a  
certain thing.

Providing you can spec your project idea out within these
parameters,  
this is a big chance to get someone interested in whatever
personal  
Drupal itch you have to scratch.

Sorry, that got really long. :P In summary:

- We need help with Summer of Code!
- If you know a lot about something, please sign up to be a
mentor:  
http://gro
ups.drupal.org/og/subscribe/2741
- If you have great ideas, please write a good project
proposal:  
http://drupal.org/node
/110704.
- If you are a good teacher or a newbie, please help with
writing  
beginner docs for developers: http://docs.drupa
ldojo.org/getting- 
started-with-drupal-development

Also if possible, be relatively quick about it. ;) I'd like
to have  
all of our mentor names and most of our project proposals
nailed down  
by March 1.

Thanks!!
-Angie

> "Security  audit all of core"

For the records: someone DID submit that as a proposal.

Karoly Negyesi responds:
>> "Security  audit all of core"
> For the records: someone DID submit that as a
proposal.

But if the proposal was to "improve coder security
review", this would be
do-able by a student and would be a BIG benefit to the
community.  

I'd add to the proposal to "write coder performance
review" -
http://drupal.org/node
/121388.

Neither of these are huge projects.  I've laid the framework
with coder.
Each review would personally take me a couple days (a week
tops), and (I
would think) by a supervised student less than the allotted
three months.

Doug Green
904-583-3342
www.civicactions.com
 
Changing the world one node at a time!

-----Original Message-----
From: development-bouncesdrupal.org
[mailto:development-bouncesdrupal.org]
On Behalf Of Karoly Negyesi
Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2007 9:17 AM
To: developmentdrupal.org
Subject: Re: [development] Summer of Code: Call for
mentors/help

> "Security  audit all of core"

For the records: someone DID submit that as a proposal.

So 40 paragraphs of text and Heine pointed out that I forgot
to  
mention what being a mentor involves. ;)

Being a mentor means:
- You have an active interest and skillset in a given
project / area.
- You're available for students to ask questions to, to do
code  
reviews, to help with scoping, etc. (on average, 5-10 hours
per week)
- You're checking up on students to make sure they're
progressing,  
and offering to help when they're not.
- You're keeping in contact with the rest of the mentors and
project  
administrators if there are any problems.
- You're filling in all the various reports required by
Google on time.
- You're nice, and patient, and want to help students
succeed. 

Thanks a lot to the folks who've already signed up for
mentoring and  
hope to see even more!
-Angie