Attendees: Alyssa, Mark, Harsh, Sam, Vandit, Kris, Sofia, Loghi, Dheeraj, Ashutosh, Mukul, Sayantan, Lakshmi, Giri, Jagruti, Sofia, Utsav, Saeid, Saarthak, Rahul, Freyam, Mahmoud Galal, Jean-Marc
Agenda & Notes:
- What about the ideas that have been withdrawn from the project? Communication
- See the announcement of the withdrawal
- Guidance on project plans
- Kris didn’t see any clear patterns of mistakes that were being made in plans
- Proposals are longer this year (good thing), more detailed, more thought from candidates
- Times when details were incorrect or imperfect, review comments trying to correct those
- General message from Jean-Marc
- Not an easy decision to withdraw an idea, wanted to do it as early as we could
- Allow potential contributors to propose another idea
- Balancing the timing of that decision
- Reasoning behind the decision
- Respect the time and effort from contributors
- Assure the contributor has best chance of success with strong mentors
- If you need further discussion, Jean-Marc is happy to meet for additional discussion
- Happy to meet by Zoom with one at a time or in small group as needed
- Want to make this a positive experience for all
- Email to Jean-Marc to request a meeting time if you’d like
- Question from Mukul - if people review and comment on the work of others and use good ideas from others, won’t that make all the proposals almost the same?
- Jean-Marc answers that it is a help to others when we give comments
- Also provides new ideas that we can copy (much as nature copies working organisms)
- Allow you to extend that idea to even better ideas
- Did you understand the problem to solve?
- Pull requests give practical experience with the project and the specific idea
- Not a university grading process, this is an open, collaborative process that intentionally shows ideas to others
- Question from Saarthak Maini - What are the best practices which I can follow while communicating with mentors, project maintainers and the community members in general?
- Be respectful - have empathy for the people involved (GSoC is not our whole life)
- Accept that answers may not be immediate, ping again after a day or two
- Fear not - others are experienced but not unapproachable - don’t hesitate to ask questions
- A question that you have but do not ask does not help you and does not help others who silently have the same question
- Be more verbose - “It doesn’t work” is not nearly enough. Mentors can’t help if they can’t see what you are seeing. Good technical communication matters very much
- Apply your own due diligence - when asking for help, do research yourself
- Google search is your friend, use it to help
- The jenkins.io site is your friend, search it
- Be respectful - have empathy for the people involved (GSoC is not our whole life)
- Question from Saarthak Maini - What are some of the steps which I can take as a mentee to make it easier for the mentors to guide me in this period?
- Be patient - accept that it may take a day or two to get an answer
- Due dili
- Question from Sam - If more than one candidate is interested in a project idea, how do you choose the contributor among the candidates?
- In preparation phase, drafting the plans, refining and improving
- By April 4, contributors submit final proposal
- Mentors review final proposals beginning April 4
- Will rank / give a score to each proposal (0 to 5)
- 0 - junk
- 5 - killer proposal, strong candidate, well explained, right goals and skills
- Independent grading by each of the mentors
- Will rank / give a score to each proposal (0 to 5)
- Org Admins review the proposals and the grading
- Org Admins organize a meeting with each project and mentoring team to decide
- Which is the best candidate for this project idea?
- What is the best mentoring team for this project idea?
- 7 running project ideas, 4 lead mentors
- Decided that we will limit lead mentor to only lead one project
- Will look holistically to choose the best projects and mentors for this year
- No more projects from the Jenkins project than we have lead mentors
- Decided that we will limit lead mentor to only lead one project
- Org Admins will submit the proposal from Jenkins to Google
- Org Admins will only propose projects that we are confident we can do well
- Question from Aditi - In the light of withdrawn ideas, how can I be of most help to my peers
- Great if you can help others
- Even better if you can submit a different proposal
- Question from Sofia - I was wondering if I can post my draft proposal in the Gitter channel even if there are some sections I’m still working on? I would like to get review from the sections I already have, also, my proposal has the possibility to be re-reviewed when finished? Or will be reviewed only once? (in this case, with some sections missing
- Yes, post links to your draft proposal
- Most mentors will look at your responses to their comments (love Google Docs)
- Post a reminder asking for a new review when major changes have been added
- Question from Sam - When I register the GSoC, there is a question I need to answer: Have you ever contributed to open source before? If I choose yes, I need to write a reason to explain why. It looks like GSoC prefer the people who haven’t contributed to any open source projects yet. Is it correct?
- GSoC program administrators want to avoid having people with lots of open source experience be the applicants
- Contributions to the Jenkins project while preparing for GSoC 2023 can be mentioned as what you’ve done as your open source contributions
- Question from Mukul - What do you think if my idea is great but I don’t have enough experience in that domain. I mean I know Jenkins but there are few things I still have to learn. So will it be considered? And what about if my Idea is bit fuzzy because of less knowledge what will you think of that?
- General advice - Jenkins project will choose people with the best ability to complete the project successfully
- OK if your understanding is fuzzy and incomplete, try it, learn from it, use it
- If not selected this year, continue learning, growing, and apply again in future
- Exercise the tasks, do the work so that you learn
- General advice - Jenkins project will choose people with the best ability to complete the project successfully
- Question from Mahmoud - How can I make my proposal to stand-out on the other candidate, as I got trust that I will be selected? does it matter to send the proposal early, or should I be late, at least to make the perfect one?
- Create the best proposal that you can. Stand out by doing the best work on your plan
- Understand the idea
- Follow the instructions
- Investigate the idea, create prototypes, fix bugs, submit pull requests
- Submission deadline is April 4, 2023
- Submissions are locked down only at April 4, 2023
- If there is an issue for one of the contributors with a submission, please notify Jean-Marc so that he can assist
- Create the best proposal that you can. Stand out by doing the best work on your plan
- Question from Mahmoud - does contributing to other open-source will be counted?
- Yes, an indicator of experience (interesting but not decisive)
- Jenkins wants our projects to succeed
- Question from Jagruti - How do I know when is the right time to submit my proposal on the GSoC portal? And the mentors have completed the reviews?
- Mentor review comments are visible in your document
- If a review happens without comments, that’s quite surprising
- Resolve the comment by changing the document
- A response to a comment is not as effective as a change in the document
- Dashboard shows review progress for proposals
- Mentor review comments are visible in your document