How to track/rank/accept mentor proposals

[Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>]

How should we track mentees proposals and mentors willingness to mentor them?

Whilst we have one or two mentees trickling in it will be fine to
handle each one individually, but once we get geared up to put out a
general PR call we are likely to get a number of requests and it will
become hard for us to manage. Bear in mind that GSoC experience shows
that around 80% of proposals are not acceptabel and will find no
mentor. We need a fast and efficient way of clearing proposals through
this initial stage before we start bothering potential mentors with
them.

Some suggestions:

- Text file in SVN (manually intensive but supremely flexible with
respect to our evolving process)
- Online Spreadsheet (manually intensive but supremely flexible with
respect to our evolving process)
- Melange, Googles open source webapp for GSoC (efficient for admins,
predefined process, although it is configurable)
- Custom built (effort on our part, but allows us to have what we want)
- ????

I suggest we ought to be thinking about an immediate solution now and
a solution for use in our first major push which Kathey is hoping to
do after the GSoC students are assigned in April.

Ross


-- 
Ross Gardler

OSS Watch - supporting open source in education and research
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk

Re: How to track/rank/accept mentor proposals

[Ross Gardler <ro...@googlemail.com>]

2009/12/2 Kathey Marsden <km...@sbcglobal.net>:
> Gert Vanthienen wrote:
>>
>> Next to the options mentioned, another option to consider might be
>> JIRA: for tracking/ranking incoming proposals, we could just create an
>> issue per proposal and use comments on the issue (where we can set the
>> "viewable by" field for some of the comments)?
>>
>>
>
> I think this is the best short term option. I don't really think there will
> be a ranking  for acceptance as the applications will be staggered and I
> think as long as we get a mentor willing to accept the proposal, it will
> probably go through. Jira is light weight, easy to use and maintain. We can
> have a component for proposals.

+1 for JIRA to start with. we can create a workflow and custom fields.
It'll also mean the first step of being mentored is to figure out
submitting an issue.

Unless anyone objects I'll add a note to the application instructions.


-- 
Ross Gardler

OSS Watch - supporting open source in education and research
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk

Re: How to track/rank/accept mentor proposals

[Ross Gardler <ro...@googlemail.com>]

2009/12/2 Kathey Marsden <km...@sbcglobal.net>:
> Gert Vanthienen wrote:
>>
>> Next to the options mentioned, another option to consider might be
>> JIRA: for tracking/ranking incoming proposals, we could just create an
>> issue per proposal and use comments on the issue (where we can set the
>> "viewable by" field for some of the comments)?
>>
>>
>
> I think this is the best short term option. I don't really think there will
> be a ranking  for acceptance as the applications will be staggered and I
> think as long as we get a mentor willing to accept the proposal, it will
> probably go through. Jira is light weight, easy to use and maintain. We can
> have a component for proposals.

+1 for JIRA to start with. we can create a workflow and custom fields.
It'll also mean the first step of being mentored is to figure out
submitting an issue.

Unless anyone objects to using JIRA I'll add a note to the application
proposal page.

Ross


-- 
Ross Gardler

OSS Watch - supporting open source in education and research
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk

Re: How to track/rank/accept mentor proposals

[Kathey Marsden <km...@sbcglobal.net>]

Gert Vanthienen wrote:
> Next to the options mentioned, another option to consider might be
> JIRA: for tracking/ranking incoming proposals, we could just create an
> issue per proposal and use comments on the issue (where we can set the
> "viewable by" field for some of the comments)?
>
>   
I think this is the best short term option. I don't really think there 
will be a ranking  for acceptance as the applications will be staggered 
and I think as long as we get a mentor willing to accept the proposal, 
it will probably go through. Jira is light weight, easy to use and 
maintain. We can have a component for proposals.

Re: How to track/rank/accept mentor proposals

[Gert Vanthienen <ge...@gmail.com>]

L.S.,

I'm not entirely sure which parts of the track/rank/accept process are
private and which are public?  e.g. Is there anything private to the
proposals themselves and, once accepted, the names of the mentors
assigned to them?  If not, I think we should be using the wiki for as
many of the public bits as possible, to show people what's going on
with community.apache.org.

I can imagine you want to keep some privacy to the ranking process.
Next to the options mentioned, another option to consider might be
JIRA: for tracking/ranking incoming proposals, we could just create an
issue per proposal and use comments on the issue (where we can set the
"viewable by" field for some of the comments)?

Regards,

Gert Vanthienen
------------------------
Open Source SOA: http://fusesource.com
Blog: http://gertvanthienen.blogspot.com/



2009/12/1 Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>:
> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> wrote:
>> ...- Text file in SVN (manually intensive but supremely flexible with
>> respect to our evolving process)...
>
> Probably the best solution to start with, but if we need to keep this
> (and/or mentees applications) confidential we might need a specific
> SVN setup.
>
> -Bertrand
>

Re: How to track/rank/accept mentor proposals

[Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 4:32 PM, Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> wrote:
> ...- Text file in SVN (manually intensive but supremely flexible with
> respect to our evolving process)...

Probably the best solution to start with, but if we need to keep this
(and/or mentees applications) confidential we might need a specific
SVN setup.

-Bertrand

Re: How to track/rank/accept mentor proposals

[Ted Dunning <te...@gmail.com>]

This option seems a bit better than the text file in SVN.  I believe that
Google spreadsheets allow enough fine grained access control.

The virtue here is that spreadsheets provide a bit more native organization
than a file.

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 7:32 AM, Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> wrote:

> ...
> - Online Spreadsheet (manually intensive but supremely flexible with
> respect to our evolving process)
>