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Posted to dev@openoffice.apache.org by Ross Gardler <rg...@opendirective.com> on 2011/07/07 17:30:37 UTC
Easy tasks and mentoring
Over in another thread there has been some discussion of "easy tasks"
being identified to help newcomers find their way in the OOo project.
In the ASF the Community Development project works to make ASF
projects a little more accessible. Typically it's very scary for a
newcomer, regardless of their background. The ASF is a big place where
everyone seems to know one another.
Here at OOo we have a very big project with a deep and rich history.
the problem of attracting and engaging newcomers is probably even more
pronounced here.
One of the things we do is encourage projects to tag "easy tasks" in
their issue tracker.We also encourage projects to offer to mentor
people who want to tackle one of these tasks. Now an ASF project
community is should be mentoring newcomers anyway, so explicitly
stating a mentor is available for some tasks may seem strange. but we
have found that just having the words "mentor" associated with a
project task makes it more approachable.
Another benefit of doing this is that when it comes around to Google
Summer of Code time the project already has a bunch of tasks
identified that would be suitable for GSoC applications. The ASF has
been involved with GSoC since it first started., We usually get
between 35 and 50 projects, and most of them are successful. We've
even got a few ASF members who started life as GSoC students, became
committers and are now working across multiple projects.
So, i would encourage people to mark "easy tasks" that they would be
willing to help guide people on with a label of "mentor" (which means
ensuring questions from someone tacking the problem are answered, it
does not mean putting in so much effort you can have done the job
yourself in less time).
Finally, I'll repeat Rob's observations elsewhere. Easy tasks should
not be meaningless tasks. They should be real tasks that will add real
value to the project. Ask yourself, if it's easy and your not going to
do it yourself is it really necessary? There are plenty of tasks that
would be nice to have but not essential, these are good candidates for
mentored tasks.
Finally, I'd like to hear from the OOo education project. Are there
any existing programmes in the Oo.o community that we should work
with?
Ross
Re: Easy tasks and mentoring
Posted by Ross Gardler <rg...@opendirective.com>.
This all sounds wonderful. The ComDev project here simply pushes
people to the projects themselves. We don't provide specific mentors,
we just try and encourage people to take that first step by giving
some gentle guidance on what the first step should be.
The EducOOo project is much more organised and, as a result, seems to
be more successful. ComDev does well with GSoC but we've pretty much
failed to make it work in a broader sense (only a small number of
people have passed through ComDev). Even with a major EU project
specifically targeted at getting students into open source projects as
part of their formal CS courses we've not seen any significant uptake.
I believe it is because we don't provide things like OOoLight.
Until the code from OOo is here there is little we can do directly
with the project here, I'd be happy to explore this further and try
and bring our experience of running mentored projects through GSoC to
the great work you are doing for OOo.
Ross
On 8 July 2011 11:32, eric b <er...@free.fr> wrote:
> Hi Ross,
>
> Le 8 juil. 11 à 00:41, Ross Gardler a écrit :
>
>>>
>>> I'm not sure to fully understand. Can you explain more please ?
>>
>> Sure.
>>
>> When typing my email about encouraging the project to offer "easy tasks"
>> with mentors it occurred to me that the education project may already have
>> some efforts to help new developers become engaged with the project.
>
>
> Indeed, we are used to such easy tasks, and even more (me since 2006, and
> Education Project since end 2007). And I confirm, EducOOo would be glad to
> contribute (as I told Martin Hollmichell and Ingrid vdM privately)
>
> We use to work with students, and their schools, and we try to explain how
> we hacked the code online (yet on the wiki).
>
> Important : the OpenOffice.org developers often helped us, and they had a
> big role in the story too. Philipp Lohmann, Stephan Schaefer, Franck
> Schonheit, Thorsten Behrens, Stephan Bergmann, Herbert Düer, Mathias Bauer,
> Thomas Lange, and a lot of other Sun/Oracle devs were fantastic with us.
> Apologies for the one I forgot to mention :-/
>
> The initial idea was : instead of diving with boring QA, prefer have Fun
> with a forked version of OpenOffice.org, for instance OOo4Kids or OOoLight
> (no Java, 40% lighter than OpenOffice.org), and imagine new features, hack
> and so on.
>
> When the code desserves it, we propose it for integration (can be refused of
> course). OOo4Kids and OOoLight are LGPLv3, but we have no problem to
> relicense the code for Apache OpenOffice.org. The annotation mode, made by
> students from Ecole Centrale Nantes, and reverserd to OpenOffice.org
>
>
>
>> If that is the case then I obviously don't want to step on your existing
>> work through the ComDev work, I'd rather work with you to make the efforts
>> complimentary.
>
>
>
> There is place for all, and we'd be glad to work with you. FYI, I already
> contacted Martin Hollmichel in this sense, and he's preparing a list of
> tasks.
>
> The collaboration could start with developers able to work with us. e.g. one
> or two hour from time to time, join our IRC channel, and answer students
> questions, and so on, participate to IRC meetings, when designing a feature,
> and so on.
>
> We currently have 11 students from Epitech Paris who applied to EducOOo, for
> the period july to early december (yes, now ...). This is too much for us,
> because we have not the resources to mentor them all (5 for sure, max could
> be 6 or 7), but it would be great if other OpenOffice.org developers agree
> to join the effort ? (Any candidate to help us ?)
>
>
> More information on our list of schools who participated is available here
> -> http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/WelcomeStudents
>
> The features are proposed by teachers or the students, and when everybody
> agrees, we implement what we can. Once implemented, we explain the changes
> in the code, and put it online (our wiki). Some examples :
>
> New Start Center : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/NewStartCenterBehavior
> Toolbars and levels :
> http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/ToolbarsAndUserLevel
> New cursors : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/AddNewCursors
> Protected preferences :
> http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/PasswordProtectedPreferences (the page
> has been seen more than 27,000 times ... )
>
> + Online ClassRooms http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/ClassRooms
>
> and so on
>
> As you can see, the list of possibilities is very long, there is a lot to do
> with schools, and the Education Project + OpenOffice.org is really a good
> compromise to introduce FOSS.
>
>
> Regards,
> Eric Bachard
>
>>
>
> --
> qɔᴉɹə
> Education Project:
> http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Education_Project
> Projet OOo4Kids : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page
> L'association EducOOo : http://www.educoo.org
> Blog : http://eric.bachard.org/news
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
Ross Gardler (@rgardler)
Programme Leader (Open Development)
OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
Re: Easy tasks and mentoring
Posted by eric b <er...@free.fr>.
Hi Ross,
Le 8 juil. 11 à 00:41, Ross Gardler a écrit :
>>
>> I'm not sure to fully understand. Can you explain more please ?
>
> Sure.
>
> When typing my email about encouraging the project to offer "easy
> tasks" with mentors it occurred to me that the education project
> may already have some efforts to help new developers become engaged
> with the project.
Indeed, we are used to such easy tasks, and even more (me since 2006,
and Education Project since end 2007). And I confirm, EducOOo would
be glad to contribute (as I told Martin Hollmichell and Ingrid vdM
privately)
We use to work with students, and their schools, and we try to
explain how we hacked the code online (yet on the wiki).
Important : the OpenOffice.org developers often helped us, and they
had a big role in the story too. Philipp Lohmann, Stephan Schaefer,
Franck Schonheit, Thorsten Behrens, Stephan Bergmann, Herbert Düer,
Mathias Bauer, Thomas Lange, and a lot of other Sun/Oracle devs were
fantastic with us. Apologies for the one I forgot to mention :-/
The initial idea was : instead of diving with boring QA, prefer have
Fun with a forked version of OpenOffice.org, for instance OOo4Kids or
OOoLight (no Java, 40% lighter than OpenOffice.org), and imagine new
features, hack and so on.
When the code desserves it, we propose it for integration (can be
refused of course). OOo4Kids and OOoLight are LGPLv3, but we have no
problem to relicense the code for Apache OpenOffice.org. The
annotation mode, made by students from Ecole Centrale Nantes, and
reverserd to OpenOffice.org
> If that is the case then I obviously don't want to step on your
> existing work through the ComDev work, I'd rather work with you to
> make the efforts complimentary.
There is place for all, and we'd be glad to work with you. FYI, I
already contacted Martin Hollmichel in this sense, and he's preparing
a list of tasks.
The collaboration could start with developers able to work with us.
e.g. one or two hour from time to time, join our IRC channel, and
answer students questions, and so on, participate to IRC meetings,
when designing a feature, and so on.
We currently have 11 students from Epitech Paris who applied to
EducOOo, for the period july to early december (yes, now ...). This
is too much for us, because we have not the resources to mentor them
all (5 for sure, max could be 6 or 7), but it would be great if other
OpenOffice.org developers agree to join the effort ? (Any candidate
to help us ?)
More information on our list of schools who participated is available
here -> http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/WelcomeStudents
The features are proposed by teachers or the students, and when
everybody agrees, we implement what we can. Once implemented, we
explain the changes in the code, and put it online (our wiki). Some
examples :
New Start Center : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/
NewStartCenterBehavior
Toolbars and levels : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/
ToolbarsAndUserLevel
New cursors : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/AddNewCursors
Protected preferences : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/
PasswordProtectedPreferences (the page has been seen more than
27,000 times ... )
+ Online ClassRooms http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/ClassRooms
and so on
As you can see, the list of possibilities is very long, there is a
lot to do with schools, and the Education Project + OpenOffice.org is
really a good compromise to introduce FOSS.
Regards,
Eric Bachard
>
--
qɔᴉɹə
Education Project:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Education_Project
Projet OOo4Kids : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page
L'association EducOOo : http://www.educoo.org
Blog : http://eric.bachard.org/news
Re: Easy tasks and mentoring
Posted by Ross Gardler <rg...@opendirective.com>.
On 7 July 2011 16:40, eric b <er...@free.fr> wrote:
> Le 7 juil. 11 à 17:30, Ross Gardler a écrit :
...
>> Finally, I'd like to hear from the OOo education project.
>
>
> I'm there. just ask :-)
>
>
>> Are there any existing programmes in the Oo.o community that we should
>> work with?
>>
>
> I'm not sure to fully understand. Can you explain more please ?
Sure.
When typing my email about encouraging the project to offer "easy
tasks" with mentors it occurred to me that the education project may
already have some efforts to help new developers become engaged with
the project. If that is the case then I obviously don't want to step
on your existing work through the ComDev work, I'd rather work with
you to make the efforts complimentary.
Ross
Re: Easy tasks and mentoring
Posted by eric b <er...@free.fr>.
Hi,
Le 7 juil. 11 à 17:30, Ross Gardler a écrit :
> Over in another thread there has been some discussion of "easy
> tasks" being identified to help newcomers find their way in the OOo
> project.
>
> In the ASF the Community Development project works to make ASF
> projects a little more accessible. Typically it's very scary for a
> newcomer, regardless of their background. The ASF is a big place
> where everyone seems to know one another.
>
> Here at OOo we have a very big project with a deep and rich
> history. the problem of attracting and engaging newcomers is
> probably even more pronounced here.
>
> One of the things we do is encourage projects to tag "easy tasks"
> in their issue tracker.We also encourage projects to offer to
> mentor people who want to tackle one of these tasks. Now an ASF
> project community is should be mentoring newcomers anyway, so
> explicitly stating a mentor is available for some tasks may seem
> strange. but we have found that just having the words "mentor"
> associated with a project task makes it more approachable.
>
> Another benefit of doing this is that when it comes around to
> Google Summer of Code time the project already has a bunch of tasks
> identified that would be suitable for GSoC applications.
> The ASF has been involved with GSoC since it first started., We
> usually get between 35 and 50 projects, and most of them are
> successful. We've even got a few ASF members who started life as
> GSoC students, became committers and are now working across
> multiple projects.
> So, i would encourage people to mark "easy tasks" that they would
> be willing to help guide people on with a label of "mentor" (which
> means ensuring questions from someone tacking the problem are
> answered, it does not mean putting in so much effort you can have
> done the job yourself in less time).
>
> Finally, I'll repeat Rob's observations elsewhere. Easy tasks
> should not be meaningless tasks.
There is a lot to do, indeed.
> They should be real tasks that will add real value to the project.
> Ask yourself, if it's easy and your not going to do it yourself is
> it really necessary? There are plenty of tasks that would be nice
> to have but not essential, these are good candidates for mentored
> tasks.
>
> Finally, I'd like to hear from the OOo education project.
I'm there. just ask :-)
> Are there any existing programmes in the Oo.o community that we
> should work with?
>
I'm not sure to fully understand. Can you explain more please ?
Thanks,
Eric Bachard
--
qɔᴉɹə
Education Project:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Education_Project
Projet OOo4Kids : http://wiki.ooo4kids.org/index.php/Main_Page
L'association EducOOo : http://www.educoo.org
Blog : http://eric.bachard.org/news