A new mentoring effort

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

There will shortly be a number of students approaching the ASF looking 
for GSoC style mentoring. The number can be anything from 0 to 200. I'm 
expecting it to be 10-20 in reality (their tutors don't feel that many 
will have the confidence to approach the ASF).

I will be the main contact point on behalf of ComDev, naturally I hope 
people here will help out within their own projects and if possible 
within ComDev too.

I propose to send the following email to PMCs in a couple of days to 
make them aware of what this is all about and what mentors are expected 
to do. I'd appreciate any comments/clarifications before I send it out.

SUBJECT: New mentoring activities

Over the next few weeks your project may be approached by students 
participating in a European Commission funded project called OpenSE. 
These students will be looking for GSoC style mentors in open source 
projects.

The headline info you need is:

* Mentors will not need to commit as much time as they do to GSoC

* The student/mentor relationship should be largely the same as any 
other relationship with someone new to your project

* Students will, in general, work on existing issues in your project, 
but some may come with their own ideas

* All work by the student should be managed and recorded using your 
projects normal workflow

* Students will not be full time on the project

* Students will not be paid

* Students will have external support from teachers

The key message for your project community is that this activity should 
present minimal additional overhead to your normal community support 
activities. However, there are a few additional, but small, tasks we ask 
you to perform during the course of a mentored project:

* acknowledge your agreement to mentor a student

* provide a brief evaluation of the students activities half way through 
the project cycle (around 6 weeks in most cases)

* provide a brief evaluation of the students activities at the end of 
the project cycle (around 12 weeks in most cases)

Each of these activities is recorded in a JIRA issue in the ComDev 
project. This issue will be created by the student during the 
application process.

It is important to stress that we are not asking mentors to take any 
responsibility for the success of the students work. All we ask is that 
you act as a "friendly face" within your community and provide brief 
evaluations as described above.

Unlike in GSoC these students will (in most cases) be doing this work as 
part of their formal education and will have external tutors and 
teaching assistants helping them. They will not be paid for their 
activities.

Unlike in GSoC students will not be working full time on their projects 
and thus the overhead on mentors will be considerably less.

The Community Development project is encouraging and supporting this 
activity in an attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach to 
helping students understand open source development whilst bringing some 
valued patches to our projects.

You can find some more information about the mentoring programme (which 
will evolve in response to experiences and feedback in this experiment) 
at http://community.apache.org/mentoringprogramme.html

If you have any questions please mail dev@community.apache.org

If you agree to mentor a student I, or someone from the ComDev team, 
will ensure you are kept informed of activities as they progress.

Ross
On behalf of the Community Development Project

Re: A new mentoring effort

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

On 5 Oct 2010, at 13:14, Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 1:54 PM, Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> wrote:
>> On 05/10/2010 12:03, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
>>>> ...If you agree to mentor a student I, or someone from the ComDev team,
>>>> will
>>>> ensure you are kept informed of activities as they progress....
>>> 
>>> Shouldn't we instead ask mentors to subscribe to this list, and keep
>>> the info here?
>> 
>> Good point, although shouldn't it be code-awards@a.o?
> 
> I'd say here as our public list, and code-awards for discussions about
> people, as we do for GSoC?

Yes, you are correct

> Having the public info here might help raise interest for comdev in
> general, IMO.

+1

Ross

Re: A new mentoring effort

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

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 1:54 PM, Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> wrote:
> On 05/10/2010 12:03, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:
>>> ...If you agree to mentor a student I, or someone from the ComDev team,
>>> will
>>> ensure you are kept informed of activities as they progress....
>>
>> Shouldn't we instead ask mentors to subscribe to this list, and keep
>> the info here?
>
> Good point, although shouldn't it be code-awards@a.o?

I'd say here as our public list, and code-awards for discussions about
people, as we do for GSoC?

Having the public info here might help raise interest for comdev in
general, IMO.

-Bertrand

Re: A new mentoring effort

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

On 05/10/2010 12:03, Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:

>> I propose to send the following email to PMCs in a couple of days to make
>> them aware of what this is all about and what mentors are expected to do.
>> I'd appreciate any comments/clarifications before I send it out...
>
> Sounds good, and it would be good to include podling's PPMCs as well
> (they're not in the main pmc distribution list).

+1

>> ...Over the next few weeks your project may be approached by students
>> participating in a European Commission funded project called OpenSE...
>
> Can you add an URL for OpenSE?

Sure (although like most EU projects you'll find it hard to make any 
sense of it - I have nothing to do with that part of the project ;-)

http://opense.net/index.php

>> ...If you agree to mentor a student I, or someone from the ComDev team, will
>> ensure you are kept informed of activities as they progress....
>
> Shouldn't we instead ask mentors to subscribe to this list, and keep
> the info here?

Good point, although shouldn't it be code-awards@a.o?

Ross

Re: A new mentoring effort

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

Hi,

On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 12:44 PM, Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> wrote:
> There will shortly be a number of students approaching the ASF looking for
> GSoC style mentoring. The number can be anything from 0 to 200. I'm
> expecting it to be 10-20 in reality...

Cool!

> I propose to send the following email to PMCs in a couple of days to make
> them aware of what this is all about and what mentors are expected to do.
> I'd appreciate any comments/clarifications before I send it out...

Sounds good, and it would be good to include podling's PPMCs as well
(they're not in the main pmc distribution list).

> ...Over the next few weeks your project may be approached by students
> participating in a European Commission funded project called OpenSE...

Can you add an URL for OpenSE?

> ...If you agree to mentor a student I, or someone from the ComDev team, will
> ensure you are kept informed of activities as they progress....

Shouldn't we instead ask mentors to subscribe to this list, and keep
the info here?

-Bertrand