[Soc-coordination] important information for mentors

[Ana Guerrero]

Hi everybody!

You all probably have been contacted already for students interested in your 
project. In case you haven't, the student application in the Google system 
(called Melange) opens in 4 days and then probably the contact from students 
with prospective mentors will increase. 
We would like to share some tips and important information with you about 
how we want to run the program this year in Debian.

Mentor Acceptance in Melange
=======================

If you are mentoring or co-mentoring a project, you need to sign up at 
http://www.google-melange.com, do a request to mentor Debian and tell us 
your "linkid" by IRC or email. This is a requirement by Google to be able 
to fill out student evaluation forms. Sadly there are a lot of scammers 
signing up and we want to avoid accepting the wrong user.

In the past years, we accepted everybody who belonged to the Debian community 
and asked to be a mentor in Melange just for the sake of transparency, so that 
they could comment and read the proposals. This year instead, we will encourage 
that the proposals be put at the same time on the Debian wiki as Melange, so that 
everybody can read and comment on the proposals instead of having to use Melange 
that is not public.
This means that a mentor will only be accepted if there is a concrete project 
(suggested by a student or a DD) that is fit for GSoC and the mentor is willing 
to either mentor or co-mentor it.


Student Selection
=============

The mentors and co-mentors will have to choose between all the students 
application to select the student they want to work with. If they 
do not consider any of the students suitable for the project, it is also 
possible to not to choose any.
In the likely case that Google does not fund all our projects (in previous
years we received only 9-10 slots), Debian organization admins (Gergely, 
Sukhbir and Ana) will choose which projects get the slots.

In case a mentor has several students applying for a single project, the mentor 
is strongly encouraged to have the students complete a small test, or create 
a patch. Mentors can help guide the student to work on the above test but remember 
that this a test to gauge the student's competency, so be careful of how much 
help you extend!



Asking Students Weekly Report
=======================

Last year, we had the students report on the progress of their project
bi-weekly. Based on the feedback from both students and mentors, this worked
out really well, because it allowed the students to do a self-assessment 
of their work and the mentors to get an idea about how the student was 
progressing. Starting this year, we are going to have the students report 
on a weekly basis as we feel that this will work to every one's benefit.
The report should be send by email to the soc-coordination mailing lists. 
Of course, students can also publish them in their blogs or CC them to 
mailing lists related to their projects.

In case a student is on holiday or otherwise not able to send a report, 
it is, of course, allowed to miss a report, but the must to notify the mentors 
and admins in advance. (We will detail more about this in an email targetted 
to the students)

Application Submission
=================

The students should submit their application on Melange [1] when the application 
period opens (March 26 - April 6) for their proposal to be considered by Google. 
However, we also want the students to create and submit their application on the 
wiki [2]. This serves two related purposes: by allowing public access of the
application and thus helping the student to make necessary changes that may arise 
from the feedback of the mentors or other people interested in the project. 
Of course, students can choose to omit personal information from their application 
on the wiki. Just add your name and email.

To add to this, it's always recommended to discuss your application (on the wiki 
or a mailing list) with your mentor/ co-mentor before submitting it on Melange.


Evaluations
=========

There are two evaluations required by Google that must to be completed:

Midterm: July 9 - July 13:   Mid-term evaluations.
Final: August 20 - August 24:

If none of the mentors or co-mentors can do it, please mail the org admins in 
advance and they will do it for you. Usually the questions are available in advance.

The GSoC admins in Debian,
Gergely Nagy, Sukhbir Singh and Ana Guerrero

[1] - http://socghop.appspot.com/
[2] - http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2012/StudentApplications