Hello everyone, Most of you probably don't know me. Those who do might recall I worked on apertium-af-nl during the Code-In 2010. I thought I would just send a mail to tell you about the impact you can make by mentoring in this contest.
Before november 2010, I was kind of aware open source existed as a thing. I used Firefox and had learned Python. I was aware that anyone technically could contribute, but I had no idea how that worked, let alone did I think I actually had the skill to do so. Enter the Code-In. After doing some translation work for other projects, I found something mentioning Dutch in the Apertium task list. More or less by accident and Francis' tendency to think up new tasks all the time, I rolled into creating the entire dutch half of apertium-af-nl. I did not last too long on Windows, so I was introduced to Linux. Again, I was aware that there was something else out there, but how and what, no idea. Honestly, I had gotten started because "why not" and "wow, Google pays money" (this was scrapped in later iterations). I continued, because I really enjoyed building something and learning new things. I ended up doing so many tasks, that at some point I realized I might be a grand prize winner. This ended up being the case and it was huge for me. However, I did not imagine at the time that getting a trip to Google HQ actually was not the biggest payoff of the Code-In. During the Code-In I had Ubuntu 10.10 installed on a VM. Some time after, I got my first laptop, which has been running Linux for over 3 years now. I got hooked by the practicality and stayed for the freedom and am still enjoying it every day. While I am no longer active in apertium, I have found another open source project that I contribute to when my hours are not being eaten by university. What I want to say is: Not only is the GCI a nice opportunity to get some assistance from eager young minds, but you can also win one of them for the open source community as a whole. That's what you did for me and I cannot thank all the mentors, but Francis in particular, enough for that. Kind regards and keep up the good work, Pim On Thu, Oct 23, 2014 at 8:12 PM, Ilnar Salimzyan <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello, > > I am going to be a mentor and plan to spend 1-2 consecutive hours a day > mentoring tasks/hanging around on irc. > > Best, > > Ilnar Salimzianov (selimcan) > > 2014-10-23 18:57 GMT+02:00 Mikel L. Forcada <[email protected]>: > >> Dear all, >> >> as you know, "Google Code-In is a contest for pre-university students >> (e.g., high school and secondary school students) with the goal of >> encouraging young people to participate in open source.". Google Code-In >> works "with open source organizations", such as Apertium, "each of whom >> will provide a list of tasks to be completed by student contestants. Tasks >> can be anything an organization needs help with, from bug fixes, to writing >> code, to user experience research, to writing documentation. The contest >> takes place entirely online." >> >> Apertium has been part one of the Google Code-In organizations every year >> since its inception in 2010. Note that only about 10 organizations are part >> of it every year: it's a very exclusive club. >> >> We need more Apertium developers to become involved. If we succeed in our >> application, which has to go in before November 10, there will be hundreds >> of tasks and hundreds of participants, eager to get feedback on their work >> by email or on IRC. GCI 2014 [1] will run between December 1 and January >> 18. >> >> We need you to: >> >> *Propose tasks that you can mentor*. We have hundreds of unfinished >> tasks left over from other GCIs. You could easily mentor some of these. But >> you can propose tasks of a similar size that may help our project. Think of >> teenager-level, a-few-days tasks that can help that part of Apertium where >> you are working. You can look at task descriptions (and the interaction >> with students) in previous editions [2,5] by typing Apertium in the >> Organization field. We also keep task descriptions in the Apertium wiki >> [6], and this is where you could propose new tasks. When proposing a task, >> think about how long the tasks take to be reviewed or explained, and how >> easy it will be for other people to review work. Note that having a good >> task page at application time increases our chances of being part of GCI >> this year. >> >> *Actually mentor tasks*: this means being available to discuss tasks >> with student, evaluate the results, and make sure results are made >> available in our repository. This means you have to read your email often >> for notifications and ideally hang around on our IRC channel, although this >> is not entirely necesssary. Tasks can have more than one mentor. >> >> *Volunteer to administer*: there is some work involved in making tasks >> available through the Mélange site: importing them, classifying them, >> making sure they have a description. >> >> I hope I haven't forgotten anything: past mentors and admins, please add >> or correct. >> >> I look forward to hearing from you. >> >> Mikel L. Forcada >> interim president of the Apertium Project Management Committee >> >> [1] http://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2014 >> [2] http://www.google-melange.com/gci/tasks/google/gci2010 >> [3] http://www.google-melange.com/gci/tasks/google/gci2011 >> [4] http://www.google-melange.com/gci/tasks/google/gci2012 >> [5] http://www.google-melange.com/gci/tasks/google/gci2013 >> [6] http://wiki.apertium.org/wiki/Task_ideas_for_Google_Code-in >> -- >> Mikel L. Forcada E-mail: [email protected] >> Departament de Llenguatges Phone: +34-96-590-9776 >> i Sistemes Informàtics also +34-96-590-3772. >> UNIVERSITAT D'ALACANT Fax: +34-96-590-9326, -3464 >> E-03071 ALACANT, Spain. >> >> URL: http://www.dlsi.ua.es/~mlf >> >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Apertium-stuff mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/apertium-stuff >> >> > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Apertium-stuff mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/apertium-stuff > >
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