Alison Dalgity tried to view our GSoC mentorship application in Google's
online system, but it turns out only people from our "organization" who
have set up accounts there can view it (just Dennis W. and me).
So with Alison's approval, I'm posting our submission here (I saved it
before I submitted the form, because I'm that paranoid :-) ).
Arches Project
--------------
Arches is an open source heritage inventory & management system,
purpose-built to help inventory and manage all types of immovable
heritage -- including, but not limited to, archaeological sites
for example.
The Arches Project was started by the Getty Conservation Institute
and the World Monuments Fund, with participation from many other
organizations involved in cultural heritage sites. The project
has been open source from its inception, and version 1.0 was
released on December 4th, 2013.
Tags: heritage archaeology inventory
License: AGPL
Logo URL:
http://archesproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/icon_why_arches1.jpg
Mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/archesproject
Main org web site: http://archesproject.org/
IRC channel: #arches
Feed: http://archesproject.org/feed
Blog: http://archesproject.org/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/archesproject
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/archesproject
> Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer
> of Code 2014? What do you hope to gain by participating?
Arches is particularly useful to universities and other academic
institutions; many of the people involved in its design are from
such institutions. Because there is increasing crossover between
students of cultural heritage (archaeology, etc) and students with
some software expertise, we felt that we had a high likelihood of
not only attracting qualified Summer of Code applicants but of
having them remain involved in the project even after the summer
project is done. This would be a benefit not only to Arches and its
users, but, we hope, to the students as well. Not only would Arches
gain fresh insight and problem-solving energy, it would also gain
potential ambassadors in the environments most likely to find Arches
useful in the first place.
> How many potential mentors do you have for this year's program?
> What criteria did you use to select them?
3-4. They are experienced in open source development generally, as
well as knowing Arches inside-out of course, and they have been
actively participating on the project's mailing list and bug
tracker. We have watched them engage enquirers at various levels of
expertise, and they've shown an ability to help people in a way that
is both pitched correctly for the asker's level of commitment and
knowledge, and designed to be useful to others who may be observing
the conversation.
> What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?
It depends on the manner of disappearance. If a student starts to
show signs of trouble or retreat, but we have a chance to talk to
them about it, we may be able to redesign the project to be more
manageable (see
http://archesproject.org/ideas/#import-export-improvements for an
example of how we're thinking about this as we post project ideas).
If a student just completely goes radio silent, well... We're not
sure what we'd do in that case, except ask other mentoring
organizations and the GSoC home office what they've done in that
situation in the past and see if we can try the same things.
> What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?
We can make sure to accept only enough students such that we have
some spare mentoring capacity available just in case. (This is made
easier by the fact that for several of its developers, Arches is
their full-time job, so they may be somewhat less likely to
disappear than participants whose salaries and daily work
relationships do not depend on Arches.)
> What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with
> your project's community before and during the program?
We are already encouraging them to interact with us on our public
development/usage discussion forum. We also may be able to take
advantage of the fact that Arches' users and other participants tend
to be at universities anyway, in that we may find institutional
intersections between current participants and an SoC student. For
example, if the institution is deploying Arches locally anyway, the
student could be involved.
> What will you do to encourage your accepted students to stick with
> the project after Google Summer of Code concludes?
Try to make it as rewarding an experience as possible! (The
responses to other questions already offer some answer to this
question.) We want participation to be as beneficial for the
student as for Arches. We also expect that their work in Arches
will provide a useful reference for the student(s), professionally
and academically.
> Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization
> to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.
We're working with Karl Fogel, who has previously mentored several
Summer of Code students in other projects.
(Er, actually, it's Karl writing this part; feels weird to stay in
the third person. Hi everyone over at OSPO!)
[Note to those reading this on the ArchesProject Google Group: the
personal greeting above is because they used to be my coworkers,
when I was at the Google Open Source Program Office.]
> Are you an established or larger organization who would like to
> vouch for a new organization applying this year? If so, please
> list their name(s) here.
[left blank]
> If you chose "veteran" in the organization profile dropdown,
> please summarize your involvement and the successes and challenges
> of your participation. Please also list your pass/fail rate for
> each year.
[left blank]
> If you are a new organization, have you applied in the past? If
> so, for what year(s)?
This is our first time.
> Is there anything else we should know or you'd like to tell us
> that doesn't fit anywhere else on the application?
[left blank]
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