On Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 8:08 AM, Pete Morgan <ac...@daffodil.uk.com> wrote:
> Has/Does FlightGear participate ?
>
>
> http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/03/google-summer-of-code-applications-now.html
We have never participated before, but I see the deadline for organizations
to apply is March 12 ... coming right up. It's not like I've got nothing
else to do, but I like the idea of mentoring. I can think of many
individuals who have played a mentor roll from time to time for me and I am
very appreciative of that. So I am submitting an application for FlightGear
(assuming no one else has already.)
Here are some things we need:
1. Mentors
2. Student applicants (mentorees).
3. A web page listing project/mentoring ideas
1 & 3 are the most important to have lined up before March 12 (Friday.)
The organization application has some questions that I'd love to have some
help thinking about and answering:
1. What criteria did you use to select the individuals who will act as
mentors for your organization? Please be as specific as possible.
2. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students?
3. What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors?
4. What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your
project's community before, during and after the program?
5. What will you do to ensure that your accepted students stick with the
project after GSoC concludes?
6. What would our organization expect to gain from this experience?
As you can see, this would not be a trivial undertaking for the FlightGear
project, and it's not something I can carry entirely on my own shoulders.
Do we have others in the project that would be willing to volunteer their
time and participate in a mentoring and organizational roll?
We also need to quickly assemble a list of possible student project ideas
... and these need to be well measured ... like you would measure a pass in
soccer/futbol. We want to avoid things that are too hard or too easy. The
ball needs to arrive with the correct pace so the student can handle it. We
want suggestions that could be attainable by a *student* in the allotted
time frame (summer?) and realize that a student may have to spend a good
chunk of their time learning about the FlightGear structure before they can
advance with their project.
I think we should avoid suggesting projects that are in FlightGear's
critical path. I.e. "add aircraft shadows" might be an tempting project to
suggest, but is this student level work that could be finished in a summer?
Do we want to pin all our hopes for aircraft shadows in FlightGear on a
google summer of code student who may bugout mid stream if it starts looking
too hard? If it does get too hard, does that student "fail" or is it us
that failed as a mentoring organization?
So for project suggestions I think we should focus on projects that have the
best chance of teaching student level people, have the best chance of being
attainable in a summer of effort, have the best chance of helping a student
to gain confidence, knowledge, experience, etc. We should be
careful/resistant to suggesting projects that are simply FlightGear feature
wishlist items. We should suggest projects that the mentors have some idea
of a clear path to a solution (i.e. not so much research into new and
unknown things.)
I think to be successful, we need to keep our focus on the mentoring aspect
of this. The focus is to help bring some of the younger generation up to
speed more quickly by sharing our experiences and knowledge. It's something
we do already to some extent in a casual context. The google program just
makes it official. The mentors commit some time to sharing their experience
and knowledge and the students commit to actually listening and respecting
what is shared. :-)
Those are my thoughts. I can get the ball rolling, but I can't do it all
myself.
Thanks,
Curt.
--
Curtis Olson: http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt/
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