Hi devs, Last month, I applied for Google Summer of Code (GSoC), unfortunately I was not accepted into this year's program. I know it's disappointing, since we all would like to see an open source alternative to existing ETL, and I feel like the stars were aligned here.
So here my little post-mortem, and few tips and suggestions to help futures applications: What went well - First QGIS community was very enthusiastic and supportive, I am very grateful to the community. I was also incredibly well received at the local contributor meeting in Grenoble. - We had two rounds of feedbacks to taylor the proposal one by mail, and a second in person with local contributor meeting What went wrong - Despite the enthusiasm around the proposal, my proposal was rejected. I am only making a guess here, but I suppose it was because of the lack of mentors. Tips and suggestions for future applications. *For students* - Be proactive to look for mentors Git commands like 'git log' and 'git blame' are your friends to find people with common interest in your proposals.Gitk can also be used to get a more friendly graphical interface with 'gitk -- ./path/to/directory, you can see all the contributor who committed in that specify directory for exemple to search for processing related use 'gitk -- ./src/core/processing/' or 'gitk -- ./src/gui/processing/' - QGIS participates in GSoC under the umbrella of the OSGeo organization. You don't only need to convince QGIS devs but also OSGeo. So don't only submit proposals on the GSoC platform, and also post your proposal on the Soc mailing list[0] dedicated to coordinate at OSGeo level ( s...@lists.osgeo.org ) - Remember that mailing lists are plain text only, I had the surprise to discover that all the formatting for quoted text didn't work, because I sent my mails as html( which is the default in gmail) and not as plain text (And I'm yet to find how to properly justify plain text mail). The migration from mailing list to discourse should however fix these issues . *For mentors* - Volunteer as a mentor early on the SOC mailing list. There is usually a call for ideas and mentors[1] around the end of January ~2 month before the application deadline for students. However at this point you don't have the full picture, you don't know which proposals students will submit. Some years there are multiple volunteers for QGIS, this year there was no volunteers for the QGIS project *For both mentors and students* - Communicate on SOC mailing list, I can't stress this enough. I think it's the key point why my proposal was not accepted. It's unfortunate because I discussed with multiple mentors/companies that were interested in mentoring me, but we never formalised it on an official channel of communication. - Since OSGeo handles a lot of projects, it means we need to be really vocal. So if there is a match between a student and mentor post it on the SoC mailing list as well ! - There is a minimum of one mentor per student, but it's possible to have more than one mentor (usually two), and other mentors can be added later on. *For the QGIS project* - Improve documentation, if you search for QGIS and GSoC on google you are redirected to an old page on the former QGIS bug tracker website[2]. This page was last updated in 2016, and contains a lot of broken links, and ideas from 2016. There is existings page on the OSGeo wiki[3] with recommendations for students, suggested ideas, and former projects, but it might be worth having a dedicated page for QGIS in the developer documentation. - Suggest ideas to the OSGeo organization, during the call for ideas. These ideas will be displayed on the OSGeo page on the GSoC platform and on the OSGeo wiki and will help influence the proposals submitted in a direction that fit the QGIS project. QGIS doesn't lack of ideas that could be a GSoC proposals, we could pick two or three QGIS Enhancement Proposals each year (ideally ranging from short ~175 hours to long ~350 hours project) *For OSGeo* I don't know the volume of applications OSGeo received so it might be difficult to answer to everyone, but it's always appreciable to get a personalized answer instead of a generic email from Google platform. Lastly, I'd like to end with a positive note, even though I was not accepted, I still plan to stay around and maybe work on a smaller portion of my proposal on my own. [0] https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/soc [1] https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/soc/2024-January/005129.html [2] https://issues.qgis.org/projects/qgis/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code [3] https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_Recommendations_for_Students Regards, Valentin _______________________________________________ QGIS-Developer mailing list QGIS-Developer@lists.osgeo.org List info: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer Unsubscribe: https://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
