Talk:Summer of Code 2012/management

The management process appears to be quite strict on first glance, but having been a part of the process in the last year, I support Sumana's stand. It will help us in getting quality contributors who will stick around for a long time. Akshay.agarwal (talk) 19:29, 16 March 2012 (UTC)

Use "proposal" not "application"
We should consistently use "proposal" and not "application" as the latter is misleading. "Proposal" is better at conveying the consistent work necessary. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator (talk) 02:45, 6 April 2012 (UTC)

Next year:

 * Soft deadline of 1 week before the Google deadline to circulate your plan on wikitech-l. Just formalizing what's already the case -- if you don't do that, then you have far less of a chance to attract a mentor.
 * Circulate http://ploum.net/post/be-selected-student-for-soc to prospective students.
 * Start recruiting and encouraging students in December.
 * Clearly tell mentors what's expected of them, starting the moment they sign up. Don't expect them to read the whole multipage mentors' guide.  Give them a one-pager.
 * Strongly and clearly signal to students that conflicting/overlapping/duplicate projects are not the way we do things around here.

Free floating ideas

 * 1) Have an IRC meeting(s) for applicants before the deadline to gauge skills, commitment, and get a sense of who applicants are.
 * 2) Dedicated IRC channel for WM GSoC to encourage discussion among mentors, etc.
 * 3) Develop out GSoC wikipage into multi-page portal setup to help manage what goes where and encourage usage (maybe?). (1-3)--Varnent (talk) 20:21, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks. A dedicated IRC channel for GSoC is, in my view, bad; there are already too many channels for people to keep track of, and they should just talk in #mediawiki.  The other ideas, I like. :-) Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Volunteer Development Coordinator (talk) 20:34, 21 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Fair point. :)  Continuing improvement of the devo community tone towards newbies will likely help make students feel more confident/comfortable in being bold in the #MW IRC room.  --Varnent (talk) 21:31, 21 April 2012 (UTC)