Outreach programs/status

Last update on: 2014-02-monthly

2012-11-20
Sumana Harihareswara posted a retrospective on our participation in Summer of Code 2012, concluding that we're improving at student retention but need to get better at producing something useful at the end of a mentorship period, and offering suggestions on how to improve our processes in the future. Applications are now open for Wikimedia's Outreach Program for Women, which offers paid internships for work in open source software projects and is organized by GNOME. This follows the community's decision not to participate in Google Code-In due to a lack of mentors.

2012-11-monthly
The first phase of the Outreach Program for Women (OPW) has been completed, receiving the submissions of more than 15 firm candidates, delivered to 8 mentors available. The Wikimedia Foundation is funding 4 full-time internship positions between January and March 2013. There is a possibility to obtain more, depending on external sponsors of the program. The selected candidates will be announced on December 11. The OPW is organized by the GNOME Foundation and 11 FLOSS projects are taking part.

2012-12-11
Five MediaWiki candidates have been selected for the Outreach Program for Women (OPW) and they will be announced today. They will work on different projects as full time interns under the supervision of MediaWiki mentors between January and March 2013. We got 10 submissions from about 25 people interested. The OPW is organized by the GNOME Foundation and 11 FLOSS projects are taking part. The rather open and participatory selection process we have defined for OPW will be used as basis for future mentoring programs.

2012-12-18
We announced the 6 interns selected for the Outreach Program for Women. 4 of them are funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and 2 by Google through an agreement with the GNOME Foundation, organizers of the program. Our payment to the GNOME Foundation has been approved and will be transferred in few days. Some casual planning discussions have started already.

2012-12-monthly
Six MediaWiki candidates have been announced for the Outreach Program for Women (OPW). 4 of them are funded by the Wikimedia Foundation and 2 by Google through an agreement with the GNOME Foundation, organizers of the program. They will work as full-time interns under the supervision of MediaWiki mentors between January and March 2013. We got 10 submissions from about 25 people interested. The rather open and participatory selection process we have defined for OPW will be used as a basis for future mentoring programs. We've also started matchmaking for the LevelUp mentorships for the coming quarter.

2013-01-08
Outreach Program for Women started on Jan 3 with a formal meeting where all interns and mentors were invited. The 6 OPW interns have started with their projects and will work full time until April.

2013-01-17
Outreach Program for Women: Mariya is working on MediaWiki vendors gathering a lot of community help. Valerie has been pretty active trying to complete the Bug Squad group proposal and a first Bug Day but she needs help from us to complete. Priyanka created a script and plans to move to git. Sucheta is on schedule following her project plan. Isarra is learning about Flow and the basics of interactive design as indicated by her mentor, and she will get deep in the project next week in San Francisco. Teresa has completed a solid base for her extension and is working on the main functionality. She hit a snag with her work environment this week, but is still on track with her proposed timeline.

2013-01-22
Google Summer of Code 2013 page created and pre-planning discussion started at wikitech-l.

2013-01-monthly
<section begin="2013-01-monthly"/>Six Outreach Program for Women interns started on January 3rd and will work full time until April. Mariya is working on a discussion among third-party MediaWiki users. Valerie has completed the Bug Squad group proposal and a first Bug Day. Priyanka created a script and plans to move to Git. Sucheta is on schedule following her project plan. Kim is learning about Flow and the basics of interactive design as indicated by her mentor. Teresa has completed a solid base for her extension and is working on the main functionality. She hit a snag with her work environment this week, but is still on track with her proposed timeline. The Google Summer of Code 2013 page was created, a pre-planning discussion started on wikitech-l, and LevelUp matchmaking for the first quarter of 2013 is nearly done.<section end="2013-01-monthly"/>

2013-02-monthly
<section begin="2013-02-monthly"/>The Outreach Program for Women is more than half-way. Our six participants are fairly on track; read February reports from Valerie, Mariya, Priyanka and Sucheta. Teresa is working on unit tests for the Git repository extension and is looking at a request to use this extension to help to maintain CentralNotice-related content. Isarra completed her work on Flow/User tests and now is working with the Editor Engagement team on improvements to the Watchlist design.

Google published the timeline for the Summer of Code 2013 and we have confirmed our intention to apply as organization. Without big announcements and more than a month before any deadline, we have already 15 students, 5 mentors and 2 org admins potentially interested.<section end="2013-02-monthly"/>

2013-03-monthly
<section begin="2013-03-monthly"/>Quim Gil focused on:
 * Completing Round 5 of Outreach Program for Women with casual evaluation meetings with the 6 intern/mentors teams. To be summarized with a blog post in early April.
 * Wikimedia's application for Google Summer of Code 2013 and a new round of Outreach Program for Women including 17 common project ideas with mentors.
 * Making Possible projects the reference list of big tasks to potential contributors. Featured project ideas must go through a reality check considering project feasibility for newcomers, availability of mentors and community/maintainers buy-in, which we check through related feature requests filed in Bugzilla.
 * Announcing a GSoC and other open source internship programs meetup in San Francisco on April 11.<section end="2013-03-monthly"/>

2013-04-09
<section begin="2013-04-09"/>Wikimedia's participation in Google Summer of Code 2013 and Outreach Program for Women - Round 6 is public and official. Quim Gil focused on:
 * Adding featured project ideas beyond development for OPW.
 * Agreeing with Mozilla to co-mentor the Bugzilla-MediaWiki extension project idea.
 * Supporting the first students showing an interest in featured project ideas or drafting their own proposals. <section end="2013-04-09"/>

2013-04-16
<section begin="2013-04-16"/>Quim Gil focused on:
 * SF Metup: GSoC and other open source internship programs
 * Supporting GSoC / OPW candidates finding mentors and polishing proposals.
 * First meeting with SocialCoding4Good to (re)start joint activities. They will come back with a list of requests.<section end="2013-04-16"/>

2013-04-23
<section begin="2013-04-23"/>Quim Gil focused on:
 * Supporting GSoC / OPW candidates.
 * Better alignment between our requirements and processes and those of GSoC and OPW.
 * Meeting GNOME's Karen Sandler, co-driver of the OPW program.<section end="2013-04-23"/>

2013-04-monthly
<section begin="2013-04-monthly"/>Quim Gil supported the Google Summer of Code / FOSS Outreach Program for Women processes, candidates and mentors. He coordinated co-mentorships with Mozilla for the Bugzilla-MediaWiki extension, and with MathJax for VisualEditor math support. He organized a meetup about GSoC and other open source internship programs and also published a post on FLOSS internship programs. Last, he met with SocialCoding4Good to (re)start joint activities.<section end="2013-04-monthly"/>

2013-05-07
<section begin="2013-05-07"/>We received 69 applications from 60 students for Google Summer of Code 2013, from which 47 have been considered valid. We requested between 11 and 21 slots to Google, and we have started the selection process asking mentors to rank the proposals. We have 13 candidates for Outreach Program for Women - Round 6, from which 9 are applying to GSoC as well.<section end="2013-05-07"/>

2013-05-14
<section begin="2013-05-14"/>We received got the 21 requested Google Summer of Code 2013 slots and we are going through the candidate approval process. We are also going through the approval process for the Outreach Program for Women. More details on May 27, as soon as the public announcements of both programs are made.<section end="2013-05-14"/>

2013-05-21
<section begin="2013-05-21"/>We have communicated our pre-selection of candidates to the Google Summer of Code and Outreach Program for Women organizers. More details on May 27, as soon as the public announcements of both programs are made. Quim Gil created a landing page for organizations willing to collaborate with Wikimedia co-organizing technical activities.<section end="2013-05-21"/>

2013-05-monthly
<section begin="2013-05-monthly"/>We selected 20 Google Summer of Code and 2 Outreach Program for Women projects that will be mentored by a total of 32 volunteers. This represents more than double the amount of projects we had last year. We received 69 applications from 60 students for Google Summer of Code 2013, from which 9 were also applying to OPW, and 4 OPW-only individual applications. Google allocated the 21 slots we requested, but we decided to give one back in order to keep a standard on project feasibility.<section end="2013-05-monthly"/>

2013-06-monthly
<section begin="2013-06-monthly"/>The 20 Google Summer of Code and the 1 Outreach Program for Women interns have completed the bonding period (with 3 exceptions, 2 of them justified) and they are now working on their projects. One OPW accepted candidate declined her participation due to a job offer. Monthly status updates are available for these projects:
 * Improving support for book structures
 * Mobilize Wikidata
 * jQuery.IME extensions for Firefox and Chrome
 * Browser Test Automation for Visual Editor
 * Incremental dumps
 * Refactoring of Extension ProofreadPage
 * Language Coverage Matrix Dashboard
 * Section Handling in Semantic Forms
 * VisualEditor Mathematical Editor Plugin
 * ZIM Incremental Updates for Kiwix
 * VisualEditor RTL support
 * UploadWizard: book upload customization
 * Android app for MediaWiki translation
 * Pronunciation recording tool
 * MediaWiki Moodle extension
 * VisualEditor plugin for source code
 * Prototyping inline comments

We also met with SocialCoding4Good, who are relaunching their activities, and we refreshed the Wikimedia page. We expect this to become a regular channel for new technical contributors working in corporations with social/training programs.<section end="2013-06-monthly"/>

2013-07-09
<section begin="2013-07-09"/>Quim Gil organized meetings with each GSoC / OPW team, one by one. Most projects were already at full speed and for them the meeting was primarily social / nice to have. A few really benefited from going through a checklist to highlight early problems easy to solve now. Only one meeting was held back: Bayesian Spam Filter Extension. The student is progressing but we are missing the primary mentor.<section end="2013-07-09"/>

2013-07-16
<section begin="2013-07-16"/>Bayesian Spam Filter Extension primary mentor is back, and the student has updated his reports. With this, all Google Summer of Code and Outreach Program for Women projects are on track.<section end="2013-07-16"/>

2013-07-monthly
<section begin="2013-07-monthly"/>Quim Gil organized meetings with each Google Summer of Code and Outreach Program for Women team, one by one. Most projects were already at full speed, and for them, the meeting was primarily social and nice to have. A few really benefited from going through a checklist to highlight early problems easy to solve now. All GSoC and OPW projects, 21 in total, are now on track.<section end="2013-07-monthly"/>

2013-08-monthly
<section begin="2013-08-monthly"/> The 20 Google Summer of Code projects passed the official mid-term evaluation at the beginning of August, and the Outreach Program for Women project is on track as well. Katie Filbert (Aude), David Cuenca (Micru) and Quim Gil (Qgil) will participate at GSoC Mentors Summit in Mountain View (CA, USA) on October 19-20.

Monthly reports from the projects:
 * Refactoring of ProofreadPage extension
 * Section handling in Semantic forms
 * jQuery.IME extensions for Firefox and Chrome
 * Android app for MediaWiki translation
 * Mobilizing Wikidata
 * Improve support for book structures
 * Incremental data dumps
 * Language Coverage Matrix Dashboard
 * Internationalization and Right-To-Left Support in VisualEditor
 * Browser test automation for Visual Editor
 * VisualEditor plugin for source code
 * UploadWizard: Book upload customization
 * Prototyping inline comments
 * Improvement of glossary tools
 * Incremental updates for Kiwix
 * Pronunciation Recording Tool
 * Bayesian Spam Filter
 * Wikidata language fallback and conversion<section end="2013-08-monthly"/>

2013-09-monthly
<section begin="2013-09-monthly"/>18 out of the 20 Google Summer of Code projects have passed the program evaluation, as well as the one Outreach Program for Women project (read our announcement and blog post). These numbers are unprecedented and we have to ensure that they are not just occasional results but a trend. Wrap-up reports from the projects: <section end="2013-09-monthly"/>
 * Browser test automation for Visual Editor
 * Internationalization and Right-To-Left Support in VisualEditor
 * Improve support for book structures
 * Section handling in Semantic Forms
 * Prototyping inline comments
 * jQuery.IME extensions for Firefox and Chrome
 * Pronunciation Recording Tool
 * Mobilize Wikidata
 * VisualEditor plugin for source code (SyntaxHighlight GeSHi support)
 * Android app for MediaWiki translation
 * Language Coverage Matrix Dashboard
 * Incremental dumps

2013-10-monthly
<section begin="2013-10-monthly"/>We presented the at the Wikimedia Metrics Meeting. The document about lessons learned in mentorship programs was updated. Wikimedia applied to Google Code-In and was successfully accepted on November 1. We opened the call for candidates for FOSS Outreach Program for Women - Round 7.<section end="2013-10-monthly"/>

2013-11-monthly
<section begin="2013-11-monthly"/>We started successfully Wikimedia's first participation in Google Code-In. Six candidates were selected as new interns at the FOSS Outreach Program for Women - Round 7:
 * Anu G Enchackal - UploadWizard:OSM Map Embedding (mentored by Gergő Tisza)
 * Diwanshi Pandey - Complete the MediaWiki development course at Codecademy (Yuri Astrakhan)
 * Brena Monteiro - mediawiki.org homepage redesign (Heather Walls and Quim Gil)
 * Be Birchall - Clean up Parsoid round-trip testing UI, including using a templating system (Marc Ordinas and Subramanya Sastry)
 * Maria Pacana - Clean up tracing/debugging/logging inside Parsoid (Subramanya Sastry and Arlo Breault)
 * Niharika Kohli - Compact interlanguage links as a beta feature (Sucheta Ghoshal and Pau Giner)

We also confirmed the participation of Wikimedia in the Facebook Open Academy program.<section end="2013-11-monthly"/>

2013-12-monthly
<section begin="2013-12-monthly"/>Wikimedia's first participation in the Google Code-In program required a lot of dedication from the ECT members, and about a dozen of mentors and other contributors helping creating and reviewing tasks. Students completed about 200 tasks. The GCI inertia and the lessons learned will help us organize a better gateway for new contributors, which was a main reason for us to join this program. We also believe that the experience acquired will help us make future editions as successful with less work.

Round 7 of the FOSS Outreach Program for Women started and all projects and on track so far:
 * Compacting interlanguage links.
 * MediaWiki Homepage Redesign.
 * Complete mediawiki API development course on codecademy.
 * Clean up Parsoid round-trip testing UI.
 * Clean up tracing/debugging/logging inside Parsoid.
 * UploadWizard :OSM Embedding

We joined Facebook Open Academy almost at the last minute thanks to a reminder from developer Tyler Romeo. Six projects were accepted, which will be developed by teams of university students during the first half of 2014:
 * Distributed cron replacement — Coren
 * Cassandra backend for distributed round-trip test server — Gabriel Wicke, Marc Ordinas i Llopis
 * Flow Right-To-Left language support — and
 * Flow Edit Filter integration — and
 * OpenBadges and Persona support for MediaWiki — and <section end="2013-12-monthly"/>

2014-01-monthly
<section begin="2014-01-monthly"/> Wikimedia's first participation in the Google Code-In program ended up with great success: 273 tasks completed by 46 students with the help of about 30 mentors. Theo Patt and Mateusz Maćkowski were selected winners for Wikimedia, and we sent a special mention to Mayank Madan.

Round 7 of the FOSS Outreach Program for Women started and all projects are on track so far:
 * Compacting interlanguage links
 * MediaWiki Homepage Redesign
 * Complete the MediaWiki API development course on Codecademy
 * Clean up Parsoid round-trip testing UI
 * Clean up tracing/debugging/logging inside Parsoid
 * UploadWizard: OSM Embedding

Facebook Open Academy's warm-up period saw a slow progress in the beginning of the projects. At the end it seemed that everybody was waiting for the official start at the kick-off in Facebook headquarters on February 7−9.<section end="2014-01-monthly"/>

2014-02-monthly
<section begin="2014-02-monthly"/>The six ongoing FOSS Outreach Program for Women projects all made good progress, and are headed to completion by the end of the program on March 10. For more details, check their dedicated reports:
 * Compacting interlanguage links
 * MediaWiki Homepage Redesign
 * Complete the MediaWiki API development course on Codecademy
 * Clean up Parsoid round-trip testing UI
 * Clean up tracing/debugging/logging inside Parsoid
 * UploadWizard: OSM Embedding

Getting Facebook Open Academy projects up to speed is becoming even more complex than expected, but we are getting there slowly. All students and mentors met at the kick-off hackathon at Facebook headquarters on February 7−9 (see Marc-André Pelletier's report).

Wikimedia applied to Google Summer of Code 2014 and we were accepted. We also confirmed our participation in FOSS Outreach Program for Women round 8. We are organizing both programs simultaneously under a common umbrella, as we did last year with great success.<section end="2014-02-monthly"/>