Call for Summer of Code 2020 mentors!

[jywarren]

With Outreachy and Google Summer of Code 2020 coming up, we're looking ahead to who may be interested in mentoring for these programs. We have participated in both during the past few years, and while we are not guaranteed spots, we are planning to apply as an organization.

Read some previous year's proposals here, and participate in project idea brainstorming here. If one of the project ideas strikes your interest, please mention it!

We especially welcome people from groups underrepresented in free and open source software!

It's very important to us to have diverse representation in our mentor group just as in our participant group. And remember -- our community aspires to be a respectful place. Please read and abide by our Code of Conduct.

To participate:

This year, we're asking that mentors have taken some of the following steps to be part of our community:

1. Solve a first-timers issue. Provide the link to the first timer issue's pull request (PR) once it's merged. In case, you are not able to find any first-timer issue, solve issue marked as fto-candidate or support, these issues may require little more work, but we'll try to help.
2. Solve a help-wanted issue. Help wanted issues are issues which are not labelled as gci-candidate neither as fto-candidate nor as first-timer-only. Provide link to such issues' merged PR. (Make sure you claim the issue first by commenting on issue you are planning to solve)
3. make a first-timers issue. Use the extra friendly template which we generally use for creating our first timer issues. Provide the link to the first timer issue which is created by you.

Mentors check in with a student at least once per week roughly from May-August, and offer some project management guidance and encouragement... while relying on the chatroom and the @publiclab/reviewers group to provide code-specific input, so that we share the burden of specific technical support. We have weekly Check-Ins on GitHub (#4548) as well, and mentors are expected (along with students!) to be in the rotation to post these occasionally.

Remember that to be a mentor you don't necessarily need to know how to code -- we also need mentors who know Public Lab's community and practices well, and who can encourage students to speak up when they get stuck, and to ask the community for input and testing of their work. Students often get stuck when they don't know how something should look, or how a feature might be used by the community -- contextual info!

Priorities this year

This year we are aiming to bring some focus on high-priority projects to the program, and we’d like all mentors to help to encourage these new priorities. Some are highlighted in our ideas list, which lists our top community projects. We’re much more likely to accept projects that source from this list, although we’re happy to provide input on other suggested ideas too!

Others are covered in our ROADMAP, which emphasizes code stability, testing, maintainability, and reducing technical debt.

However, it does note that new projects can be developed in a “satellite” format, where they first achieve stability as separate repositories, before being proved out and integrated into PublicLab.org. With lots of people proposing React projects last year (for example), we really want to see such a project developed separately with a limited scope (like, just the commenting system, or just the dashboard), and proved out before being considered for integration.

Finally, we have a new Style Guide this year, which we are strongly encouraging people to read carefully before proposing design changes or refinements: https://publiclab.org/notes/warren/05-07-2019/introducing-a-draft-style-guide-for-public-lab

Thanks!

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If you're interested in being a mentor, leave a comment here -- and read over our software outreach resources to get an idea of how we work!

Some key resources on mentoring:

• read over our Summer of Code workflow here
• read these extra notes on our approach here
• read different ways to mentor in this post -- we need various types!
• read about what reviewers do day-to-day on Public Lab code projects
• read about our commitment to modularity, very important in how we ask contributors to work
• check out our growing list of software outreach strategies

Thanks a lot, and we're happy to answer questions!

Kindly fill https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1OFjj_2d4BnntXEy6bddWoKNOeBqvnJCLeGwOFORajZI/edit before 30th March 2020

[sagarpreet-chadha]

Hey, Yes let me contact @emilyashley and discuss this. Thanks for the patience :smile:

[SusannaDiV]

Hello, I hope I'm writing this in the right place (coming form the mailing list) :) I'm a first-timer GSoC student aspirant with a 4.0 GPA and quite some experience with Javascript frameworks, Ruby on Rails and CSS styling - who unfortunately didn't claim a "first-timer-issue" in time, but who would love to contribute to the "Printability of posts and wiki pages" project. Are there perhaps any other issues I could take up to contribute and guide myself in the right direction?

[VladimirMikulic]

Hi @SusannaDiV! Welcome to the community :rocket: :rocket: :rocket: This thread is for GSoC mentors :)

Currently, the priority is email related issues. Since you know RoR, you could help us resolve them.

If you have any more question feel free to contact me. Also, don't forget to visit and introduce yourself to our community on Gitter.

We are looking forward to work with you :+1:

[cesswairimu]

Hey everyone, a couple of proposals have been posted on the PL website https://publiclab.org/notes/cess/03-02-2020/call-for-2020-soc-proposals-gsoc-and-outreachy, please take a few minutes to review and give feedback. Thanks

[cesswairimu]

Hi awesome mentors, Thanks for the great work you are doing. We need some help reviewing the applicants pull requests having only a week left to the end of the application period. Please help so that they can submit strong applications. @publiclab/mentors @publiclab/reviewers. Thanks

[jywarren]

Hi @Tlazypanda were you able to find the Public Lab pages on Outreachy? I think you may have been looking too early... they should be there now!

@harshithpabbati @pydevsg @ataata107 IS is a great project and we will support it through the programs if we can. But we may have a much smaller number of slots this year in GSoC as we are participating under an umbrella organization. If any of the priority projects from the ideas list look interesting to you, it may be a good idea to mention them and see if you could compose a proposal from one of them... thank you!

I ❤️ IS a lot but I know we'll face some tough choices with a limited number of slots this year. Thank you so much for your interest!

[jywarren]

and, hi all, if other mentors are interested we could use the help in leaving reviews for open proposals so far:

GSoC proposals so far: https://publiclab.org/notes/cess/03-02-2020/call-for-2020-soc-proposals-gsoc-and-outreachy

And here for Outreachy proposals: https://publiclab.org/notes/liz/03-09-2020/call-for-outreachy-2020-proposals

For example i left some detailed feedback here suggesting breaking a project up into functional and UI portions, as well as thinking about testing, and finally ordering projects so easiest sub-parts come first in the timeline, and can be published to the live site, before taking on more difficult portions:

https://publiclab.org/notes/keshav_sethi0004/03-12-2020/gsoc-2020-proposal-spam-management-dashboard#c26535

That's good advice for everyone! Thanks, all, and stay safe!

[sagarpreet-chadha]

Reviewing Proposals!

[Dhiraj240]

@jywarren Last time I applied as a mentor but this time I am participating as a student. I had already started with a proposal on Leaflet Environmental Layers (LEL): time slider UI. @sagarpreet-chadha It is not a high priority project so can you suggest some pointers to make it more interesting. Also, I will submit the proposal for review by day after tomorrow.

[Divy123]

Hi @sagarpreet-chadha how can I add my name to the list of projects as mentor? I was not able to find any option there!

[Divy123]

Got that thanks!!

[sagarpreet-chadha]

Some pointers top of my heads:

1. Study the existing layer's data and segregate layers where we have time attribute.
2. Make mocks of how time slider may look on map.
3. Make the time slider generic so that it canbe used with any layer with any data json.
4. It should be easy to use --- the UX part.
5. You may have to do some research on how it is done on other websites.
6. Tests and documentation

I think these points cover up most of the things. @jywarren , @emilyashley do you guys want to add anything else on this list. Thanks!

[Dhiraj240]

@sagarpreet-chadha I had uploaded my proposal on gsoc website but when i published it on Public Lab it asks for approval.is there any issue if i directly put int on gsoc?Still some time is left

[Divy123]

@Dhiraj240 I highly recommend you upload it on GSoC app, asap and then you can do it here later as well.

[Dhiraj240]

@Divy123 Thank you, I have uploaded it, could you check I guess you are also one of the mentors.

[jywarren]

Hi mentors! Moving to our welcome/planning issue here! https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/7873

[jywarren]

@cesswairimu just posted the 2021 call for mentors here! https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/9219 -- thank you all!!