Public Lab Research note


Call for Summer of Code 2019 mentors!

by warren | January 09, 2019 16:50 09 Jan 16:50 | #18090 | #18090

With Rails Girls Summer of Code (#rgsoc) and Google Summer of Code (#gsoc) 2019 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 of last 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, the plots-dev list and the @publiclab/reviewers group on GitHub to provide code-specific input, so that we share the burden of specific technical support. We have weekly Check-Ins on GitHub 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!

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:

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


25 Comments

I'm interested

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Hello! If there's anyone interested in mentoring a mobile project in particular, please get in touch igor.wilbert@gmail.com. Thanks!

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Hi! I would love to be a mentor for GSoC'19. Can we do anything related to PWAs? I was thinking maybe we can make plots2 a PWA and also make further enhancements in it. Please let me know what do you think about this?

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Reposting from Github as requested:

I would love to be a mentor with public lab.

My completed requirements:

Please let me know if there is anything else you need. Thank you!

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Hi @rbhatia46 please check out the ideas brainstorming page -- sorry the link above was broken but I'm fixing it now!

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Hey @warren! I have an idea. Right now it seems there are much more students than mentors. I have a decent knowledge of JavaScript, I have created some FTO-issues across PL's projects and I'm getting quite familiar with them, so may I put my name on the list of potential mentors (https://publiclab.org/wiki/gsoc-ideas)? I'm planning on submitting a proposal as a student just like before, and decide if I'll participate as student or mentor later. What do you think? Thanks!

Update: I am not able to add my name on the list of potential mentors. Is this a bug or only admins can add names? Thanks!

Update 2: Here are my contributions, as required:

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Hi Igor - that seems very reasonable! Thank you!

Hmm, what was the issue in adding your name - can you try editing the whole page?

And thank you!!! Great work!!!!

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@warren thanks! I opened an issue in plots2 for this (https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/4891).

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Just to note: At a particular point of time a person can be either SoC mentor OR student but not both. So, please choose wisely in which category do you want to apply. We are happy to accept your help in either way.

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@bansal_sidharth2996 thank you for the clarification, but I was well aware of that. I just meant that I would be very happy to help this community during GSoC, either as a Mentor or as a Student.

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We are either way glad to have your help. I just wrote above comment because I got some personal emails people asking to be part of both.  Thanks 

On Tue, Mar 5, 2019, 3:54 PM \<notifications@publiclab.org> wrote:

Hi! You were mentioned by IgorWilbert in a comment on the research note Call for Summer of Code 2019 mentors!. You can reply to this email or visit this link:

https://publiclab.org/notes/warren/01-09-2019/call-for-summer-of-code-2019-mentors#c22046

IgorWilbert wrote:


@bansal_sidharth2996 thank you for the clarification, but I was well aware of that. I just meant that I would be very happy to help this community during GSoC, either as a Mentor or as a Student.


Reply at: https://publiclab.org/notes/warren/01-09-2019/call-for-summer-of-code-2019-mentors#comments

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I am Harshith Pabbati I would like to be a mentor with Public Lab in GSoC. My contributions: https://github.com/publiclab/image-sequencer/pull/782 https://github.com/publiclab/image-sequencer/pull/776 https://github.com/publiclab/image-sequencer/issues/810 Thank you.

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Hi @harshithpabbati! thank you! You aren't going to apply as a student as well? You can apply to both but only do one, i believe?

@rbhatia46 also we'd love to have you and anyone else I've missed here. Thank you -- and we'd love some help making more first-timers-only issues as well, actually, because there are lots of new people showing up! Thanks!!

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For those looking to help make new first-timers-only issues, a good source for them is the fto-candidate label, which often have all the right ingredients (or close) but need some additional help and formatting! https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/labels/fto-candidate

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Hi @warren, I want to be a mentor for the GSoC 2019.

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Hello @warren ! I have decided that I would like to be a mentor for GSoC 2019. If you could update me with next steps I would be very glad. Thanks!

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Great!!! I will be circling back to this list once the GSoC process moves along, and will check everyone's preferences and make invitations! Thanks a lot!

On Fri, Mar 29, 2019 at 6:38 AM \<notifications@publiclab.org> wrote:

Hi! There's been a response to your research note 'Call for Summer of Code 2019 mentors!'. You can reply to this email or visit this link:

https://publiclab.org/notes/warren/01-09-2019/call-for-summer-of-code-2019-mentors#c23533

IgorWilbert wrote:


Hello @warren ! I have decided that I would like to be a mentor for GSoC 2019. If you could update me with next steps I would be very glad. Thanks!


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Reply at: https://publiclab.org/notes/warren/01-09-2019/call-for-summer-of-code-2019-mentors#c23533

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@warren I have completed the prerequisites mentioned in the post. I would like to be a mentor with Publiclab for RGSoC 2019. A little about me: I am a full stack developer and have been contributing to opensource projects from past 2.5 years. I started my opensource journey by contributing to Zulip for about an year. I have also contributed to Hasura as an intern and currently I am contributing to Fossasia. I am a GitHub Campus Expert and have organised numerous events including workshops and sessions for freshman students of my institute. I also organised and mentored in an event called OpenCode (OpenCode GitHub) which is a month long event to bring more people into the world of opensource by mentoring and guiding them in resolving issues over GitHub. My GitHub Profile: Anupam-dagar

Looking forward to your reply. Thanks 😃

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All the GSoC mentors are requested to fill in this form before 20th April. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Ixh9Hjo1gwDeez6eMq8_uthr3P_Qb6opuo5FW2oetcI/ Thanks

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Please ping me in case there is some problem in the google form given by me. We will be sending invites between 21 and 25th of April.

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Hi we have sent the invites. Just a reminder to the folks who missed to fill in the form. Please fill it asap

Thanks all for making PL a lovely place to code and interact.

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Hi everyone, We are also participating in the Google Summer Of Docs program this year. So anyone willing to be a mentor for the program then please visit https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/5550. Thanks

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@jywarren @ bansal_sidharth2996 I was not able to get selected as student this year , but I would love to mentor. Thanks

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Awesome, thank you so much @jainsubahu. You can use this form: https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/issues/4585

On Thu, May 9, 2019 at 4:59 PM \<notifications@publiclab.org> wrote:

Hi! You were mentioned by jainsubhahu in a comment on the research note Call for Summer of Code 2019 mentors!. You can reply to this email or visit this link:

https://publiclab.org/notes/warren/01-09-2019/call-for-summer-of-code-2019-mentors#c24096

jainsubhahu wrote:


@jywarren @ bansal_sidharth2996 I was not able to get selected as student this year , but I would love to mentor. Thanks


Reply at: https://publiclab.org/notes/warren/01-09-2019/call-for-summer-of-code-2019-mentors#comments

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@jywarren already done .


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