[SoC] Squeak Mentor Summit?

[Giovanni Corriga]

Ken Causey ha scritto:
> A quick report on today's meeting:
> 
> I think it went quite well, there was better attendance than I expected.
> Attendees included: Ken Causey, Matthew Fulmer, Klaus Witzel, Stephane
> Ducasse, Matthieu Suen, Esteban Lorenzo, Janko Mivsek, Brian Rice, and
> Lukas Renggli.

Hi Ken,

thanks for picking up the process! Sorry for missing this first meeting, 
but it clashed with my work hours.

Here are the answers to the points that were raised during the discussion.

> If anyone wants I can provide a log of the entire discussion but to
> quickly summarize:
> 
> We started out with open questions:
> 
> Klaus asked about students applying multiple times and about mentors
> mentoring multiple projects.  We said that applying multiple times is
> fine but in the end a student can only receive one slot.  We were unsure
> about mentoring but assumed at the very least a mentor can be the
> primary mentor on one project and a secondary mentor on another project.
> If anyone can clarify this I would appreciate it.

You're correct when you say that a student can only receive one slot. As 
for the mentors, there is no such limitation, provided they can give 
each student under them all the mentoring they need. In practice, it 
would be better for each student to have a separate main mentor (the one 
that will be responsible for "grading" him) and one or more 
backup/secondary mentors.

> Klaus also asked about policy regarding students who don't reply to
> queries.  We decided that we would be as lenient as possible but
> obviously once it came time to vote that this would be a significant
> issue in voting.

That's 100% correct. If someone doesn't bother to reply to the mentors' 
comments, why should we bother?

> Stephane pointed out that it's not unusual for a student to apply to
> more than one project and that ideally we should find out where that is
> the case as soon as possible and be prepared to deal with it.

Yes, last year we lost a couple of very bright students because they 
were accepted by more than one org.

> Stephane also pointed out that ESUG will be sponsoring at least 4
> students in its SummerTalk project and suggested that students who are
> rejected should also apply there.

> At that point we decided to go through the applications one-by-one and
> open up discussion.  I won't go over the details but I think a lot was
> accomplished with that and to my surprise we got through all of the
> applications with time to spare.

That's great!

> I asked about the application entitled 'Coding' by Suprita Kocchar and
> whether that one should be marked ineligible since there is no project
> specified and it is a purely generic application.  Matthew checked and
> this does not appear to be one of the application spammers.  We left
> this issue open and any comments would be appreciated.

We should try to get some feedback from this student, in order to have 
him refine his application. If we don't, let's simply downvote him.

> Klaus asked Brian Rice if he would consider co-mentoring a new compiler
> project and Brian said he would be willing to consider it.
> 
> Two students came by: Cedrick Beler and Francois Stephany.  Cedrick
> asked about scheduling issues and was a little concerned about whether
> he would have the time to do his project.  I believe he is intending to
> contact Giovanni for clarification.

I already replied to Cedrick; as long as he's able to do some work 
during the weeks when he'll be engaged in other activities and/or catch 
up in the second part of the summer, there shouldn't be any problems.

> Thanks everyone and remember that there is another meeting on Saturday,
> April 5th from 15:00UTC to 17:00UTC.
> 

I'll be in the channel for as long as my mobile broadband thingie allows 
me to be.

	Ciao,

		Giovanni