Squeak GSOC Students,
Your projects are nearly over and final evaluations are coming up. I'm confident you have all done well and I look forward to examining your final projects.
I would like to request something more from you once you have finalized your projects and completed any necessary paperwork for Google or your mentor. I would like for you to reflect back over the course of the project and pick 3 topics from the list below and for each one write up a short (approximately 500 words) essay for the blog. There is no rush on this, if you complete all three by the end of September I will be satisfied.
I think the results of this could be helpful to all of us. It can help us mentors and administrators plan for future GSOCs; it can help you gather your thoughts on the work you have done and by writing it up it can help you formulate your ideas so they stick with you in the future; and these essays will continue to be available on the web and may be of use if you apply to GSOC in the future or to other activities.
So, again, please pick 3 of the topics below and for each one post an approximately 500 word essay to the project blog.
Topics:
a. Summarize the final result of your project as if explaining it to someone who otherwise has no knowledge of your project. Think of this like an 'about' page if your project had it's own website.
b. Talk about how your project went. Pick 2-3 things that went badly and talk about how you could have done them differently. Then pick 2-3 things that went very well and describe them, maybe reflecting on how this could be used in other projects or contexts, if relevant.
c. Now that your project is completed, if you had to do it all over again, would you do it differently? Would you instead explore some other aspect or direction of the project? In contrast to b. focus on conceptual factors, rather than implementation details.
d. Did using Smalltalk help you in implementing your project? Did it make it more difficult?
e. Can more be done with your project in the future? Talk about some ideas for improvement or expansion or maybe another idea for which your project might just be a part.
f. Do you have an idea for a cool project for a future Squeak GSOC? Tell us about it.
g. Pick your own topic. For this one you can talk about anything you like as long as it is related to your Squeak GSOC project. Don't do this one more than once, also pick 2 of the other topics if you pick this one.
Please feel free to ask questions if any of this is unclear.
Thank you,
Ken
soc@lists.squeakfoundation.org