[SoC] Welcome to Squeak's Summer of Code!

[Giovanni Corriga]

Hello, and welcome to Squeak's Summer of Code!

I apologize for waiting so much before sending this message, but now
here we are.

As you know, your proposals have been selected for Squeak's Summer of
Code. Fine, but now what? Here's a list of things you need to know
and/or do for your SoC project (you probably already know most of them).

Mentors
Get in contact with your mentor, and discuss and decide how you should
interact with him during the summer: email, IM, IRC etc. Also, since
we've plenty of available mentors, we'll be assigning each student a
second mentor to help him. We're currently in the process of assigning
them; as soon as we complete the assignment, we'll tell you who shall be
your second mentor. This second mentor will also act as backup in case
the first one can't continue mentoring you.

Mailing lists
Subscribe to the main Squeak mailing lists. These include the Beginners
and Squeak-dev mailing lists, and are the places where most of the
Squeak community lives. You should also subscribe to the SoC mailing
list and to the other mailing lists that your mentor may suggest.
Almost all mailing lists are hosted on
http://lists.squeakfoundation.org .

Contact data
We need to be able to get in touch with you if the need arises. Please
send a message to me ( giovanni at corriga.net ) with your contact info:
other email addresses that you check often, IRC and IM contacts, even a
phone number.

Squeaksource
Get yourself an account on Squeaksource, if you don't have one.
Squeaksource ( http://www.squeaksource.com ) is a centralized monticello
server, with some extra features like web/wiki pages, integration with
SqueakMap etc. Many of the packages you'll work on have their home on
Squeaksource.

The tools and the library
If this is the first time you work with a Smalltalk system, then you
have to get acquainted with the development tools: code browser, method
finder, monticello browser, debugger, etc. etc. Also, start to learn the
structure of the class library.
Ask you mentors for help on this, and try to develop some small
applications to get your feet wet in Smalltalk.

Weekly IRC meetings and reports
During the summer months, we're going to hold a short IRC meeting at the
beginning of each week. During this meeting we'll quickly go over what
you've done in the past week, what you're planning to do in the current
week, what problems you did encounter.

Summer of Squeak Blog
I've created a blog called Summer of Squeak
( http://blog.summer.squeak.org ) that will be used to track your SoC
projects. I invite you to join the blog and post regularly about your
work. If you want to join, please contact me and I'll add you to the
blog.

ESUG Conference
ESUG (the European Smalltalk User Group) organizes a yearly conference
of Smalltalk pratictioners. This year's conference will be held in
Lugano from August 25th to August 31th. Since the conference will be
held in the last week of the Summer of Code, it would be cool if the
students could meet in person. You can apply for a student volunteer job
at the conference: if you're accepted ESUG will pay your admittance to
the conference and your accomodations for the days of the conference, in
exchange for some light work during the conference.
We're also planning some other activities that could be held immediately
before or after the conference, so you should seriously consider being a
student volunteer.

If you have any questions or comments, don't hesitate to contact your
mentor or to send a message to this mailing list.

	Giovanni