Open Letter to KDE GSoC Students We Could Not Accept

Hello students,

I no longer have access to your proposal or emails, thus the open letter on my blog.

If you allowed commenting before the student proposal deadline, I along with other admins and mentors tried to help you improve your proposal. Some of you took the suggestions and sharpened your presentation, fleshed out your timeline and in general created a proposal you can be proud of.

If you did not allow commenting or only uploaded your proposal right before the deadline, you missed out on this mentoring opportunity, and for that I am sorry. That cut us off from a vital communication link with you.

This proposal process, along with fixing some bugs and creating some commits mean that you have real experience you can take with you into the future

. I hope you also learned how to use IRC/Matrix/Telegram channels to get information, and help others as well. Even if you do not continue your involvement with the KDE Community, we hope you will profit from these accomplishments, as we have.

We hope that your experiences with the KDE community up to now make you want to continue to work with us, and become part of the community. Many students whom we were not able to accept previously were successfully accepted later. Some of those students now are mentoring and/or part of the administration team, which is, in our eyes, the zenith of GSoC success.

Some of you we were unable to accept because we could not find suitable mentors. The GSoC team is asking us this year to have three mentors per student, because the world has become so uncertain in this pandemic time. So more developers who will mentor are a precious resource.

Almost every single proposal we got this year is work we want and need, or we wouldn't have published "Ideas" to trigger those proposals. If you are interested in doing this work and do not need the funding and deadlines that GSoC provides, we would welcome working with you outside of GSoC. In fact, each year we have Season of KDE which provides some mentoring, structure and timeline and no funding. This has been very successful for most mentees. And of course all are welcome to join our worldwide army of volunteers, who code, fix bugs, triage bug reports, write, analyze, plan, administer, create graphics, art, promo copy, events, videos, tutorials, documentation, translation, internationalization, and more! It is the KDE community who makes the software, keeps it up-to-date, plans and hosts events, and engages in events planned and hosted by others.

Please join the KDE-Community mail list and dig in! Hope to see you at KDE Akademy.

Oh hey, late update: I just learned today in #gsoc that I *do* have access to all the proposals -- and names and emails! So at the very least I will send a link to this open letter to all of our prospective students. Talk to you then. -v

Google Code-in draws to a close -- students finish your final task by January 16, 2017 at 09:00 (PST)

KDE's Google Code-in party is ending once again. Student work submitted deadline is January 16, 2017 at 09:00 (PST). 

Mentors, you have until January 18, 2017 at 09:00 (PST) to evaluate your student's work. Please get that done before the deadline, so that admins don't have to judge the student work.

Then it will be time to choose winners. We need to have our choices in by January 23, 2017 at 09:00 (PST). Winners and Finalists will be announced January 30, 2017 at 09:00 (PST).

To me, this contest has been lovely. Because there are more organizations participating now, there are more tasks for students, and less pressure on each org. It seems that the students have enjoyed themselves as well.

Spencerb said, in #kde-soc, This was my first (and final) gci, so I don't have much of a point of comparison, but it's been awesome. I've been an opportunity to meet new people and just get involved with KDE, which I've wanted to do for a long time. I've also learned a lot about serious software development that I wouldn't have otherwise.

"I'll turn 18 this Monday, which is why this is my last year :(  I'm so glad to have had the chance to participate at least once.

As a task, Harpreet filed a GCi review: http://aboutgci2016.blogspot.in/

So far, we've had 121 students. The top ten have 103 completed tasks so far! And 160 tasks completed so far. Most exciting for me is that Beginner tasks completed: 45. Getting kids acquainted with Free and Open Source Software communities, which is why every organization must have beginner tasks. I'm glad 45 kids got to know KDE a bit.

KDE Developer Guide needs a new home and some fresh content

As I just posted in the Mission Forum, our KDE Developer Guide needs a new home. Currently it is "not found" where it is supposed to be.

UPDATE: Nicolas found the PDF on archive.org, which does have the photos too. Not as good as the xml, but better than nothing.

We had great luck using markdown files in git for the chapters of the Frameworks Cookbook, so the Devel Guide should be stored and developed in a like manner. I've been reading about Sphinx lately as a way to write documentation, which is another possibility. Kubuntu uses Sphinx for docs.

In any case, I do not have the time or skills to get, restructure and re-place this handy guide for our GSoC students and other new KDE contributors.

This is perhaps suitable for a Google Code-in task, but I would need a mentor who knows markdown or Sphinx to oversee. Contact me if interested! #kde-books or #kde-soc

2016-2017 Season of KDE begins

Do you have a project in mind which will help KDE? Whether you are an experienced developer who would like to mentor someone as part of that project, or a less-experienced person who wants a mentor to help you create the project, Season of KDE is for you.

KDE Student Programs today announces the 2016-2017 Season of KDE for those who want to participate in mentored projects which enhance KDE in some way.

Projects from past Seasons of KDE include new application features, the KDE Continuous Integration system, new reporting for developers, as well as a web framework, porting and a plethora of other work.

Successful mentees earn a certificate of completion along with  a very cool tee shirt and other goodies. Any person who wants to complete a project is eligible to enter.

Those who want to mentor are asked to add ideas here: https://community.kde.org/SoK/Ideas/2016. The sooner the better, please!

Students are asked to begin discussion about your ideas or those on the various KDE mail lists and IRC channels even before applications open. The more consultation is done with the team you want to work with, the more likely you are to succeed.

The schedule this year will be:

•  7 October to 31 October:  Student and mentor applications
•  1 November: Official coding period begins. Students can start work after once mentor and student agree on the project scope and the timeline
•  28 February : End of coding period

To apply as a mentor or student, please visit https://season.kde.org

 ____________________
 Photo by Erik Drost, Mentor Marsh Nature Preserve through a Creative Commons license. Thanks!

KDE has been selected as a Google Summer of Code 2016 mentor organization

Welcome, all interested students!

Students, please read https://community.kde.org/GSoC before beginning to create your proposal. KDE works in teams; find a team working on software you would love to help create, get to know them, familiarize yourself with the codebase, and start fixing some bugs.

Don't forget to join the Student list.

Mentors are presenting their ideas for students here; remember this is only a starting place for your proposal. Most of your communication should be in the team's preferred channels, but ask general questions in #kde-soc on freenode IRC, or KDE-Soc Telegram group.

Students, Google Summer of Code is coming, but not quite yet....

We've been seeing more and more questions about GSoC and how to get involved.

GSoC 2015 will be happening, but it is not yet time for orgs to even apply, much less be accepted. So we have no ideas page as yet for GSoC 2015.

That said, the best way to have your GSoC proposal accepted is to join
a team NOW and work with them on triaging and fixing bugs, and working
on old and new projects. As you work with your team members and the
codebase, you will be learn how to create a proposal which fits the needs
of the project, and also find willing and able mentors willing to guide you. Remember, mentoring is hard work. Probable mentors want to choose students they can trust to complete their proposal successfully.

The time to prepare for GSoC is now -- but it is not the time for
creating proposals yet. The important part of GSoC is embedding
yourself into your chosen project.Your energy can transform a project
from one lacking a spark into one brimming with enthusiasm. Go for it!

How to join a team:

• Find the best list(s) and subscribe, and scan the archives.
• Join the relevant IRC channels and hang out there All The Time.
• Search the forum for areas/posts where you can help out.
• Start searching https://bugs.kde.org for bugs which you can test, and fix.
• Learn how to propose your code changes to Reviewboard.

Other ways to prepare yourself:

• Read the KDE Developers manual and prepare your development environment.
• Read the GSoC Student Manual.
• As you work your way through the documentation, please fix errors you find, or update it. Remember, documentation is part of the code we provide to both other developers and users.

Google Code-In Application Deadline soon - Get your tasks in now!

Hi folks, if you have been thinking about participating in Google Code-In, which is held from December through mid-January for teens not yet in college or university, now is the time to describe your tasks and get them onto the spreadsheet.

Ten to twelve organizations will be chosen to participate, and the more high-quality tasks we have available for the students, the more likely it is that we (that is, KDE) will be chosen to participate.

It is a lot of work for mentors who have lots of tasks, but each task is not much work. It would be excellent to have many mentors, each with a few tasks. By the way, many tasks can be "re-used," such as testing a certain number of bug reports.

Keep in mind that application teams and KDE distributions are welcome to bring in tasks too, as long as they are KDE-related.

For more about how to structure the tasks, see https://developers.google.com/open-source/gci/resources/mentor-and-orgadmin-info. We need each task tagged as coding, documentation/training, UI, outreach/research or quality assurance.

The form for entering your tasks is here: http://goo.gl/forms/wVtXW050X3

Our deadline for application is Monday, November 10th at 19:00 UTC.

Season of KDE - Let's go!

We're now in the countdown. The deadline for applications is midnight 31 October UT. So give the ideas page one last look:

https://community.kde.org/SoK/Ideas/2014

We even got one last task just now, just for you devops -- UPDATE: this task is taken.

Please talk to your prospective mentor and get their OK before signing up on https://season.kde.org/ . If you have already signed up and your mentor has signed off on your plans and timeline, get to work!

===========================================

UPDATE: Because of the glitches in the schedule, we are extending the student deadline a few days, to match the mentor deadline for logging into and making an account on https://season.kde.org/

Please don't delay. Make all necessary accounts, subscribe to KDE-Soc-Mentor or KDE-Soc list, and get the proposals posted and approved. Please ping us in #kde-soc if there are any problems we can help you with. Otherwise, get to work!

Start your Season of KDE engines!

Season of KDE (#SoK2014) was delayed a bit, but we're in business now:

http://heenamahour.blogspot.in/2014/10/season-of-kde-2014.html

Please stop by the ideas page if you need an idea. Otherwise, contact a KDE devel you've worked with before, and propose a project idea.

Once you have something, please head over to the Season of KDE website: https://season.kde.org and jump in. You can begin work as soon as you have a mentor sign off on your plan.

Student application deadline: Oct 31 2014, 12:00 am UTC - so spread the word! #SoK2014

Go go go!