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

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!

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!