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Being a GSoC mentor


From: Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso
Subject: Being a GSoC mentor
Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:29:43 -0400

On 20 March 2013 15:08, pantxo diribarne <address@hidden> wrote:
> 2013/3/20 Jordi Gutiérrez Hermoso <address@hidden>

>> I don't understand. Because you would have done it yourself, you're
>> unable to mentor?
>
> Because I am technically unable to do it my self I don't see how I
> could help someone else do it. I can give the informations I have
> gathered on the subject, I can help testing, finally I can share my
> knowledge on octave if the student is a newbye, what else that would
> take me 10 hours a week?

Being a mentor is about giving pointers about what to do next and
following up on the student. You don't have to know all of the answers
yourself. We have a mailing list and a whole community you can
leverage for when you don't know the answers. Your role is more social
than technical. You should understand the problem enough to know what
a solution looks like. You should be able to provide guidance about
the direction in which a solution will be found. You don't have to be
an expert in details such as nuances of the C++ language. You should
understand something about the general problem domain that you're
working on, however.

You should be able to give a brief glance to the source code that the
student writes to know if it passes basic quality requirements. You
should be staying in touch regularly with the student to make sure
goals are being met. You should test the code.

Here is another description of what mentoring for GSoC is like:

    http://en.flossmanuals.net/GSoCMentoring/what-makes-a-good-mentor/

The 10 hours a week is a somewhat artificial upper bound of how much
time you should dedicate to this. It seems to be close to what other
people in GSoC are recommending, but it's not a hard requirement. If
your student is capable to work alone, the time commitment may be
less. If there are other mentors who can back you up, the time may
also be less. If, however, 10 hours a week is absolutely impossible,
then indeed you should not offer to be a mentor.

- Jordi G. H.


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