Archive for 2011 emails
1. Welcome to summer of code
Placed in "Message to accepted students" on the organization page in Melange.
Dear GNOME-loving student,
Congratulations: you did it! The GNOME community is glad to welcome
you, and to have you participate in the Google Summer of Code and work
on GNOME!
Some of you already know the GNOME community quite well, but it might
not be the case for everyone of you. That's not a problem: GSoC has a
community bonding time, where you will have a few weeks to get to know
the community before starting the real work. That's a really good
thing, and we hope you'll be able to see how great, friendly and
helpful the GNOME community is!
The first thing we want you to do is to contact your mentor. Write her
or him a nice mail or buy her/him a beer (or some juice) if you happen
to live in the same city :-).
If during the GSoC, you have a problem with your mentor (lack of
communication, or misunderstandings, or deep disagreements, or
anything else), don't hesitate to report that to the GNOME
administrators (listed on https://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2012 ):
they'll be there to help with this kind of things and their goal is
to make sure that you feel good, so they will work hard to fix any
issue with your mentor. But hopefully, this won't be needed: all
mentors and administrators are nice people (or at least, they're
supposed to be ;-)).
After sending a mail to your mentor, you should go subscribe to our
mailing list for the Summer of Code:
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-soc-list
Feel free to use this list for discussion between all mentored
students, or to ask questions about GNOME, or about the community or
about anything you need. We'll check next week if you're all
subscribed since this is the list where mails will be sent when we
need to reach all of you.
To begin things, it would be great that you send to this list an
introduction mail so that the whole community knows about you, your
project, your plans, etc.
You can then use your introduction mail to fill the wiki page for your
GSoC project. First, add a link to it from a page that lists all
projects, then create a wiki page for your individual project.
This is a good place to introduce your project, link to the blog posts
you'll write, link to your code, etc. See the wiki pages from
last year if you need some examples:
https://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2011/Projects
Feel free to edit other pages of the GNOME wiki too. This is where we
post the information relevant to the GNOME projects. From time to time,
you might like to look through the recent changes page to see what's
going on in GNOME.
https://live.gnome.org/RecentChanges
Planet GNOME is an aggregator of blogs of GNOME contributors. From now
on, it will serve as your morning newspaper :-). We ask that you add
your blog to Planet GNOME, creating a new blog if necessary, and write
updates about your work during the internship period every two weeks.
Of course, you are welcome to blog more often too! It is exciting that
you will have a voice on Planet GNOME right from the start and it is a
very important way to let the GNOME community know about the work you
are doing! This will also allow us to keep track of your progress.
Once your blog is added, please write an introductory post and start
blogging about your work on GNOME and other things that you see
relevant for Planet GNOME.
http://planet.gnome.org
Here is what you need to do to get yourself added to Planet GNOME.
You need to have a link to your blog or to a category of posts in your
blog AND a hackergotchi ready for that. This page has all the details:
http://live.gnome.org/PlanetGnome
In particular, see "Do I have to only blog about GNOME things?"
section which explains that it's great to have posts about other
things that interest you aggregated on Planet GNOME, as long as they
can be of interest to other people in the community. So you should
decide whether you want to add your full blog or just a category
based on how frequently you blog and the range of topics you blog
about.
For the hackergotchi, you can either
1) Design it yourself by following the instructions here:
http://live.gnome.org/HackergotchiGuidelines
2) Ask the art team to help you by creating a wiki page with a link
to your photo or your photo as an attachment and adding the request
to the bottom of the requests list here:
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/ArtRequests
3) You can see how your picture will look as a hackergotchi by
adding a layer mask in GIMP and clearing out everything around your
head. You can then save it as .xcf file and file an art request for
people on the art team to add the shadow. Here is an example of an
art request like that:
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeArt/ArtRequests/issue45
The guide to adding a mask in GIMP is here:
http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-dialogs-structure.html#gimp-layer-mask
Once you have the hackergotchi and the blog feed ready, file a bug
with them here:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=website&component=planet.gnome.org
Mention that you are a GSoC student in the bug. That will get your
blog added fast even if it is completely new and will waive the
requirement of being the GNOME Foundation member. You will get a
special GSoC logo next to your posts on Planet GNOME.
Other mailing lists that might be of interest to you are the
desktop-devel-list and the gnome-love list:
https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-love
You can participate in the general discussion on the
desktop-devel-list, and ask questions if you have problems with
building GNOME, or if you're not sure how to do something on
gnome-love list. You should also subscribe to the mailing
list relevant to your project.
You should also join #gnome-hackers, #gnome-love, and #soc
IRC channels on GIMPNet (irc.gnome.org), as well as the channels
relevant to your project and other channels that might be of
interest to you. It's fine to just lurk on IRC. IRC is where
people talk in GNOME, and it is a great way to learn and discuss
things. See this page for more information:
http://live.gnome.org/GnomeIrcChannels
If you prefer to use an address different from your gmail (or
google account) address to communicate, please tell the
administrators. They'll make a note about it somewhere.
That's all for now. If you have any questions, feel free to send
a mail to the administrators or the mailing lists, or ask your
mentor.
Small summary:
+ make sure you're in contact with your mentor(s)
+ subscribe to the gnome-soc-list mailing list
+ subscribe to other relevant mailing lists
+ create the wiki page for your project
+ get your blog added to Planet GNOME
+ hang out on IRC
+ introduce yourself on gnome-soc-list and on Planet GNOME
Welcome and Congratulations!
2. Mail for rejected students
Placed in "Message to rejected students" on the organization page in Melange.
Dear student,
Unfortunately, your proposal has not been accepted as a Google Summer of
Code 2012 project for GNOME.
Thanks a lot for your proposal. We are very honored that you took the
time to submit a proposal to make GNOME better.
The response to the program has been particularly high this year,
with many students successfully completing the required contribution
and establishing a relationship with a project they applied for. We
looked at the relevance of the proposed project for GNOME, strength of
the student's coding sills, and history of involvement in GNOME and
free software when making the selection decisions.
We would love to have you as part of GNOME and help you gain more
experience with the project. There's no need to be a GSoC student to make
great contributions and learn more!
Join the IRC channel and the mailing list of the project you are
interested in. Try out patches, write bug reports, and submit your
own patches. Every project appreciates and respects new contributors!
Check out the GNOME Love initiative [2]. Its whole purpose is to help
people get on their feet in the GNOME community. There is a mailing list,
an IRC channel, a list of mentors, and a huge list of bugs [3] that would
b good for first timers to work on. A lot of friendly GNOME developers
hang out in #gnome-love just waiting to help out a future contributor.
And if you're feeling unsure about putting yourself out there, don't
hesitate to contact any of us privately. You might want to start with
the developer who would have mentored your project, or with the
maintainer of the software you're most interested in.
Again, thanks for showing an interest in working with the GNOME
community. Keep up the good ideas, good luck with school, and we hope
to see you around, and perhaps in a future GSOC!
Take care,
The GNOME GSoC Team
[1] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/
[2] http://live.gnome.org/GnomeLove
[3] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/buglist.cgi?keywords=gnome-love;resolution=---
3. GSoC results announcement
Hi all,
On Monday GNOME accepted 29 Google Summer of Code interns and 10 Outreach Program for Women interns! All the interns made a contribution to the project they were applying to work on and almost all were connected to their mentors during the application process. We are thrilled to have these talented and dedicated contributors have a chance to spend the whole summer working on GNOME! Thanks to Google, Mozilla, Collabora, Red Hat, the Free Software Foundation, and the GNOME Foundation for making these internships possible!
Thank you to all the mentors who helped the applicants along the way and will guide the participants this summer! Everyone, please help out mentors from your project by also helping the participants when possible.
Because we are closing the 3.6 feature proposal period, it would be great if mentors consider proposing the planned work as a 3.6 feature. If your intern’s proposal is about a well-defined user-visible feature, the student is an experienced GNOME contributor, and/or you are dedicated to spend part of your time working on the feature, please propose it for 3.6.
Below, is the list of all the interns’ projects. The ones without a link are OPW projects. The interns will blog about their work on Planet GNOME throughout the summer.
Thanks to everyone and welcome to the interns!
Marina, on behalf of GSoC and OPW admins
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
= Category =
Name - Project - Mentor
link to project page
Name - Project - Mentor
link to project page
[...]
4. Start of coding period
To: gnome-soc-list
Hi dear students,
Last week, the coding period of GSoC started. This means you should all
already have completely amazing results to show right now, of course :-)
More seriously, that means the real stuff is now happening.
First, if you haven't had any contact with your mentor(s) yet, please
get in touch with her/him/them as soon as possible. Or if you tried to
do so several times already without success, tell us (GSoC admins) so we
can investigate the issue.
To allow everyone to keep track of your work, to see the progress in
your projects, and to also help you if needed, we are asking you to
write reports about your activities at least every two weeks and to
maintain a wiki page with all the details of your project.
All details about this can be found here:
http://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2012/Reporting
Read this page carefully, and please note that the reporting is not
optional. You should not be afraid of saying you've been blocked for a
few days in your reports: those things happen to all of us :-) All in
all it should not take much time, just make a habit out of it.
Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any problems or questions.
Best of luck and enjoy, now is when the fun begins!
XXX,
on behalf of your friendly GNOME GSoC admins
5. Start of coding period (for mentors)
To: soc-mentors-list
(forward mail from gnome-soc-list)
Hey there,
Coding period has started for GSoC, so it's time to make sure your
students work on their project :-)
If you haven't had any contact with your student(s) yet, then something
is not going well. Please try to make that happen as soon as possible,
or tell us, GSoC admins, about the issue. We prefer to be notified early
of such issues.
You might want to subscribe to the wiki page for the project of your
student, see https://live.gnome.org/SummerOfCode2012/Projects
Cheers,
XXX
6. Announcement of GUADEC
To: gnome-soc-list
All work and no play makes you boring. So it's time for some play,
GUADEC!
In case you don't know it (where have you been?), GUADEC is *THE* GNOME
conference: http://guadec.org/
And it's extremely good fun to hang out with all the GNOME rockstars.
Last year, some of the GSoC students were able to attend GUADEC and it
was really fun and useful. Meeting your mentor, some people interested
in your project and other community members has a positive impact on
your work. Showing what you already achieved is also fantastic to get
some good feedback.
So it's probably a good thing for the students of this year's GSoC to
attend GUADEC, if possible. We talked with GUADEC organizers, and they
support the idea. While there's no guarantee, it's possible that you
can get a sponsorship to attend GUADEC, if you need it. Our budget is
limited, but we'll do our best. Please see the earlier sent mail by
Germán for details. Of course, attending GUADEC is not mandatory. ;)
We've also been allocated a slot for student lightning talks. These are
short presentations (5, 10 or 15 minutes, to be decided) where each
student gets the opportunity to present his/her work. It's also a good
way to get a lot of interest (and become, like we promised, our next
rockstar ;)). All of this still has to be organized though, more on
that later.
So, we'd like to know if you'd like to attend the conference. Please
show us some love and reply to this mail asap so we can know about your
plans wrt GUADEC. Also, please do not forget to apply for sponsorship if
you need it before May 16, 2012, 23:59 UTC.
Cheers,
Your friendly GSoC admins.
