1. Information for Mentors
All GNOME Foundation members can be mentors for Google Summer of Code. If you're not a GNOME Foundation member and you still want to become a mentor, you can talk to the GNOME GSoC admins.
Mentors are invited to participate in the process early by proposing project ideas and helping students complete the required initial contribution to the module they are applying to work on. Please discuss with the applicants the details of the work they'll be doing during the internship period. A specific timeline needs to be created and a project should have an overall theme.
It's best if the project consists of manageable and relevant tasks that the student can land in the main module throughout the internship period. Although students can propose projects, Google suggests making Google Summer of Code your own and is open to any format for the projects. Big feature projects are only suitable for already established contributors. Please try to avoid situations when students work on features that are not yet designed or agreed-upon, have too many moving parts, and would only land in the main module after the internship is over as a best-case scenario. This rarely works out. Instead, especially for new contributors, look for agreed-upon manageable bugs and small features that have a shared theme and would allow the student to feel the satisfaction of landing their code throughout the internship.
If you have any doubt or issue, even if it seems small, or want some help and tips mentoring, please don't hesitate to contact us GNOME GSoC admins either by email or just pinging one of us in IRC, we are here to help you making gsoc a great experience for you!
1.1. Requirements and steps to follow
Make sure to at least have the Watching first post level of notification on the gsoc tag on our Discourse. We will post announcements there.
Join the #soc:gnome.org room on Matrix, or the #soc channel on irc.gnome.org (this is the same room, bridged between Matrix and IRC)
Make sure you are comfortable agreeing with Google rules (search for the mentors section).
Read GSOC timelines.
- Make sure you are comfortable sharing with GNOME some information like email, irc nick or phone number. We need a reliable way to communicate with mentors since the organization and administrators are responsible for any mentoring issue.
- Have a gmail account to be registered in the GSOC website. This is required by Google.
- Reserve a minimum of 5h per week for GSOC. Mentoring requires time.
- Set goals every week with the student and review them weekly. The biggest issue we saw in the past is not following closely the progress of the student and finding out the student was not on track or didn't progressed enough when it was too late.
Take a look at Google manual for mentoring.
And to finish, read GNOME mentor best practices.
1.2. Further Resources
List of year-round mentors and newcomer-friendly projects in GNOME - consider adding yourself and your project there!