Re: [boost] [gsoc15] Attn: We need 2015 mentors and project ideas for Boost!

Subject: Re: [boost] [gsoc15] Attn: We need 2015 mentors and project ideas for Boost!
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-01-28 10:52:52

On 28 Jan 2015 at 9:35, Kenneth Adam Miller wrote:

> I would like to know what the qualification requirements are for becoming a
> GSoC mentor.

Writing one or preferably more project ideas for 
https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/SoC2015 pretty much earns you 
the right. We can usually tell from how well the project ideas are 
written as to your depth of understanding and skill level in your 
domain, and if we see a problem in your project idea proposals we'll 
contact you privately about those to either tidy them up or in the 
worst case scenario, to ask you to withdraw (note this has never 
happened to my knowledge yet, most mentors realise when writing the 
ideas if they have what it takes or not and don't submit their idea 
if they know they aren't mentor material).

Past that, it helps to like working with students, but to be firm 
enough as a personality to know how and when to be mean and how and 
when to be nice. If you get a good student, mentoring is *extremely* 
rewarding personally. Most of our mentors are serial repeats.

Do try to design your ideas to be attractive to students, so what 
*they* think is a cool project rather than you (trawling past student 
submissions is an excellent way of figuring out their preferences). 
If no student picks your idea, we may try to match you to a similar 
idea, but more often than not we don't get enough slots from Google 
and you don't mentor that year if no student picks your idea. In that 
sense mentors compete for students as much as students compete for 
mentors.

And do ask any questions here if you encounter them, in particular if 
my crappy instructions on 
https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/SoC2015 don't make sense. Our 
thanks in advance for your interest in mentoring!

Niall
--- 
Boost C++ Libraries Google Summer of Code 2014 admin
https://svn.boost.org/trac/boost/wiki/SoC2014