Re: [boost] GNOME outreachy

Subject: Re: [boost] GNOME outreachy
From: Niall Douglas (s_sourceforge_at_[hidden])
Date: 2018-08-25 21:03:55

> I completely agree with you here. But my sole purpose of starting this
> thread was to participating in this kind of open source event so that new
> people get involved throughout the year and I thought GNOME outreachy would
> be a good opportunity but as discussion concluded outreachy is not an event
> boost would show much interest into. But there are many other events and
> such one is Google Code In. (Obviously, if we have byte size tasks which
> can be solved by a school student.)

Boost is in the enviable position of being very wealthy relative to 99%
of open source orgs. We have cash aplenty. We don't need Outreachy
funding. We easily could be funding several mentor-mentee projects per
year, just out of our own income. And the Standard C++ Foundation
probably could fund quite a few more, if we asked. Money isn't the
problem here.

What we are lacking in is sufficient suitable mentor-student pairings.
We have a surplus of people wanting to be mentored, but they can't find
mentors willing to mentor what they want to be mentored in. We also have
a general shortage of willing mentors, though Boost members have been
more than generous on this relative to other orgs for GSoC.

So I don't think awareness, or publicity, or new blood, or funding are
the problem here.

Incidentally, we did try hard to get Boost into Google Code-In a few
years back, and we got exactly one willing mentor, and even then I felt
they were asking a bit much from a high school student. There is a
reason why most of our GSoC students are postgraduate students, it's
only then that they're able to contribute usefully enough to get a
mentor to agree to mentor them.

I'd love to change this, but short of paying mentors at market rate
which we definitely can't afford, I'm not sure what more can be done.

Niall