Re: GSoC projects: lessons learned

We had two projects for adding interactivity to form building in
PloneFormGen. I mentored both. The work had only a loose connection to core
Plone technologies; it was mostly JS and well-understood AJAX connections.
The proposal was put forward by me, with the successful student extending
it.

The first failed. I think the key element of the failure was lack of any
community connection going in. When he floundered, we had no connections to
pull him back in.

The second succeeded. The student was known to other community members in
advance and stayed connected throughout. He wasn't just working for the
money or for me, but also to impress others in the community.




On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 10:36 AM, Martin Aspeli <[email protected]> wrote:

>  We have quite a lot of experience of GSoC now. It would be valuable
> collecting what projects worked and what didn't, to inform this year's
> evaluation.
>
> From my own memory:
>
>  - things where we have existing community members who happen to be
> students (eg Timo), working on core stuff (eg p.a.discussion)
>  - things that have a limited scope and are easy to learn (building Diazo
> themes)
>  - students who are mature and motivated
>  - students who write their own proposals
>  - mentors who make time and set a regular (weekly) meeting schedule
>
> I have a feeling a lot of submissions last year were motivated more by
> money than consideration for the community.
>
> Things that have failed:
>
>  - stuff no one understands (WTF is a "buildout builder")
>  - stuff in alien technologies (Laszlo (!), native apps)
>  - things that require deep knowledge of core (building p.a.portlets;
> replacing PAS with PAU)
>  - things that require above normal programming talent (designing APIs,
> addressing really old concerns)
>  - things that require hundreds of man hours and are dull (replace all
> skin templates with views)
>
> I feel we have more failures than successes, but I may be pessimistic.
> What else have we had?
>
> Martin
> —
> Sent from Mailbox <https://www.dropbox.com/mailbox> for iPad
>
>
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