On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 11:20:32AM -0500, M. Satyanarayanan wrote:
> That's an interesting suggestion!   Would appreciate pointer to
> site.

someone provided that.

> Also:  has anyone on this mailing list had experience as a mentor 
> organization?  Would appreciate hearing of pros and cons.
>

I have been a mentor for SoC for the NetBSD project, participating
since the SoC started.

Pros:

1) You get people to write code for you, maybe code up that little
   project that you thought about but never found the time to do
   yourself

2) Maybe get more people to help with the coding long term - the idea
   of the SoC is to encourage more participation in open source
   projects and the ideal outcome is if the paticipants continue on
   after the SoC has finished

3) Google gives the project a bit of money for each student they
   mentor, I guess this really is not so important to Coda.

4) Each mentor gets a t-shirt if they fill in the surveys.

Cons:

1) The students get money which means, unfortunately, there seem to be
   a lot of people who attempt to rip the system off by trying to get
   accepted for a project and then try to wangle the payments.  It is
   up to the mentor to agree to the payments but sometimes it can be a
   tough call as to whether or not the claims from the student are
   genuine or not, especially when you cannot have a face to face
   meeting due to distance.

2) There is a bit of work involved in making sure your student is on
   track and performing.

3) You get students to implement your code so making sure it is up to
   the right standard sort of rolls into 2 above

4) It is rather difficult to scope out a project that is technically
   challenging yet small enough to fit within the timeframe of the
   SoC.  It is also very difficult wading through the proposals and
   picking out the one that is likely to succeed from the ones that
   have just thrown something in to try and get the cash (yes this
   happens)

I guess that since most of the Coda developers work at CMU they know
the habits of students so the cons may not be much of a concern -
especially if they can get some of the local students onto a project.

If you are seriously considering doing this I suggest you move
quickly, the size of the largess from Google is not boundless so
getting a project slot or two is a matter of making sure you have
sound organisation, reasonable projects and willing mentors.  Good
luck.

-- 
Brett Lymn
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