[TOS] Does Red Hat or Canonical have any student competitions?

Cat Allman cat.allman at gmail.com
Sun Feb 27 16:06:32 UTC 2011


Hi all,

With respect, I'm going to clarify a couple of points re GSoC for people who
are un/less familiar with the program.

2011/2/26 Karsten Wade <kwade at redhat.com>

> On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 02:58:00PM -0500, Kevin Cole wrote:
> >
> > I mentioned GSoC and the OLPC Contributors program but I think the
> > professor's looking for a "competition" rather than a "project".
> >  Personally, I also think our students would do better with
> "collaboration"
> > rather than "competition" since (a) you don't "lose" and (b) it's
> > open-ended: Students who participate in such efforts go on to become
> > professionals who participate in such efforts and end up mentoring the
> > current crop of students who go on to become professionals...  Ain't
> > recursion grand? ;-)
>

I'm delighted to report that this does happen with GSoC - and with out high
school program, GHOP/CGI too.

>
> So the GSoC program ...
>
> There is actually a highly competitive element to it, most of which
> falls within the current school year. The students have to compete
> with other students by writing project proposals to get a chance at a
> paid slot over the summer. It is also conducted entirely in the
> written medium, and the projects involved are now quite experienced
> with students of different English capabilities. The only requirement
> is to be an enrolled student, I do not know if any age barrier exists.
>

All true, with addition that participants must be 18 or older.

>
> The proposal writing process involves:
>
> * Contacting one or more FOSS projects
>  - You have to meet the people who put forward ideas
>

Not clear what is meant by this; meet as in conversation online between
applicants and members of the project?   True.

 - Ask questions and learn about the idea you are proposing for
>  - Probably take some coding tests and similar
>

Some projects require this, some don't.


>  - Show you are willing and able to communicate with the project
> * Putting together one or more technical proposals
>  - Demonstrate ability to analyze a problem
>  - Show skill thinking toward a technical solution with info on hand
>  - Work with one or more mentors to improve the proposal pre-deadline
>  - Get a serious proposal in by a deadline
>
> So, just the proposal process involves much of the
> how-to-start-participating that we want to teach students.
>

Very true.

>
> There are usually many, many projects involved, so the competition is
> high but there are more opportunities.
>

And we're accepting more projects this year, so please encourage projects to
apply - starting Monday/tomorrow 12 noon PST.  Thanks in advance!


Cheers everyone!

Cat

>
> Now someone mentioned Fedora's program from last year, last called
> Fedora Students Contributing (FSC). I wrote about this recently[1],
> and the conclusion I came to is that for Fedora and Red Hat's
> investment, FSC gave us the same result as participating in the GSoC
> at a much higher cost.
>
> The one thing running our own program did was give us a chance to
> fund projects that weren't just software. One student completed the
> first version of the "Fedora Musicians Guide" as his project.
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Summer_Coding_2010_projects
>
> I would only recommend resurrecting FSC if we get more sponsors who
> also bring in some people resources to help carry the organizational
> load.
>
> - Karsten
>
> [1]
> http://iquaid.org/2011/02/16/fedora-students-contributing-live-or-let-die/
>
>
> --
> name:  Karsten 'quaid' Wade, Sr. Community Gardener
> team:                Red Hat Community Architecture
> uri:               http://TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki
> gpg:                                       AD0E0C41
>
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>


-- 
Cat Allman

allman at google.com
1-650-214-4886

Open Source Programs Office
Google
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA USA 94043
code.google.com

"A little sunlight is the best disinfectant." Justice Louis Brandeis
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