Hello GSoC Mentors and Org Admins,
We are pleased to announce Google Summer
of Code 2021, the 17th consecutive year of
the program!
As many of you might have heard if you attended
the Mentor Summit a couple of weeks ago (or chatted with
someone who did) we are making a few changes for the 2021
program. We’ve spent a lot of time evaluating the GSoC
program and have been looking at where we can make some
changes to help meet the #1 goal of GSoC - bring new,
diverse contributors into your communities that stay in
your communities after their GSoC program ends. And with
the challenges of the pandemic and the strains it has put
on everyone’s time (students, mentors and org admins
alike) we are looking to provide more flexibility in 2021.
What are the changes for 2021 from 2020?
- Smaller project size - all
students participating in the 2021 program will be
working on a 175 hour
project (instead of a 350 hr project). This
change will also result in a few other changes
including the student stipend being cut in half.
- Currently we are missing out on many wonderful
students who could never commit to such a huge project
and time commitment but would be great contributors to
your community. This is a significant change as we now
are no longer strongly encouraging students to focus
only on GSoC over their summer. Students have many other
responsibilities especially during the pandemic that
make it hard for them to spend 30 hours a week on a
project.
- We realize this is going to require all
of you to think about smaller projects and update your
project ideas which is why we wanted to give you 3+
months to start talking it through with your
communities.
- The mentor stipends will be adjusted to
$400 per student mentored. In feedback from the mentor
summit it was pointed out that the effort from mentors
will not be half as much even though the project size
is cut in half so we adjusted from $250 to $400.
- Shortened coding period -
the coding
period will be 10 weeks with a lot more
flexibility for the mentor and student to decide
together how they want to spread the work out over the
summer. Some folks may choose to stick to a 17-18 hour a
week schedule with their students, others may factor in
a couple of breaks during the program (for student and
mentor) and some may have students focus 30 hours a week
on their project so they wrap up in 6 weeks. This also
makes it a lot easier for students with finals or other
commitments (weddings, etc.) to adjust their schedules.
-
2 evaluations (instead
of 3) - There will be an evaluation
after 5 weeks and the final evaluation will take place
after the 10th week. We are also no longer requiring
students complete their first evaluation (though we
encourage them to do so), so if a student doesn’t
complete the first evaluation they will not
automatically be removed from the program. They are
still required to complete the final evaluation.
-
Eligibility requirements
- In 2020 there are many ways students are learning
and we want to acknowledge that so we will be allowing
students who are 18 years old AND currently enrolled
(or accepted into) a post-secondary academic program
as of May 17, 2021 or have graduated from a
post-secondary academic program between December 1,
2020 and May 17, 2021 to apply to the GSoC program.
- What this means is that now the program will be open
to folks participating in a variety of different
academic programs, not just accredited university
programs. This includes licensed coding camps, community
colleges, and many other programs that may not be
accredited yet but are post-secondary academic
programs.
These changes were made to help find more
diverse students who we hope will stay involved in your
communities after their GSoC ends. We look forward to
these changes and will definitely be getting feedback from
all of you as the 2021 program goes on to see what is
working and what we should consider adjusting for any
possible future program.
The program announcement, timeline, marketing
materials (slide deck, flyers), FAQs, and short videos
with tips for mentors and students are all available.
You'll also notice the 2020 program has now been archived.
Organizations -- If you would like to
apply for the 2021 program please start thinking about the
~175 hr projects you would like students to work on and
also reach out to your community members to ask if they
would like to be mentors for the program. Having a
thorough and well thought out list of Project Ideas is the
most important part of your application.
Encourage other open source orgs to apply --
Please also consider encouraging other open source
projects to apply and be a first time GSoC org - we’re
hoping to accept more orgs in 2021 than ever before with a
good number of them being first time orgs. When orgs apply
they can put your org down as a reference.
Please
note that Org applications will open on January 29th.
We are looking forward to another exciting year
of GSoC!
For any questions about the programs please
email us at gsoc-support@xxxxxxxxxx
Best,
Stephanie Taylor
GSoC Program Lead
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the
Google Groups "Google Summer of Code Mentors List" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails
from it, send an email to
google-summer-of-code-mentors-list+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To view this discussion on the web visit
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-summer-of-code-mentors-list/c6db75dd-0534-41c4-9596-65e2a64772f9n%40googlegroups.com.