Google Summer of Code and Season of Docs programmes aim to introduce students and recent graduates to open source contributions. I participated in GSoC some years ago and it certainly encouraged me to contribute to other projects afterwards.
There are some familiar names among organizations that participated last year such as Python Software Foundation, Django, Julia or (more closely related to some of Jupyter projects) Eclipse, which had a project focused on collaborative edition features (among others).
I just wanted to bring this to your attention, and encourage to consider whether you would be interested to participate this year to promote Jupyter and attract new contributors. Each organization needs a few mentors to guide the students, which is a part-time commitment for a few months (there is a symbolic payment from GSoC to organizations for each mentor); preparation of a few project proposals is also needed. The organization application window for GSoC this (2021) year is Jan 29 - Feb 19.
Introduction for mentors | More detailed mentors guide | Timeline for 2021
2 Likes
Nudging here slightly in case if someone was considering to act on this idea as the application window starts tomorrow.
Thanks for the ping, @krassowski! We (JupyterHub) have participated in Outreachy in the past, with amazing results (@GeorgianaElena is a graduate of this!) . However, it also showed that you need good mentor time - ideally with two mentors per participant - to do justice to the participants. We’ve not pushed for that again, but hopefully we can the coming round. Personally, if we’ve to pick between outreachy & GSoC, I’d prefer outreachy. Ideally, we can do both though.
We used this repo to co-ordinate the last time. Maybe we can develop that into something that’s a little bit more agnostic so that can be used for GSoC too? Having a list of things folks can work on is important to both, and can be added to over the course of the year.
Any idea how we can go around finding more mentors? I’m happy to be the organizer contact point, but not sure if I can be a mentor.
Excited to see more interest in this subject! I did GSoC (twice!) almost 9 years ago, and it was an important part of helping me sustainably contribute to open source 
1 Like
Hey @yuvipanda, I work at Quantstack and I think folks there are up for this.
I talked to @SylvainCorlay and the reason why he’s not motivated to try this year is because he tried two times before as QuantStack but wasn’t accepted.
Would you recommend applying as NUMFocus or something like this?
I’d also prefer Outreachy, but I read their rules and my company is also not allowed to participate, so I don’t know how to go about these things. How did you get accepted in Outreachy?
I’m available for a call if you want to discuss 
Cheers
1 Like
GSoD is opening calls for organizations now (2/10). I did GSoD with NumPy in 2020. It was an amazing experience. I would definitely apply for a Jupyter documentation writer position if you participate.
1 Like
Hey @marathomas! Excited to hear that you are interested. When we did outreachy, we had two sponsors - Berkeley Institute for Data Science and NumFocus. They each got an invoice they paid. I think for quanstack participation, I’d definitely suggest going with NumFocus as a fiscal sponsor. I think you’ll need to apply as Project Jupyter, not a particular organization. This requires the projects to be worked on be considered larger parts of the Jupyter (or conda, perhaps?) ecosystems. I think many of Quanstack’s projects definitely qualify.
IMO, mentorship and management energy is far more important than money. So I would suggest:
- Find a few people who are willing to mentor. You need at least two committed mentors per student, willing to dedicate a few hours a week on & off to work with (not just respond to) students. This is really the bottleneck.
- Find specific, scoped projects these mentors are willing to work on. jupyterhub/outreachy was where we kept our project ideas, but it is stale now. This should be a community involved effort.
- Based on what these projects are and who those mentors are, apply as Project Jupyter or Conda. This requires the projects be in-scope of each of those organizations, and will benefit not just quanstack but the whole ecosystem.
- Go through the application process!
I think it is important for all these steps to happen in public, rather than in processes internal to quanstack. I’d suggest using either this discourse or a github repository (under the jupyter/, jupyterhub/, jupyterlab/ or conda/ organizations) to organize this. I’m happy to help with process
Ideally, we’d be able to participate in both GSoC and Outreachy. Unfortunately, usually the amount of time and energy mentors have is limited. In that case, I’d prefer outreachy by multiple orders of magnitude
Either way, I’m really excited that you are interested in this, @marimeireles! I hope this helps, and I look forward to participating in the process however I can
3 Likes
Hey @yuvipanda!
I talked with QS folks and we decided for a project that was proposed by matplotlib, so I talked to them and in case they’re accepted Martin and Madhur will probably be the mentor for this one project.
Thanks for your answer! It was super useful for me to know it was possible to do it. I’m not sure if we’re gonna get another project cause we don’t have a lot of people, but if we do… I’ll do as you said and make it as public as possible. Thanks for all the tips. Cheers!
1 Like
@marimeireles That’s awesome to hear! More GSoC the better