GSoC 2018 at CERN-HSF: Welcome meeting for students

Wednesday 16 May 2018, 16:30 → 18:00 Europe/Zurich

32/S-C22 (CERN)

Welcome meeting with GSoC students

CERN-HSF (High-Energy Physics Software Foundation) is the umbrella organization for high-energy physics-related projects in GSoC. The HEP Software Foundation (http://hepsoftwarefoundation.org/) facilitates the coordination of common international efforts in high-energy physics software and computing.

GSoC at CERN-HSF this year
- 29 students
- 65 mentors
- 25 organisations

2018 totals for GSoC
– 212 organisations
– 1264 students

Community bonding period
- Mentors get in touch with students - please do if not already
- Students should get involved in the community - can already participate in meetings
- Contribute with patches, bug fixes (especially if they are already familiar with the organization)
- Read documentation, configuring their development environment, anything that prepares them for the coding period
- Establish communication channels with your mentors: e-mail, Skype or Vidyo, mattermost
- Discuss about the work plan, perhaps make some adjustments, needs agreement of both the student and their mentors.

Coding period
- This year has been shifted two weeks, started already on May 14th
- Divided in three months
- Evaluation at the end of each month
  * Mentors evaluate students
  * Students evaluate mentors
  * Should not take more than 10 min
  IMPORTANT: if the student does not submit the evaluation, their project will be canceled (this happened last year). Absolutely necessary to do it!
- When a student passes an evaluation, they are paid
- Code should be placed in a public repository for your mentors to review it
- You can write a blog of what you are doing
- At the end of your studentship you will have to provide a link to your code and its documentation

- Responsibilities as a student
  * Students should work at least 30 hours per week, full time job
  * Students should stick to their work plan unless there is some technical issue that justifies it
  * They should deliver code
  * Absences are not tolerated - another major commitment that was not communicated to the mentors will likely be a reason for failing
  * If a student fails, they are out of the program
  * Students can also quit

Timeline - Next steps
June 11-15: First evaluation period - mentors evaluate students, students evaluate mentors
July 9-13: Second evaluation period - mentors evaluate students, students evaluate mentors
August 6-14: Students wrap up their projects and submit final evaluation of their mentor
August 14-21: Mentors submit final evaluations of students

Mediation of the admins

- Administrators of GSoC make sure that mentors and students are aware of the rules and milestones of the program.

- Administrators are also mediators: they can help with conflicts between students and mentors
- Contact admins for any issue that might arise between you and your mentors
 

 

16:30 → 16:40 Student welcome

16:40 → 17:00 Coding period

Discussion about rules and milestones in the coding period.

17:00 → 17:45 Student introduction

Time for students to introduce themselves and briefly describe their projects.