On 10/22/2012 10:53 PM, Tyler Romeo wrote:
I think it's a cool idea, especially considering I'm still kicking myself for not getting involved in open-source earlier. The real problem is deciding what to have them work on.
In my experience, it's pretty easy to find small tasks that new volunteers can work on, and GCI allows organizations to offer a variety of tasks of different types. The much harder problem is getting enough committed mentors. Google demands "less than a 36 hour turnaround for review of each completed task submitted by a student" - see https://code.google.com/p/google-code-in/wiki/GCIMentorInformation2012 . Other projects participating in GCI have reported that this can be burdensome.
Also: if you want to help teenagers get involved in open source, we have teenagers *in the Wikimedia community already* whom you can mentor and ask to do tasks. And if outreach is the goal, you can make a huge long-term difference to teenagers in your city by teaching tutorials or leading hackathons at local schools and community centers. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Tutorials has materials you can pick up and use. And if you need funding to create events or attend them, check out https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Participation:Support and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Index . Google Code-In is NOT our only way to get teens into open source and nurture them.