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.
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation