Yesterday we were so busy with the beginning of GSoC and FOSS OPW round 8 that I didn't have time to post about the end of OPW round 7:

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/FOSS_Outreach_Program_for_Women/Round_7

Quite silently, the six teams participating in this round have set a new benchmark for future mentoring programs. All of them have delivered functional features that are as published / merged / deployed as it is advisable in a complex community project like ours. All of them had slight changes of plans, require more testing and fine-tuning... but this is the usual situation of any free software project four months after its inception.

Check the results:

Anu's upload wizard with OSM support http://uploadwizard-osm.wmflabs.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard

Diwanshi's Wikipedia API courses in Codecademy http://www.codecademy.com/courses/web-beginner-en-vj9nh/0/1 http://www.codecademy.com/courses/web-beginner-en-yd3lp/0/1

Brena's prototype of mediawiki.org's redesigned homepage https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki/Homepage_redesign/Preview

Be's clean up of Parsoid's round-trip testing UI is merged https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/owner:bebirchall%2540gmail.com,n,z

Maria's clean up of Parsoid's tracing/debugging/logging is merged https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/q/owner:maria.pacana%2540gmail.com,n,z

Niharika's compact language links is part of this week's deploymeent train as Beta feature https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Universal_Language_Selector/Design/Interlangu...

Not coincidentally, these interns have also excelled in regular reporting, combining in most cases weekly reports with sporadic blog posts. Check the table at the OPW wiki page.

Of course a fair part of the merit goes to the mentors, most of them first-timers. We still must wrap up the projects and recollect the new lessons learned.

One area where we still want to improve is in the continuity of these contributors, now as regular volunteers. For this, the role of the mentors and other experienced contributors is key. Please approach the not-interns-anymore, and propose them new tasks or new areas to contribute to. In addition to this, Sumana has been discussed with each of them possible opportunities within Wikimedia.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THESE SIX TEAMS! Thank you for the work you have done, and we hope to see you around, jumping on new tasks.

As always, ideas and criticism are welcome. How can we do better in the next round of mentoring programs, starting now?