The next application process for Outreachy will start in September but that will actually come quite quickly. The best applicants are usually already participating in some communities before the official application process begins.
In Tirana recently at OSCAL’17 many of the visitors from abroad could not help noticing that Open Labs has a diverse community where both male and female developers are in the education system and also in the free software community.
I spoke to several female developers who may be eligible for Outreachy and found that many of them would already be close to the standard required to be shortlisted if they apply.
The fact that there is a strong network of people around Open Labs, including women in leadership positions, also raises the probability of success for any intern who is selected. Mentors are always worried about the prospect of our interns working in isolation for 3 months. Knowing they will feel like they are part of a team and have social contact at places like the hackerspace makes organizations and mentors a lot more confident.
I’ve created this thread to ask for a few things:
which Outreachy mentoring organizations are already actively looking at seeking candidates in Tirana?
is Open Labs actively doing anything to help local members prepare for Outreachy or GSoC selection?
are there any events planned between now and the deadline (usually October) where mentors could visit and meet some applicants in person? The Crypto Party suggested by @Yeti would be a good opportunity, especially for the clean room project (see below)
are there local developers who would like to co-mentor projects, even if they are not experts on the project topic?
Personally, I am looking for applicants for the next round of Outreachy and also for GSoC 2018 to continue working on projects from previous rounds, including some of the following:
anything to do with free real-time communications (replacing Skype/WhatsApp), we had 13 students participate in 2016 and there is a wide pool of potential mentors
the ham radio/SDR project, I have advertised it before but nobody has ever applied
I’ve also written a blog about how to get selected for GSoC that is just as relevant to applications for Outreachy, I’d welcome any feedback on how to improve the blog.
I’m not officially involved with the Outreachy process for Fedora, but we usually have one, sometimes two, slots for Outreachy. I’d be happy to help connect dots for anyone interested in Fedora-related slots.
Reminder: the deadline is in October, that means now is the time to start preparing some of the things that will make your application go on the shortlist:
can you contribute some small bug fixes or a small project on Gitlab, Github or another site, doing some small task every one or two weeks?
can write two blog posts in the next 6 weeks?
I visit Tirana again from 28-30 September and maybe I will visit Prishtina again a few days after that. This will be just a few weeks before the final deadline and I will be happy to discuss the process personally with any applications for the winter Outreachy or the 2018 GSoC or summer Outreachy.
Also, you don’t have to apply to one of my projects or a Debian project, even if you want to apply to a project under another organization I’m happy to discuss it with you before the deadline.
The application period opens on 7 September and the deadline is 23 October 2017.
Debian has started advertising projects for Outreachy. Some of these projects will also be possible in Google Summer of Code 2018 for people who can’t do Outreachy.
@jbelien@John@tlevine are any of you interested in co-mentoring any of the Outreachy projects?
@teolemon you posted about a food project, would you be interested in co-mentoring on Open Agriculture for @anisakuci9 or anybody else who is interested?
The Open Labs women interested in Outreachy have created a wiki page with their details - please share with anybody else who may be interested in mentoring.
The application deadline is 23 October so anybody who wants to apply really needs to be collaborating with a potential mentor next week to write their project plan.
Sure, if I can help I would be happy to !
But I have no idea what this implies to be an Outreachy “mentor” ! Could you give us some more details about it ?
I’m a web developer so I can help with anything related to PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS (or related) but also databases (MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, …) and anything related to cartography and GIS (MapServer, GeoServer, PostGIS, QGIS, OpenStreetMap, …)
@jbelien@elioqoshi it basically involves helping the intern set a goal, make their 12 week plan, being available for the full 12 weeks (Dec, Jan, Feb) to answer questions, testing their work regularly (maybe once per week) and making sure it is all published for the community at the end. Some mentors have a daily call with their intern, some do it twice a week, etc
Working with other communities like Discourse, Fedora or Mozilla is fine, it is not just for Debian.
Some Discourse topics that would be really interesting:
creating a plugin for event and Calendar (iCalendar) support, this would be ideal for a community like Open Labs and could be related to my calendar project in Debian
Hey @elioqoshi and @kominoshja I would like to apply for the Discourse project.
I would really appreciate if you would be mentoring me What do you think?
Would love to help, but official mentoring is done by someone else from the Discourse team. I can help you to apply of course. Sharpen your HTML CSS skills in the meantime
That is not quite true - people can always propose additional project topics, as long as there is at least one mentor and a source of funding. You can ask the Discourse team if their budget will cover the extra project and if not, you can ask if funds are available from the central Outreachy budget by contacting the organizers. They will want to know that there is a good candidate (@Sidorela - please put some links in the wiki page) and a good project plan.
As the deadline approaches, I want to remind everybody about the
eligibility criteria, in particular, other jobs or study. The
organizers and mentors have a strong preference for candidates who do
not have a commitment to attend classes and do not have another job
during December, January and February.
There are problems in every Outreachy and GSoC round where people put in
the application and then withdraw later because they have another job or
because they didn’t want to give up their other job. Sometimes they try
to start working on Outreachy but then they fail at the first evaluation
(6 weeks) and don’t get paid. When this happens, we can’t give the
internship to one of the other girls, the project just stops until the
next round (June).
Can you all confirm that you will definitely be able
to give up any other jobs?
@silva.arapi I read on the Ura Design web
site
that you are working there since August, this is an example of another
job that would not be
compatible unless @elioqoshi or @rskikuli confirm you can work 100% on
Outreachy. Confirming that here in the forum would be a good way to set
a public example for other companies who benefit from free software
to give leave of absence for programs like Outreachy.
@Yeti this is also something to confirm personally with anybody you
would potentially mentor, if they commit to a project and then change
their mind mentors can not choose another person as a replacement.
Many of our best applicants are offered multiple jobs but if they
withdraw before the 23 October deadline they help the rest of the
community because the Outreachy place can go to somebody else.
I am interested in co-mentoring about the Open Agriculture project, but I don’t know how. Also I have zero knowledge about agriculture (I am a computer engineer). Please contact me with more details and information.
I need to build a Discourse plugin, but I have no knowledge of ruby-on-rails. How can I propose it as an Outreachy project, so that maybe someone can pick up this project? Anybody with ruby-on-rails skills here, to give it a try?
Or maybe getting familiar with ruby-on-rails and with the discourse code, in order to solve this problem, can be part of the project (because the plugin itself actually could be something very simple, once you know how things work).
@pocock thanks, I filled the information on the table.
About my working hours at URA, as Elio mentioned it’s a few hours a month and if that will be a matter of discussion maybe a confirmation email by Elio can be a solution I think.
