[Fedora-music-list] Google Summer of Code [was: Thoughts on spin tools]

[Brendan Jones]

On 03/20/2012 12:49 AM, Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
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> I do think we should carry this back to the fedora-music-list - ideally
> it gets more attention because we need to spread the word, fast. If you
> agree, you can reply back to the list.
>
> On 03/18/2012 01:04 AM, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
>> On 03/17/2012 01:56 PM, Brendan Jones wrote:
>
>>> as you've probably noticed I followed up on Karsten's suggestion
>>> to register the Audio Spin as a GSoC project. Fedora has been
>>> accepted so we've got roughly a week and a half or so to refine
>>> our idea(s) and promote it to students.
>
> We should definitely look in to doing more than one project idea, if
> needed.
>
>>> As Karsten suggested this could be a good opportunity for
>>> students at Stanford looking to expand their interest in audio
>>> (and perhaps an opportunity for you to recruit likewise
>>> interested people in helping out with the PlanetCCRMA project?)
>>>
>>> What's the best way (beside the PlanetCCRMA mailing list) to
>>> promote the spin in this sphere? Any tips are really welcome - I
>>>   must admit its been a good 15 years since I was a student (apart
>>>   from language school this last month - tough going on top of my
>>>   normal work week , sheesh).
>
> Get people on f-music-list and other CCRMA lists to blog about it.
> Maybe write up a canonical blog post others can refer to - gives the
> entirety of the spin concept and how students can help make it happen.
>
>>> At first I was thinking that the GSoC idea would be a good way to
>>> recruit packagers/technical expertise but the more I think about
>>> it, we should probably expand the idea to those interested
>>> learning more about open source communication in general. What I
>>> mean is we could create a role here for someone to ensure the
>>> dialogue in the Fedora audio community keeps rolling, tags bugs
>>> for the spin, and follows up on milestone progress toward the
>>> final goal.
>
> Just speaking statistically, most students don't stick around the
> project after the summer is over. So a student could do some of the
> seed work that would support someone doing that role ongoing,
> including just working with that person directly (you Brendan? what
> could you do if one or two students were working to get you ready to
> maintain a new Fedora/CCRMA relationship?)
>
> I agree with the idea of focusing on open source communication, and we
> need to realize that 25% to 50% of the project time might be taken up
> with communication - just because the student projects cover the
> entire summer doesn't mean we should expect 40 coding hours per week.
> A week is going to look more like: research, ask, wonder, ask more,
> research more, code a few hundred lines, send to the mailing list,
> chat, debate, decide, code some more, research, ask, then finish part
> of a section. Learning to interact with the project - Fedora, CCRMA as
> an upstream, and other upstream projects - is a huge part of the
> learning for the students.
>
> So consider all that when working out what can be done.
>
> When talking to the hundreds of other projects that get together at
> the annual mentor summit in Mountain View, you hear a lot of values
> that go beyond "code received." These are programming student and code
> is important, but it's only part of the scenario. We've had very
> packaging-focused summer coding projects before, including work done
> for the KDE Spin.
>
>>> If you are interested you could also list yourself as a mentor if
>>>   you can spare the time.
>>
>> I can always help...
>
> Co-mentoring can work very well, just make sure that you have one of
> you checking the schedule, checking with the student(s) regularly, and
> so forth - managing the drum beat.
>
>>> What do you think, I've copied Karsten on this as well.
>>
>> Well, the Planet CCRMA and Fedora Music lists are obvious places to
>>   look for interested users. I could also advertise in our
>> local-users and staff CCRMA mailing lists. Your GSoC url would be a
>> good starting point for the goal of the project. Do you know how
>> GSoC projects are supposed to work? (sorry, I don't)
>
> Encourage people to spread the word - it's a great deal for a student,
> especially one where the US$5K (iirc) goes a bit farther.
>
> - - Karsten

(Thanks Karsten I have forwarded to the list)

Fedora has been accepted as a Google Summer of Code Project. We have 
added the Fedora Audio Spin as an idea [1]. At this stage the idea only 
outlines a packaging role(s), but I have been discussing with Karsten 
and Fernando that it might be a good idea that we expand on the role to 
cover all aspects of the project, not just packaging and technical 
issues (see above).

I think this could be a really good opportunity to provide the Audio 
Spin with a formal process and some much need momentum.

Here's what I think we need to start discussing:

*  how can we expand upon the role. We are not limited to one idea here. 
We could create a new one to cover other aspects of the project. Tasks 
that will need coordinating down the track are:
    - documentation / wiki's / musician's guide / community wrangling
    - testing the kick starts
    - pushing the spin through the acceptance process

* how can we promote the idea to students. What mailing lists, webblogs, 
forums etc can we use to attract students to the task (I have been 
approached by one site for an interview already - this kind of thing if 
we can get it out quick enough)

* potential mentors. Not just technical here, if we create further roles 
we will need to co-mentor those as well

* anything else? this is just a start

I will have some time a little later in the week to go over this in more 
detail, just wanted to start the ball rolling. We have a week until we 
start receiving student submissions.

Brendan

[1] 
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Summer_coding_ideas_for_2012#Fedora_Audio_Creation_Spin