Welcome new students

[Alexandre Franke <afranke gnome org>]

Dear GNOME-loving student,

Congratulations: you did it! The GNOME community is glad to welcome
you, and to have you participate in Google Summer of Code and work
on GNOME!

Some of you already know the GNOME community quite well, but it might
not be the case for every one of you. That's not a problem: GSoC has a
community bonding time, where you will have a few weeks to get to know
the community before starting the real work. That's a really good
thing, and we hope you'll be able to see how great, friendly and
helpful the GNOME community is!

The first thing we want you to do is to contact your mentor. Write her
or him a nice mail or buy her/him a beer (or some juice) if you happen
to live in the same city :-).

If during the GSoC, you have a problem with your mentor (lack of
communication, or misunderstandings, or deep disagreements, or
anything else), don't hesitate to report that to the GNOME
administrators (listed on
https://wiki.gnome.org/Outreach/SummerOfCode/2016/ ):
they'll be there to help with this kind of things and their goal is
to make sure that you feel good, so they will work hard to fix any
issue with your mentor. But hopefully, this won't be needed: all
mentors and administrators are nice people (or at least, they're
supposed to be ;-)).

We have subscribed you to our mailing list for the Summer of Code:

 http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-soc-list

This is the list where mails will be sent when we need to reach all of
you. Feel free to use this list for discussion between all mentored
students, or to ask questions about GNOME, or about the community or
about anything you need.

To begin things, it would be great if you send to this list an
introduction mail so that the whole community knows about you, your
project, your plans, etc.

You can then use your introduction mail to fill the wiki page for your
GSoC project. First, add a link to it from a page that lists all
projects, then create a wiki page for your individual project.

 https://wiki.gnome.org/Outreach/SummerOfCode/2016/Projects

This is a good place to introduce your project, link to the blog posts
you'll write, link to your code, etc. See the wiki pages from
last year if you need some examples:

 https://wiki.gnome.org/Outreach/SummerOfCode/2015/Projects

Feel free to edit other pages of the GNOME wiki too. This is where we
post the information relevant to the GNOME projects. From time to time,
you might like to look through the recent changes page to see what's
going on in GNOME.

 https://wiki.gnome.org/RecentChanges

Planet GNOME is an aggregator of blogs of GNOME contributors. From now
on, it will serve as your morning newspaper :-). We ask that you add
your blog to Planet GNOME, creating a new blog if necessary, and write
updates about your work during the internship period every two weeks.
Of course, you are welcome to blog more often too! It is exciting that
you will have a voice on Planet GNOME right from the start and it is a
very important way to let the GNOME community know about the work you
are doing! This will also allow us to keep track of your progress.
Once your blog is added, please write an introductory post and start
blogging about your work on GNOME and other things that you see
relevant for Planet GNOME.

 http://planet.gnome.org

Here is what you need to do to get yourself added to Planet GNOME.
You need to have a link to your blog or to a category of posts in your
blog AND a hackergotchi ready for that. This page has all the details:

 http://wiki.gnome.org/PlanetGnome

In particular, see "Do I have to only blog about GNOME things?"
section which explains that it's great to have posts about other
things that interest you aggregated on Planet GNOME, as long as they
can be of interest to other people in the community. So you should
decide whether you want to add your full blog or just a category
based on how frequently you blog and the range of topics you blog
about.

Once you have the hackergotchi and the blog feed ready, file a bug
with them. Include your IRC nick as well. Be sure to use the right
Bugzilla product ('website') and component ('planet.gnome.org') for
your bug.

 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=website&component=planet.gnome.org

Mention that you are a GSoC student in the bug. That will get your
blog added fast even if it is completely new and will waive the
requirement of being the GNOME Foundation member. You will get a
special GSoC logo next to your posts on Planet GNOME.

Other mailing lists that might be of interest to you are the
desktop-devel-list and the gnome-love list:

 https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
 https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-love

You can participate in the general discussion on the
desktop-devel-list, and ask questions if you have problems with
building GNOME, or if you're not sure how to do something on
gnome-love list. You should also subscribe to the mailing
list relevant to your project.

You should join #gnome-hackers, #gnome-love, and #soc IRC channels
on GIMPNet (irc.gnome.org), as well as the channels relevant to
your project and other channels that might be of interest to you.
It's fine to just lurk on IRC. IRC is where people talk in GNOME,
and it is a great way to learn and discuss things. See this page
for more information:

 https://wiki.gnome.org/Community/GettingInTouch/IRC

If you prefer to use an address different from your gmail (or
google account) address to communicate, please tell the
administrators.

All students are invited to attend GUADEC, taking place in
Karlsruhe, Germany on August 12-14 as core conference days. In
addition to attending a conference and meeting GNOME hackers
from around the world, you will have an opportunity to present
your work during interns' lightning talks and possibly spend a
few additional days working with your mentor and project team.
Please talk to your mentor about setting up a hackfest, a BoF
(Birds of a Feather discussion), or a time to co-work on your
project in the days adjacent to the core conference days. If
needed, students can receive partial financial assistance for
attending GUADEC. We will let you know when GNOME's travel
committee is ready to receive applications for financial
assistance for GUADEC travel.

If your school starts before August 30, and you have vacation
time between now and May 23, we would like to encourage you to
start on your projects early.

That's all for now. If you have any questions, feel free to send
a mail to the administrators or the mailing lists, or ask your
mentor.

Small summary:
 + make sure you're in contact with your mentor(s)
 + create the wiki page for your project
 + get your blog added to Planet GNOME
 + subscribe to relevant mailing lists
 + hang out on IRC
 + introduce yourself on gnome-soc-list and on Planet GNOME
 + save the date: August 12-14 at least
 + start early if you will be busy with school towards the end

Welcome and Congratulations!

Cheers,
GNOME GSoC Administrators