[Soc-coordination] Sponsoring DebConf for Summer of code students

[Ana Guerrero]

On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 04:56:43PM +0200, Gaudenz Steinlin wrote:
> 
> Hi
> 
> During the first IRC status meeting I had today with the Summer of Code
> student I'm mentoring together with Per Andersson the topic of wheter
> she planned to go to DebConf or not came up. it turned out that she did
> not yet know about DebConf and did not consider it at all.
> 
> I guess the situation might be similar for other GSOC students. IMHO
> going to DebConf could make a big difference for a GSOC project. Getting
> more involved into the community increases the chances that these people
> will stay active in the project even after summer of code.
> 
> Therefore I propose to make an exception for these students so that they
> can still register for sponsored food and accommodation until 3th June.
> What do others think?
> 
> One problem might be that most students don't have the money to fund
> their own travel to nicaragua. Should we ask the DPL to fund another
> DebConf newbies program for those from Debian money? This might be a bit
> problematic as we don't have much money for normal travel sponsorship at
> the moment at all.
>

Hi,

I heartly agree it is worthwhile having the students attending at debconf.
It really can make a difference if they go there to meet their mentors (and
people related to their project), they held a session about their project,
get some feedback from the community, etc.

In previous years, some students have attended to DebConf with their trip
funded by Google and at least one year, we completed this fund using 
the 500USD allocated to the mentors who *agreed* to use this money to
fund more students attending.
It was up to DebConf budget paying lodging and food for the students.

I thought about it this year but I did not raise the topic with the other
organization mentors because several reasons:

- looking at the last meeting before the end of the sponsorship deadline,
it seemed that there was still not money for sponsoring lodging to all
the attendees who asked. So we could not promise to the students: go to
debconf and you will get food and bed for free.

- we need to ask money to Google. In the case they accept, it will be more
or less a fixed budget for 2-3 students. (we have 15 students)

- Most of the students are in Europe or India and transportation to 
Nicaragua is *expensive* from outside central america. Even with the money 
from the mentors (*) we only could sponsor *travel* to a max 4-5 students. 
We have 15 students this year, how are we going to choose between all them? 
They started coding this week, it is very hard to know who will enjoy more 
debconf.

(*) And some of the mentors will be using the money to sponsor their own
trip already.

- The students needs some hand-holding. No one of the admin orga are attending
to DebConf this year (in some cases because the uncertainty of travel funding).
This happens with the mentors too, and as said above, it is not so worthwhile
to have the student going there if their mentor is not going.
It is kind of a hard having to follow the list and debconf stuff to help 
students and so on when you can't go...


Ana

PS: Not so fun but we can encourage students to go to some Debian event in 
their continent.