[Soc-coordination] Next steps

[Joseph Bisch]

Hi Ritesh,

I am a student that participated in GSoC with Debian in 2014.

That is great that you already have 3 students contacting you! Just by
contacting you they are showing that they are interested in the
project you are mentoring.

You might want to encourage the students to contribute to Debian in
some way. The contributions don't have to be huge (consider that
students are probably in school at this time and some may also have a
job), but by starting to contribute before GSoC starts, the students
can show that they are not just interested in getting paid. Also, if
the students are willing to contribute before GSoC, they might be more
likely to continue contributing after GSoC ends.

Be sure to mention the newcomer tag in the BTS.

You might also make a little coding project for the students to submit
with their application. It allows you to gauge their skills. See the
example in the desirable skills from the project I worked on last
year: [0].

Last year, I found out about GSoC after the accepted organizations
were already announced. So I didn't contribute to Debian before GSoC.
And I still ended up contributing to Debian after GSoC ended. So my
suggestions above aren't requirements, they are just ways to help you
evaluate students.

Also, FYI, on March 2 (only about a week away) the accepted
organizations are announced.[1]

[0] - https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects#SummerOfCode2014.2FProjects.2FDebianMetricsPortal.Debian_metrics_portal
[1] - http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2015

Cheers,
Joseph