On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 5:08 PM, David Nalley <da...@gnsa.us> wrote: > > Before going too deep into incentive programs, though, I'd encourage > > checking out Stormy Peters' talk: "Would you do it again for free?" > > > > http://stormyscorner.com/would-you-do-it-again-for-free > > > > tl;dr - incentive programs don't always wind up generating long-term > > involvement. > > > This is my concern with GSoC - while it has produced some rockstars > (and we even have someone who was involved in GSoC working on > CloudStack, my experience is that unless the folks were previously > involved with a project before GSoC they are gone after the fact, > which is a huge loss for the investment needed. > > In general mentoring new folks is a huge timesink: > > For the same reasons some sited above and below I feel the same. I've seen 0% retention for GSoC students on the 4-5 projects I've seen take part in GSoC. This is unfortunate indeed.
> If you look at the statistics pointed out by Dave Neary: > in the first half of this blog post: > http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2011/05/31/effective-mentoring-programs/ > You'll note that generally speaking they assume only 25% of mentored > individuals will stay around, and that for the project mentoring > students appears to be a net loss. > > My personal experience with students in Fedora has been less than > encouraging, to the point I stopped my efforts in that area > altogether. My experience was that the people who were interested > would come looking on their own, would be easy to help, and would stay > around much longer; going out recruiting, particularly among student > populations (people who by definition are going through lots of change > in a very rapid time period, have shifting priorities, etc) rarely > yields any long term (more than a semester) contributors. > > Not trying to discourage you (or even say you shouldn't do it) just a > heads up on some of the experiences of others. > Ditto. -- Best Regards, -- Alex
