Re: Google Code-In 2012?

[Andre Klapper <ak-47 gmx net>]

On Wed, 2012-10-24 at 09:11 +0200, Dave Neary wrote:
> > If nobody volunteers to become organizer, GNOME will not take part.
> 
> In my experience this kind of public call for volunteers, combined with 
> a threat, is not an effective strategy.

There was no threat.
I clarified that if nobody does $work, $work won't happen. I did this as
there often is a culture of "You did it last time, so I assumed you do
it again" (release notes, anyone?) which leads to nobody working on
anything.

> How about if the board (or the mentors) got together, and put together a 
> short-list of 3 or 4 potential organizers, and ask them individually? 

Surely anybody is free to find organizers, or even find people to find
organizers. But taking a look at the schedule (12 days left to apply)
I'd prefer people worked on Code-In itself instead of adding one
abstraction layer by creating a committee to find somebody to run GCI.

> It would be a disaster (and rather ridiculous) if GNOME did not take part.

No, it wouldn't be. Other FLOSS organizations have consciously decided
in the past not to take part in GCI and the world didn't collapse
either.
Apart from admitting missing mentor/admin manpower/engagement in
general, potential reasons to not take part can be the expectation to
provide feedback to students within 36 hours, or the opinion that the
contest definition (short tasks, in the past no strong binding of
student to mentor organization, mentors' feeling of not getting much out
of it) does not work out well for a specific organization. 

andre
-- 
Andre Klapper  |  ak-47 gmx net
http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/