Thanks for being an Organization Administrator for your open source org/project for Google Summer of Code. Your behind-the-scenes efforts are vital to keeping everyone in your org informed and on the same page throughout the program. We make changes every year, so it is important to read this document whether it's your first time or tenth GSoC.
Much of this information is mentioned in the Roles and Responsibilities doc but we wanted to go into more detail on important points.
If you haven’t read the GSoC Mentor Guide please go read it now. It’s a quick read and delves into important aspects and phases of the program. Make sure all of your mentors have read the Mentor Guide and Roles and Responsibilities docs before accepting them into the program so they know what to expect.
As an Org Admin you are the primary liaison between your Org and Google. Orgs may have between 2 and 5 admins, who should be in regular communication and agree upon roles (communications, payments, checking in on mentors and GSoC contributors, checking that evals are being completed, resolving interpersonal issues, responding to the Wrap Up survey Google will send at the end of the program, etc.). From Google's perspective, all Org Admins are equivalent, there isn't a primary Org Admin.
You must have a minimum of 2 Org Admins, if one leaves the program you have to have another person available to access the Org's profile.
All Mentors and Contributors should know who the Org Admins are and how to reach them should they have an issue. The first communication you have with all of your new contributors and mentors should tell them how to reach the Org Admins should they need to change a project timeline, if they have issues with their mentor or another contributor, or any other support need.
Defining Success
What are your org’s goals going into GSoC? At the end of this year’s GSoC, what will your org consider to determine if it has been a successful GSoC program for your org?
This is a question we hope you consider each year you participate in the program as the answers will likely vary year to year. Different orgs want different things. For example:
- more new long-term contributors
- more code written
- specific features built
- opportunity to mentor excited students
- more awareness of your project, etc.
and many more.
Please take some time to think about what your org really wants out of GSoC, and for returning orgs, if you didn't achieve those goals, what you could have done differently.
Deadlines
GSoC happens on a schedule. Deadlines are numerous and firm. While there is more flexibility around the actual timing of projects this year, all of the deadlines until coding begins in late May are the same for everyone.
Org Admins are responsible for reading all the emails and keeping track of upcoming deadlines to make sure they are not missed. We encourage Org Admins to mark their own calendars, in addition to watching their GSoC dashboard, to make sure they have all of the midterm and final evaluations for each of their GSoC Contributors noted.
If your org is allowing GSoC Contributors to have projects longer than the standard 12 weeks (for medium and large projects) or 8 weeks for small projects, be sure you pay attention to the various evaluation deadlines for your mentors and your GSoC Contributors. Mentors and GSoC contributors will receive their own email reminders about their deadlines but you as Org Admin will want to be sure you have the full picture for all of your contributor projects.
It is the Org Admin's responsibility to make sure your Mentors are doing their evaluations in a timely manner and meeting deadlines. Many orgs require their Mentors submit their evaluations 24-36 hours before the actual deadline so that there is time for an Org Admin to reach out to the Mentor to remind them of the deadline should they be getting too close to it.
When a Mentor misses an evaluation deadline the Org won't receive the org stipend and that Mentor won't be allowed to attend the Mentor Summit. If an Org has 2 or more missed mentor evaluations that Org will not be invited to this year's GSoC Mentor Summit.
Metrics
What metrics is your org tracking?
Your Org should be keeping some metrics on your participation in GSoC. Org Admins can change from year to year and if the previous Org Admin doesn’t share the metrics with others in the org they could be lost forever, please be sure to share your metrics with multiple folks in your org.
You should track these metrics (at the very least):
- Number of GSoC contributors that started the program with your org
- Number of your GSoC contributors that successfully passed the program
- Number of mentors actively mentoring GSoC contributors
You will also need to figure out your own system to see how long your GSoC contributors are staying involved after their GSoC ends. Do most GSoC contributors leave your community within a month of the end of their GSoC, do they stick around for 6 months, do they come back after a year or two?) You may want to talk to the folks who stick around and get a little more insight into what it was your org did (or maybe didn’t do) that made them want to continue being a part of your community.
We will also be asking for the above metrics in a short, required survey we’ll send to all Org admins at the end of GSoC, and then at the 6 month and 1 year post-GSoC mark.
These stats should help your org see if GSoC is helping your community grow and become more sustainable. We encourage you to track other metrics you might find interesting too.
These metrics can help you determine where you may want to make some adjustments- if no GSoC contributors are sticking around -- why not? Can you help them find another project within your organization? Is it easy for the GSoC contributor to find a way to contribute and still get that same sense of accomplishment? Is your project so complicated or bureaucratic that it drives people away?
There are many reasons GSoC contributors don’t stick around - sometimes they just wanted the money or they got too busy with other things. But it's important for you to know why so that you can try and counteract it.
Reviewing GSoC contributor Proposals
All ranking of GSoC contributor proposals takes place outside the GSoC webapp. Depending on the size of your org you may be able to handle the review with a simple shared spreadsheet. Some organizations have implemented more complex workflows.
Many orgs start with an initial filtering pass:
- Spam (if it’s clear someone just threw random things into a proposal - or they just submitted a generic proposal, etc.)
- Didn’t meet requirements (if your org required the potential GSoC contributor to do a PR or some other task and they didn’t do it).
- With the rise of AI generated content you may end up receiving more low quality AI generated proposals. We suggest you ignore them.
Once the obvious "no"s are out, you can focus on the rest of the proposals by applying a rubric or grading scale to separate the great proposals from the good and from the poor.
Remember your org should NEVER select a GSoC contributor based solely on what they wrote in their proposal. Many people can write great proposals but that doesn't mean they have the technical or communication skills needed to successfully complete the project.
ALWAYS talk to every GSoC contributor you are considering selecting before the Org Admins begin ranking proposals.
For every excellent GSoC contributor proposal you need at least 1 committed mentor (two is better!). There is nothing worse than accepting a great GSoC contributor project and then not having the right mentor for it. It becomes a bad experience for everyone.
Requesting GSoC contributor Slots and Assigning Mentors to Projects
One of your most important roles is to organize your org so that you know which mentor has committed to mentoring a particular project. This will help you decide how many project slots to request from Google. Your org will have to rank the proposals based on importance to your org.
Example: Your org received 6 excellent proposals and mentors have committed to mentoring all 6. You will need to decide the priority of the projects. If your org asks for 6 project slots and Google only gives your org 4 slots, then #1-#4 will automatically become your accepted GSoC contributors. You can not decide later that you would rather have the person that was #6 in your ranking.
Changing Project Size
The project sizes selected by Contributors on their proposal are considered when Google decides how many projects to allocate to an organization. If you notice the project size is different than what you intended be sure to tell the contributor during their proposal phase so they can fix it.
After accepted contributor projects are announced, projects sizes can only be reduced. For example from large to medium, or medium to small. When changing the size of a project, Org Admins must contact Google Admins to make the change for them. You can not decide to make a project larger in scope after you have ranked the project.
Changing Project Timeline
Medium and large projects default to 12 weeks long. Small projects default to 8 weeks long. If the mentor and contributor agree that they would like to extend the timeline they must contact the Org Admin who has the final decision on whether they will extend a project.
Only an Org Admin can edit the schedule of a contributor project by going to the Project title link from their dashboard and editing the project schedule found toward the bottom of the page. Google has provided the dates you must use in the paragraph above the editable dates at the 'View this page' link. We have already configured the timeline for you based on 10, 14, 16, 18, 20 and 22 week projects.
DO NOT alter the dates outside of these dates. In 2023, some orgs did not follow the dates provided and confused their mentors with deadlines on random days, it wasn't consistent. These random dates also caused significantly more work for GSoC Program Admins who had to send many more payment distributions - we will not do that again. Any org that does not follow the deadlines provided will be contacted by Google Admins to change the date and may not be selected in future years.
IMPORTANT: All extensions MUST be entered in the system before the start of the GSoC Contributor's final submission period. Google Admins won't change any project dates where the window has been missed. The system does not support late changes.
Org Payments
As Org Admin it is your responsibility to determine if your org wishes to accept the org stipend per GSoC contributor mentored or not. Your org may have another person who acts as treasurer, accountant, or general finance person. It's your responsibility to make sure they complete the processes by the required deadlines to receive funds.
Org stipends will be paid once all of your contributor projects have concluded.
For orgs with a Mentor attending the GSoC 2024 Mentor Summit, a payment will be made shortly after the Mentor Summit for any applicable travel stipends.
Conflict
Org Admins are responsible for addressing any major conflicts among participants in your org. This can include conflicts between GSoC contributors, between mentors, or between GSoC contributors and mentors. Sometimes mentors who are mentoring the same GSoC contributor disagree on what the GSoC contributor should be working on or if they should pass or fail. You need to adjudicate this. This is why you must make it very clear how mentors and contributors can contact your Org Admins.
Occasionally you may encounter code of conduct issues within your community (from GSoC contributor or mentors). This is your community so you know the norms and what is expected and what crosses a line into harassment or other unacceptable behavior. Google expects all participants to use professional and courteous conduct during the program.
Kickoff
Send an Intro Email to your Accepted Mentors
Before GSoC contributors are announced, communicate with the mentors:
- You will likely have many mentors new to GSoC so please remind them to read the Mentor Guide and the Roles and Responsibilities and the GSoC Mentor and Org Admin email archive for this year.
- Make sure your mentors understand they must complete the 2 GSoC contributor evaluations by the required deadlines. Please make sure you stress the importance of these evals for the GSoC contributors and your org (you'll lose the org stipend if an eval is missed and that mentor won't be allowed at the Mentor Summit).
- Orgs that miss 2 or more evaluations won't be invited to this year's Mentor Summit.
- Let mentors know what your org’s expectations are for communicating with their assigned GSoC contributor (we highly recommend having communications at least 2 times a week and if one of those can be a virtual meeting that is usually ideal).
- Let mentors know that they can reach out to you if they are having issues with another mentor or their GSoC contributor (they have disappeared, are rude, harassing others, etc.). Encourage them to reach out early about issues and not wait until the last couple of days before an evaluation.
- Be sure to give mentors the contact info of the org admin or org admin group email your org may have created to reach out to with their concerns.
- Let mentors know to reach out to you if they have to suddenly step away from GSoC for 2+ days for whatever reason (illness, sudden work issue, family concerns, etc.) so that you can be sure another mentor (or you) is checking in with the GSoC contributor.
After GSoC contributors are announced, you should send an email to your GSoC contributors and mentors welcoming them into your community and informing them about:
- Your Code of Conduct. If you don't have a formal code, that's ok, but it's still important to set some expectations as to what is expected of all community members.
- How, when and why they should contact an Org Admin during the program (their mentor has disappeared, mentor is acting inappropriately, mentor suddenly changed their entire project, another GSoC contributor is behaving inappropriately, etc.)
- Any requirements around project standards, best practices, licensing, etc. -- mentors should discuss this as well directly with the student but if you mention it, it will help solidify its importance.
- Have a virtual introductory meeting with all of the accepted GSoC contributors and mentors in May to help welcome everyone and help them feel more like part of the community. This is something GSoC contributors appreciate and ask for every year in their feedback, more orgs should try this.
- We received feedback from many GSoC contributors that they would have liked to know more about the goals of their open source organization so they can better understand where their project fits in.
- GSoC contributors also wanted to know who the other GSoC contributors were in their community so they could support one another. Personal connections are a great way to keep people involved post-GSoC.
- If you have former GSoC contributors/students that are now mentors or have stayed involved in your community having them talk briefly about their experience can also be helpful to your new GSoC contributors.
Communicate Regularly
Many Org Admins send reminders to their mentors about evaluation deadlines and some require their mentors complete the evaluation at least 24-48 hours before the Google deadline so if the mentor misses the deadline the Org Admin can go in and complete it for them (or have another of the assigned mentors do it).
In Conclusion
We hope these tips help you understand your role and responsibilities as a GSoC 2024 Org Admin.
Feel free to contact us at gsoc-support@google.com if you have any further questions or you can email the GSoC mentor group list if you think it’s a question the community can help you with or that others may be interested in knowing an answer to.
Thanks for being a GSoC Org Admin!