Summer of Code/Mentors

Mentors

Our most important need right now is for quality mentors. If you (or someone you know) would make a good mentor, please nominate yourself (or them), both here on the ML and on the wiki (if you can't handle a little redundant paperwork, you're probably not a good candidate :). Include relevant information such as:

• Name/contact
• Timezone
• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?
• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor?
• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?
• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?
• Anything else you think is relevant.

Please also add this page to your watchlist. We will probably later do some kind of "community interview" process where we ask you questions on this page.

Jameson

• Name/contact

Jameson.Quinn at gmail

• Timezone

US Central / Central America (UTC-6)

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

PyGTK-based activities or Sugar improvements, especially interested in language or developer tools.

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

I could commit up to 4-6 hours a week. If we are short on mentors and I find project(s) that are an especially good match, I could do 8 hrs (double duty). Over the summer, I hope to be helping to work on an XO deployment, hopefully on a paid basis, but am currently unemployed.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

Maintainer of Develop activity, have done some tinkering with Sugar, I've been involved for over a year.

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

I have several years' experience as a full-time teacher.

• Anything else you think is relevant.

Nah.

Nrp

• Name/contact

Nirav Patel nrpatel at gmail

• Timezone

UTC-5

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

Pygame or PyGTK based Activities

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

Graduating and no job prospects, so it is likely I will have quite a bit of free time as of early May. 5 hours a week is certainly doable.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

Some Pygame/PyGTK Activity development and a module for Pygame.

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

Teaching Assistant and miscellaneous mentoring experiences at school.

• Anything else you think is relevant.

I survived GSoC on the student end of things in 2008.

Tomeu

• Name/contact

Tomeu Vizoso

• Timezone

Central European Time

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

PyGTK-based activities or Sugar improvements.

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

I could commit up to 4-6 hours a week.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

Coded activities and for the sugar shell for more than two years now.

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

Last year mentored one intern at OLPC.

• Anything else you think is relevant.

Nah.

Walter

• Name/contact

Walter Bender

EST (UTC-5)

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

I am interested in Sugar activities that are relevant to daily life in the classroom. Things that help the teacher and learner enhance their approaches to problem-solving.

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor?

As much as necessary to make sure we have a successful, useful outcome.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

maintainer of Activities/TurtleArt

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

30 years mentoring student projects at MIT

• Anything else you think is relevant.

You learn through doing, so I will roll up my sleeves along side whomever I mentor, because I want to keep learning.

Bobby

• Name/contact

firstnamelastname at gmail, nteon on IRC

• Timezone

US Eastern Standard Time (UTC-5)

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

PyGTK-based activities, lower level stuff.

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

Probably 4-6 hours a week.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

Maintainer of Model activity, have done some tinkering with Sugar/Rainbow, rewrote boot-animation. Fairly confident with C/Python/Linux, have been involved with OLPC for about a year (although have been mostly lurking on the sugar side of things for a few months).

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

Summer camp counselor for a number of years, OLPC intern summer '08.

• Anything else you think is relevant.

I'm a few months behind on Sugar development, but think its a fabulous project. Let me know what you need of me.

Sebastian

• Name/contact

Sebastian Silva (sebastian at fuentelibre.org), (gmail alternative: sebatustra)

icarito on IRC

• Timezone

Lima, Perú (UTC-5)

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

PyGTK-based activities, especially "social" activities.

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

I am helping a teacher group this (northern summer), that leaves me enough time to commit to this (at least 4-6 hours a week, more if needed). It also is a great chance for some user feedback.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

Community volunteer for 2 years now, developed activities, led workshops. Confident in python and GNU. Worked professionally in programming for some years.

Wade

• Name/contact

Wade Brainerd (wadetb at gmail dot com)

wadeb on IRC

• Timezone

Portland, Maine (UTC-5)

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

New activities, Games, Updates to/refreshes of existing activities, Frameworks for creating activities in new languages (Flash, Ajax, Mono)

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

I will be available for a single mentorship this year. I work full time as a programmer but have a flexible schedule.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

Community volunteer for 2 years now, developed activities. Experienced in Python, C++, others. 11 years as a professional programmer, including 5 as a technical director and team lead.

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

I was closely involved in the 2007 OLPC GSoC project, reviewing applications and communicating with students. I mentored two students informally during 2007 after their GSoC projects were not funded. Both projects were completed with my help.

• Anything else you think is relevant.

As the Sugar Labs Activity Team coordinator, I have plenty of access to deployments. This gives me a good handle on what student projects will most effectively advance Sugar Labs' goals in the community.

As a volunteer activity developer, I have also developed many new activities myself, and overhauled existing ones.

Lglira

• Name/contact

Luis Gustavo Lira, BSc, MSc lira.lg at pucp.edu.pe

• Timezone

Lima, Perú (UTC-5)

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

Networking, Hardware Projects, Python, Activities (science, math, entrepreneurship).

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

I could mentor 1 o 2 students.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

Engineer 10 years working experience, CIO and Executive level since 2006.

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

Consultant for big telecomms, systems integrators, etc. Lecturer at University undergraduate and graduate level. GSoC 2007, 2008 and 2009 Mentor for OpenMoko GSoC 2008 for OLPC but my student was not funded

• Anything else you think is relevant.

Fellow of Lemelson Foundation RAMP-Peru, Social Entrepreneur, Free Culture activist, Appropriate Technology developer, Teaching Science, Math and Entrepeneurship in rural terciary schools.

Ben Lau

• Name/contact

xbenlau at gmail.com

• Timezone

UTC+8

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

Video , Computer Vision , Speech Processing , Python, Activities (Educational software , Chinese language learning)

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor?

I could commit up to 4-5 hours a week, able to mentor 1 student.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

10 years Linux development experience , include kernel porting (ARM), Linux driver , GTK+ , opencv , GStreamer , C/C++ , python

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

I have led two teams of university students to join an embedded system contest called Intel Cup (China) in 2006. The teams got a first prize and a second prize award finally.

• Anything else you think is relevant.

I am leading a team of volunteers on technical side for OLPC APAC division.

Sayamindu

• Name/contact

Sayamindu Dasgupta (sayamindu at gmail)

unmadindu on IRC

• Timezone

Asia/Calcutta (UTC+0530) (I normally work on European timezones)

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

Activities, l10n/i18n related projects.

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

I am working a contractor for OLPC for the next few months. However, I think I can commit around 4-5 hours per week for the work.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

Wrote the Imageviewer activity, maintainer of Terminal, in the process of implementing largish features to Read. Familiar with GTK+, Python, Gstreamer, etc.

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

I was a mentor during SoC 2008 for the Translate toolkit project (my student worked successfully on enhancing the Pootle featureset). I have also experience informally mentoring/guiding students and volunteers for a number of Free Software projects (mostly i18n/l10n related).

• Anything else you think is relevant.

I was a successful student participant in Summer of Code 2007 under Federico Mena-Quintero for the GNOME project. I also helped in the rating of applications for OLPC as a mentoring organisation during 2008's SoC.

Assim Deodia

• Name/contact

Assim Deodia (assim.deodia at gmail dot com)

assimd on IRC

• Timezone

Asia/Calcutta (UTC+0530)

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

Listen Spell, Activities related to speech synthesis

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

I can comfortably devote 4-5 hrs a week.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

I have developed speech server in SoCon for OLPC Speech Server, Deducto for OLPC and have also developed Listen Spell for OLPC in GSoC.

• Anything else you think is relevant.

I have successful completed Summer of Code 2008 under Dafydd Harries for the OLPC. I have also developed a low cost OMR processing application which is hosted on sourceforge OMR AI

aa

• Name/contact

andresambrois at gmail

• Timezone

America/Montevideo (UTC-3)

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

PyGTK-based activities and Sugar projects, especially in collaboration and networking.

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

5-6 hours a week. Currently unemployed, but studying computer engineering. I devote most of my time to free software projects and Ceibal-related volunteering.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

I maintain the PlayGo activity, one of the developers of the EduBlog project, written a couple of patches for sugar and currently working on some improvements. Familiar with Python, PHP, Tcl, Shell Scripting and (some) C.

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

I've given technical talks and workshops, and was a math tutor years ago.

• Anything else you think is relevant.

I fear velociraptors.

Alfonsodg

• Name/contact

Alfonso de la Guarda

• Timezone

GMT -5

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

Sugar activities based on python, gtk, glade and some electronical enhancements

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?

I could commit up to 4 to 6 hours a week.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

Coded multiple python apps since 2001, including some XO activities

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

Lead Technology Consultor for the Peruvian Army with 7 projects based all on FLOSS

• Anything else you think is relevant.

Love technology and wanna that some of my activities could be better with the help of many people

Alex Levenson

• Name/contact
  • Alex Levenson
  • alev742@gwu.edu

• Timezone
  • Eastern Time during the school year, Pacific Time during the summer

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?
  • Anything physics engine related
  • Anything related to games, pygame, olpcgames, graphics, etc

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?
  • I'll be working for Google in San Francisco this summer.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?
  • I wrote a couple of physics simulation activities for OLPC last summer. I am a computer science major and have experience as a software developer. Resume: http://student.seas.gwu.edu/~alev742/resume.php

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?
  • I am a computer science tutor here at The George Washington University.

• What do you think your role as a mentor would involve? How would you fill it, and why? (3-5 sentences is plenty)
  • I would be glad to provide any kind of support I can, from high level software design strategy to code reviews. I would like to focus on keeping the code not only functional but elegant, readable, and scalable - something that's very important as this platform moves forward.

• Anything else you think is relevant.
  • Please check out my resume: http://student.seas.gwu.edu/~alev742/resume.php
  • And also my olpc userpage: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Alexlevenson

Guillaume Desmottes

• Name/contact: Guillaume Desmottes

• Timezone: GMT+1 (UK)

• What kind of projects could/would you mentor? Telepathy related

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor? What are your other commitments over the summer?
  • If possible I'd prefer co-mentoring so I would focus on the Telepathy part and a Sugar guy on the UI/integration one. I'll work this summer but my employer would probably let me allocate some time on mentoring if needed. I could maybe have another soc student on the GNOME front too.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?
  • I hack on Telepathy as my job. Did lot of the Telepathy integration in Sugar.

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?
  • Never mentored soc projects but regularly help people on #telepathy and #sugar.

• What do you think your role as a mentor would involve? How would you fill it, and why? (3-5 sentences is plenty)
  • My main goal is to ensure than proposed projects are did the right way. I want to avoid that student did the code on his own without any input from relevant person and so is finally never merged because it was just the wrong approach.

Bryan W Berry

• Name: Bryan W Berry
• Timezone : GMT+5:45 (Nepal)
• What kind of projects could/would you mentor?

Using Web technologies to create Sugar activities, like Karma

• How much time could you devote to mentoring? Can you make the especially solid commitment of being a double-mentor?

I can probably only mentor one person. I think I can contribute 10 hours per week for 3 months.

• What relevant coding experience do you have (very briefly, two sentences at most)?

For the past two years I have led a team of 10 full-time software developers creating open-source educational learning activities.

• What relevant mentoring (or related) experience do you have?

I have mentored 12 Nepali interns at OLE Nepal over the last 12 months.

What do you think your role as a mentor would involve? How would you fill it, and why? (3-5 sentences is plenty)

There is a lot to creating learning activities that is not technical but procedure. I am particularly interested in making it easier for programmers to create learning activities.