Here are the notes from yesterday’s meeting! We discussed a lot of things, so they do not go into as much details as what was said. Thanks to all the participants, and to @pitag for organizing, running and taking the notes!
What are the currently proposed projects?
- An accessible interface to read a diff. Mentors : @EmileTrotignon and @Juloo, @panglesd.
- Highlight search terms in sherlodoc results. Mentors : @EmileTrotignon and @Juloo, @panglesd.
- Create a standalone repository as a basis for the exercise section on ocaml.org into a standalone project. Mentors : @cuihtlauac and @shakthimaan
- A diffing tool for cmi artefacts to help maintainers of library detect API changes. @NathanReb, @shonfeder.
What is it like to be an Outreachy mentor?
- Being approachable
- Ping the intern at least once a day
- Expects to spend an hour a day
- Depends on the period. At the beginning, more time-intense. Later, the intern will be more independent.
- Project scoping.: Project “management”
- Preparing for the contribution period
- Find good issues
- Contribution period
- Depending on the issues you found, this can be very time-intense or not.
- Internship
- Check-ins
- Pair-programming
- Meetings. Good idea: Use a pad to explain things via drawings.
- Try out different things
- Try daily stand-ups for a while
- Try to leave the intern alone for a while
- Try to connect the interns
Tips for mentoring
- Have your expectations right from the beginning. A very good internship achieves two things: The project advances a lot, and the intern grows a lot. But also if only one of those two things happens, the internship is very successful.
- Scope out a first very self-contained easy task that you think could be done in one week. Then, expect that the intern will take 1.5 month on it.
- Put a “requirement” on the applicants to start contributing
- Adapt to the intern
- Avoid writing code for the intern
- E.g. in the review, never make a code suggestion, but phrase out the change you have in mind
- Related: Avoid “dragging along” the intern.
Current bottlenecks
Currently, the bottleneck is enough mentors, not finding more projects.
Criteria for a project / funding
Projects
Any project is a good project for this, assuming you have the mentor capacities. It doesn’t matter which part of the community is from or who the maintainer is. The only thing that matters is that the project is open-source and it’s in OCaml. A few tips for a good project:
- Be in control of the repos the project is on
- The project needs to be non-controversial among the repo maintainers.
- Don’t have too high expectations on what can be done.
Anyone can submit a project.
Funding
Any project as described above is welcome. Any mentor for such a project can get funding. Any intern working on such a project would get funding as well.
Objective of funding
The objective of the funding is to increase OCaml’s outreachy and diversity. It’s not to promote projects from a certain part of the ecosystem.
Where do mentors communicate
So far, we’ve used Slack and have invited mentors who weren’t on there. We’ve discused that the Outreachy Zulip might be an even better place. We’ll try that this round.