2019-11-07 Outreachy Meeting notes

1. Deadline Nov. 14, 2019: Mentors pick the applicant they want as an intern, rate the applicant, and sign a mentor agreement. Co-mentors must also sign the mentor agreement. Mentors can select their interns on the project applicant details page (linked in the Projects column below).
2. Deadline Nov. 18, 2019: Coordinators decide which interns will be funded from the available sponsorship funds, and which interns won't be funded. If the organization wants to accept more interns than they have sponsorship funds, the coordinator can mark the intern asking for Outreachy general funds. This community has sponsors who will fund up to 3 interns.
3. Deadline Nov. 19, 2019: Organizers review intern selections and general funding requests, and mark interns as approved or rejected. Organizers will follow up with intern sponsors to confirm funding sources.

We have funds for three interns, I don't think there is a need to ask for Outreachy general funds. 

• Two applicants recorded contributions, only one submitted it. Unrated. 

•  Three applicants recorded contributions, all of them submitted their applications and are currently rated from 3 to 5. 

• None contribution has been done. We open a discussion related to this issue and how to address it. We come up with some theories, see mailing list discussion: Tooling training for ASF projects.
• possible reasons why:
  • The skill level required in the project is too high and/or
  • the wording of the project is a bit intimidating due to the technical language or unclear goals
  • High system requirements 
• possible solutions:
  • setup cheat sheet + more guided or explained tasks. Include this sheet in the project submission to guide applicants in their initial contributions. we've seen sometimes there is no time to address all queries/questions from applicants, therefore we could include this sheet to help them guide themselves.  
  • we need a more easy-to-start development environment. regarding applicants with less experience. In this case, it is hard to find a solution other than committing enough mentor time, which is hard to find. 
• Examples: how to make the first code line to contribute.

• Discussion is open, see mailing list: First draft of friction log template.
• Some possible items to work in:

 1. A big part of making this successful will be making filling out the friction log super-easy:

• Data fields should be pre-filled

• Interview our Outreachy interns to record the steps they took.
• template with common processes over different documents + We could add to the answers "not applicable" if that step wasn't taken. It would be hard to figure out which processes to model.

2. Mentors and interns face different issues because they do different tasks. 

•  Create two friction logs (one for mentors, one for interns) 

3. Active monitoring role: looking for examples. Needs clarification.