Seeking New Admins for Fedora and GSoC

I have really enjoyed my role as an administrator for Fedora's participation in Google's Summer of Code. It has been a very rewarding experience and I have been both grateful for and proud of all of the mentors and students that have participated. Karsten Wade has been extremely helpful as a fellow administrator and has really helped Fedora's participation succeed. Last week, he wrote that he would like to pass the reigns. His work on Fedora's own student programs is extremely important, and I am pleased to see that he is focusing on that work. As much as I enjoy working as an administrator for Fedora's GSoC participation, I also have too much on my plate to give the time and attention to the program that it really needs and deserves. Therefore, I too must step aside and allow others to take a turn at the wheel.

Both the administrator and mentor roles in the Summer of Code are wonderful opportunities. Karsten lists the benefits and caveats of the administrator role in his post, and I think he sums them up perfectly, so I will not repeat them. There are some important points I would like to add about being an administrator with Fedora for the Summer of Code:

  • All projects chiefly sponsored by Red Hat are required to participate together, so administrators can come from the communities of Fedora, JBoss.org or other Red Hat-sponsored projects and must be prepared to coordinate efforts across communities.
  • This is not a full-time job. If you can spare a few hours a week and respond in a timely manner to communications, you can handle the workload. There are a few deadlines to be met, and you might have to make an IRC meeting or two.
  • Karsten and I will both be "around" to help by answering questions and offering guidance. I do not have the time to handle all of the administrative duties, but I will be happy to help as much as I can.
  • One of the biggest challenges in the past has been recruitment - gathering administrators, mentors, ideas and students. In some ways, this has gotten easier, but know that this is an important part of the job.
  • Fedora's participation in GSoC 2011 is not guaranteed. The new administrators will need to ready the prerequisites and prepare the application when the application window opens.

If you might like to serve as an administrator for Fedora's participation in Google's Summer of Code, please contact me right away.


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