[Soc2006] Welcome!

[Arc Riley]

Excellent suggestions Ian.  I suggest +4 or above, since its easy to get 
a +4.  

We'll have to wait to hear back from Google about how many we'll 
actually get total.  I do suggest that if there's a proposal up now that 
needs a mentor that's not currently signed up, we should sign that 
mentor up now, since the number Google will give us is based on the 
number of mentors we have.

I also suggest that since there will be at least a 1:1 student:mentor 
ratio that each mentor get to choose one student (the ratings system 
allows for this already) and that no un-adopted proposal be rated higher 
than these on the website.

The remainder (that above 1:1) should be hashed out on mentors-only list 
you proposed.


On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 02:35:00PM -0500, Ian Bicking wrote:
> 
> I think this year it will be clear that some proposals will have floated 
> to the top, and then we can discuss those more directly (anything +2 or 
> better?).  Because early submitters are more likely to get higher scores 
> I don't think we should put too much weight on the scores.
> 
> It would probably be good to have a private mentors list after 
> everything is submitted, so we can discuss specifics.  For instance, if 
> there's two submissions on the same topic and they are both unlikely to 
> get accepted, it's better to just discuss the specific case than to 
> comment on them each in isolation.  We also have to figure out the 
> mentor assignment; the choice of projects should take into account both 
> the quality of the proposal (including references and whatnot), and the 
> interest of a mentor.  OTOH, it would be nice if we encounter a good 
> proposal that is missing a mentor, that we try to dig a mentor up 
> somewhere; not that every good proposal will get accepted, but there 
> will likely be a case where there will be a proposal we'd all really 
> like to accept but no one feels capable of mentoring.  We would need to 
> identify those early in order to actually find a mentor, though.
> 
> After that we have to figure out mentoring itself.  There's probably 
> more to talk about there, but I'd like to suggest that each project get 
> a co-mentor (who might also be a mentor for another project, kind of a 
> buddy system).  Then mentors will have someone on their case about doing 
> mentoring; last year many mentors (including myself) didn't feel they 
> were involved enough in the project and monitoring their student's work, 
> and this might be a way for us to encourage each other to do better.