Working Group Minutes/EWG 2018-01-15

From OpenStreetMap Foundation

A meeting of the Engineering Working Group on 15th January 2018 via Mumble.

Attendees

  • Peter Barth
  • Tobias Knerr
  • Jo (Polyglot)
  • Ilya Zverev
  • Paul Norman

Topics

Google Summer of Code 2018

Peter submitted the OpenStreetMap organization in a day or two after the submissions opened. Still have time until 23rd to tidy up the proposal text. For now it was copied from 2017, but GSoC organizers changed some questions, because they want to know the past success rate.

Peter and Tobias are administrators of the OSM GSoC organization. There is a maximum of five administrators. Paul and Polyglot volunteered to be backup administrators.

Collection of Ideas

Last time we were slow to remove "bad" ideas, that were too hard or unrelated to the OpenStreetMap. This time we will start collecting ideas ASAP, right after OSM is selected for GSoC. Again with the wiki; Project Ideas page was copied from 2017 and needs tidying up. Questionable ideas will be discussed with potential mentors or removed promptly.

Paul notes that students don't have to choose from the list, they may suggest their own projects. But to make a good proposal, a student should come from the community. There is on average one project a year from someone in the community.

Ilya asks to mention in the ideas collection invitations, that we would also welcome submissions by email, because editing wiki is hard and there is a weak chance for feedback. EWG can help potential mentors with preparing ideas for the wiki page.

Invitations to submit ideas will go out soon, to dev@, josm-dev@, OSM blog and other channels. Will ask CWG for help with the blog. Students invitations will go later and wider, to every channel including regional mailing lists.

Top Ten Tasks

We have a draft, but it's mostly task titles. Ilya with Peter will expand the page. It might help with ideas for GSoC, but really some tasks are too hard for a student, and some are too easy. Andy might like help from a student on his Moderation Queue pull request.

GSoC Project History

Finding past GSoC projects and their outcome is not easy. Peter volunteered to look into tidying up the wiki in this regard.

Action Items

  • Prepare the GSoC organization proposal.
  • Tidy up the Project Ideas page.
  • Flesh out the TTT draft.
  • Prepare the call for ideas text.
  • Add past GSoC projects to the wiki.

Next Meeting

13 February, 20:00 UTC.