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Accepted Students and Mentors

10 Next Steps for Accepted Students

If you have been accepted as a student, congratulations! Please make sure to complete the following tasks as soon as possible. Ask your mentor for help if you need it.

1. If you don't have one yet, get an OpenMRS ID and create your user profile page. Upload an avatar photo. Make sure you are subscribed to the developer mailing list.

2. If you haven't read it yet, read the GSoC Student Guide.

3. Contact your mentor immediately and create a communication plan for now through the time of final evaluations. You should communicate once each week, if not more frequently. Determine the best way to communicate (e-mail, IRC, IM, Skype, telephone, etc.). Post the communication plan in your personal space on the OpenMRS wiki.

4. Get OpenMRS installed and running. Read Developer Documentation, Getting Started as a Developer, and ask others in the community if you have questions. If you ask questions the smart way, you'll get better responses.

5. Get a development environment installed and running.

6. Review our Conventions page. If you have quesitons about anything you read, contact your mentor or anyone the community.

7. Set up a blog for GSoC. Send the URL to @Michael Downey. If you don't have a blog yet, you can create one for free at WordPress.com or Blogger.com.

8. Browse the current OpenMRS code specific to your project. Browse other GSoC organizations and the pages they have for their students. We want to be the best!

9. Review the requirements for your project together with your mentor and agree on the final list of requirements with your mentor.

10. Submit a formal written proposal and project timeline to your mentor. Make sure your mentor agrees with both. Post them in your personal space on the OpenMRS wiki.

I didn't get accepted. Why not?

First of all, thank you to everyone who worked hard on submitting a proposal to OpenMRS. We received many excellent proposals, but unfortunately, it's not possible to accept everyone. If you're interested in being even more competitive next year, read "Being Turned Down" in the GSoC Student Guide (in fact, the entire student guide is useful) and consider the tips it suggests. Also look at our "tips for students" section of this page for more ideas.

Expectations

What we expect of students:

• Become familiar with OpenMRS and your project before the start date.

• Complete a short "progress report" each week to help stay on schedule.

• Commit early. Commit often. This is an important value in our open source community - read why.

• Join the interns mailing list. (We'll help you with this.)

• You are now part of our developer community. We want you to feel like part of the team, so we hope you will:

  • Have technical discussions on IRC or on the developers mailing list.

  • Ask questions (the smart way) if you get stuck.

  • Participate in our Developers Forum (Inactive) via phone or Skype.

  • Give one or more project presentations during those weekly meetings so we can see the cool stuff you're making.

What students should expect of OpenMRS during the summer:

• You will have fun!

• You will learn how to work within an open source project.

• You will have dedicated time (4-5 hours each week) with an experienced OpenMRS mentor, and will have a backup mentor for questions or problems.

• If you ask a question the smart way, our community will do its best to help you.

• The Summer of Code program leaders (both at OpenMRS and Google) will be available if any problems arise between students and mentors.

What we expect of mentors:

• Help your student be successful. Commit to spending a minimum of 4-5 hours each week with your student answering questions, giving advice, working together, and evaluating his or her progress.

• Complete a short "progress report" each week to help stay on schedule and catch potential problems early.

• Read the GSoC Mentoring Manual and ask questions if you have them.

• Reach out to the Summer of Code project leaders if you have questions or concerns.

• Have fun and work hard! The highest-performing mentors will get an expenses-paid trip to Google's headquarters later in the year to geek out with fellow mentors from other open source projects.