Making it Stick: Offline Connections & Student Retention in the GSoC

In the conversation that started the planning for the Google Summer of Code 2009 webchick presented what she saw as the biggest challenge the Drupal community faces:

IMO our challenge is not "how do we get these students to continue slaving away on their projects after they're not getting paid anymore" (I realize this isn't what you said, but I've heard other people say this if you 'read between the lines'), our challenge is instead, "how do we get our students to become Drupal-obsessed and immersed in the community as a contributor?" If we figure out the answer to that question, awesome code will follow.

Obviously, this challenge is also an opportunity, because for every person who we never hear from again (or for every dozen) we get a webchick that emerges to become a leader in, or at least a long-time member of, the community. It may be hard to keep people engaged, but the simple fact is that we already largely have their attention. We simply need to find more efficient and sustainable ways of making the contact more valuable to the participants, and make the memories more endearing/enduring.

IMO, the best, and most likely easiest, way to ensure that the GSoC students remain engaged in the community is to encourage as many real world interactions between the student and the community during the mentoring period. While the Drupal community (as well as all of the other Drupal-powered online communities powered by Drupal) maintains an amazingly active online community, there's no question in my mind that it remains vibrant largely due to the real world interactions (both personal and business related) the community enjoys (meetups+Camps+Cons). There's nothing like face-to-face interactions to engender a sense of belonging, and working directly, in-person, with a member of the community can help students overcome some of the hurdles that face new entrants. The other big benefit would be in vetting the students, though I'm not sure how similar we want to the application process to be to a normal job application process.

So, the question becomes, how do you encourage these real world encounters. My thought is that we should add another mentor to the mix (so, each project should have three mentors): a "local mentor". This person wouldn't have to be as steeped in the nitty gritty of the student's work (though it wouldn't hurt), but they would have to commit to meeting up with the student at least two or three times over the course of the summer. Ideally, this person might work at a Drupal or web shop, and the student could come in occasionally to work there.

I know that webchick also mentioned that managing the mentors has been the most challenging aspect of the GSoC, but I don't think adding an extra "local mentor" would necessarily add too much overhead to the project (and adding two from the same location would actually be preferably, imo), and potentially it could help keep non-local mentors engaged.

There are two preexisting groups that we could call on to help out as local mentors. First, there are the 350 so local ambassadors. We should make a concerted effort to reach out to each of these folks (though some/most will be too overworked to help) and see if they can't act as sort of community guides for these students. Second, I'd suggest we reach out to every firm that has sponsored a DrupalCon (now or in the past), or even a camp. Off the top of my head I can think of two other firms in this city that give back to the community in this way (organizing local events) and I'm sure many cities have firms that employ local Drupal leaders. This second group has the added benefit of helping to alleviate some of the burdens on managing mentors as well, since if we get a company to commit then the chances are much more likely that the mentor will have time to spend on the project (obviously it probably couldn't be an official commitment).

If we decide that this is a good idea, then an additional step that I think we should take is that we should actively encourage local ambassadors to reach out to the Computer Science Departments at regional universities to recruit talent. It's hard to imagine that there won't be a lot of students looking for paid internships this summer, so a little bit of outreach might go a long way.

I don't think that having a "local mentor" should be a requirement- that would hurt the chances of the community to grow into regions where the community hasn't yet reached- but my question is: should we give extra weight to those students who can be vetted and meet up during the GSoC in person? It's hard to see a better way to make the bridge between the GSoC and a lifelong commitment to Drupal.