Hi,
Here is a report from the GSoC mentor's summit:
To be honest, I didn't learn that much from this years conference. Probably for two reasons: The first is that I (as well as many others) were tempted by the sessions given by Google employees. While these sessions were interesting, they weren't really applicable to GSoC. BTW, if anyone can think of how it could be useful for Inkscape, I've got a $2000 coupon for using Google's cloud platform.
The other reason is that there is probably less to learn after attending the summit last year. I kind of guessed this and if the Graphical Web (e.g. SVG Open) conference hadn't been just after in San Francisco I probably wouldn't have made the effort to attend.
I did pick up a few things. The most interesting session I attended was titled "Developer Meetings Coding Sprints" but was really about ways to collaborate and communicate. Highlights[1]:
1. Have bug days using IRC. It helps to motivate people if a group is doing this together. It is also rewarding to be able to report "40 bugs squashed today".
2. Hangout using Google's Hangouts. Some people found it quite useful to announce that they would be on-line for a given period of time and let others freely join the conversation. I plan on giving this a try in the next couple of days. (For more organized sessions, the hangout can be live-streamed via YouTube so one doesn't need a Google account to watch.)
3. For serious planning and strategizing, face-to-face meetings are most useful. Separately, Bradley Kuhn, from the Software Freedom Conservancy was there; he is really encouraging us to use some of our pot of money to hold a meeting for this.
As a final note, the GSoC timetable has been moved forward by quite a bit. Next year's organization applications are due on February 14th (rather than March 29th) and student applications are due March 21st (rather than May 3rd).[2]
Tav
[1]https://gsoc-wiki.osuosl.org/index.php/Developer_Meetings_Coding_Sprints [2]https://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2014