Summary of lunch meeting re: GSoC talk at ETH

[Seon-Wook Park]

Hello everyone,

I met with Sabina and Bogdan today to discuss about how to proceed with organising a talk at ETH Zürich.

There were a few questions we posed, and most are listed below:

1. Would many students be interested given that examinations are in August (after the holidays, when GSoC would happen)?
2. Should we do separate talks for students and mentors? Who would be our audience?
3. How do we promote the talk?

For point no. 1, Bogdan mentioned that those interested would still participate in GSoC, as the flexibility allows for both work and study. Sabina mentioned that Masters and Doctorate students may be more likely to have time to participate in summer work. She also mentioned that students in other universities will have different examination periods, and may be able to participate.

For point no. 2, we agreed that it may be best to have a talk in this semester (around early December) as students will be sitting exams in January and February, and March may be slightly late. This is quite soon though, and we would need to organise quickly.

While it would be nice to have multiple talks, it may be a good idea to focus on one for students first. Students possibly interested in GSoC may not necessarily be Computer Science students, so we would have to adjust our talk and advertise accordingly.

For point no. 3, we are yet unsure, but there are many who can help.

Sabina mentioned correspondance with http://www.project21.ch/projekte/thealternative, an organisation aiming to promote free software in Zürich. They are very interested in helping with the talk, and asked us to organise something more formal.

We considered promoting the talk to http://www.meetup.com/zhgeeks but the talks there tend to be very technical and the crowd does not consist much of students. We can nonetheless reach out to them.

Bogdan mentioned the student organisation common rooms, where students flock to grab their free coffees. These would definitely be good promotion areas.

Let's continue discussing these questions through this forum.

Best,

Seon-Wook Park / Wookie