IMPORTANT: Clarification about final GSoC deadlines

[Ben Goertzel]

Hi,

As you'll note from this page

http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/program/google/gsoc2009/timeline

the final deadline for GSoC 2009 is approaching!

The terminology on that page is a bit confusing so I thought I would send this email to clarify. 

August 17 is the first date that mentors can submit final evaluations of students to Google.

August 24 is the *last* date that mentors can submit final evaluations of students to Google.

Here are relevant words from Leslie Hawthorne, the manager of GSoC, last year (NOTE: I swapped dates according to this year's timeline to avoid confusion)...

>If you/your student has not yet completed work by 17 August, that's
>totally fine - s/he can continue writing code up until the 24 August
>deadline. All final evaluations should be based on work students have
>completed up until the 24 August deadline.
>
>In years past, we had many questions from students about whether they
>could submit their code samples including work they completed after
>the 24 August deadline, as we do not begin collecting code samples
>until 3 September (instructions forthcoming). It's perfectly fine to
>include code written post-deadline in the code sample, but all
>evaluations are to be based on work done up until 24 August, not
>afterwards.

So, for students, the bottom line is:

-- If you've worked productively and continuously through the summer, and also met your project goals, then you're OK to stop work on the 17th of August.  Maybe you'll want to spend a few days after that cleaning up and documenting your work; or maybe you've done that already. Of course, if you want to keep working that's great too (we'd like you all to stick with OpenCog permanently ;), but you should feel no *obligation* to do so.

-- If you've had unforeseen distractions this summer, or missed time due to vacations ... OR if you've *not* achieved your project goals ... then it's preferable if you can continue working on your project till Aug 22 or 23 in accordance with Leslie's email above.


Also, if any student/mentor pairs are NOT in frequent contact with each other at this point, now would be an excellent time to remedy that problem ;)

thanks
Ben Goertzel