Google Code In 2017 : Organization Application
Q: Why does your organization want to participate in Google Code-in 2017?
A: Our organization consists mostly of working scientists and engineers, who — as with nearly anyone who contributes to open source software — are often more focused on their own research projects' short-term needs than on contributing to scientific computing infrastructure. Scientists tend to write one-off code for their research — code which will never, or can never, be used for any other project. SciRuby's existence facilitates contributions to the common infrastructure by those who have the interest; as with any community, it creates opportunities for collaborations.
We perceive Google Code-in as a medium through which the student contributors can be made aware of the existing SciRuby projects, while also familiarizing them with the workflow of open-source projects and best-practices. By seeking out "sometimes" contributors and convincing them to commit to mentoring, we transform our sometimes contributors into regular contributors. Most mentors and students stick around between programs. Interestingly, many of our potential mentors this year, including the admin, have been GSOC students with SciRuby previously.
Q: How has your organization prepared for Google Code-in 2017?
A: Our organization has been preparing for Google Code-in 2017 for over a month, trying to assess various aspects of our participation, such as:
- How many mentors will be able to dedicate their time for mentoring students during Google Code-in?
- What projects would they like to mentor?
- List down some of the bite-sized tasks for students, at this page
- Are there are at least 2 mentors for as many projects as possible?
Q: Has your organization participated in Google Code-in before?
A:
- Yes
- No
Q: Has your organization participated in Google Summer of Code before?
A:
- Yes
- No
Q: How many mentors have committed to participate?
A: 4-8
Q: How do you plan to deal with any holidays or vacations mentors may have planned during the contest period?
A: Our plan has always been to ensure that we have more than one mentor lined up for each project. We expect our primary mentors to actively mentor their project idea for entirety of the program's timeline. In case of any vacations that might be taken by primary mentors, they are expected to inform the community beforehand to ensure that one of the secondary mentors take up their role during their absence.
Q: How do you plan to deal with unresponsive mentors?
A: With our experience in Google Summer of Code 2017 (and many GSOCs before that as well), we think that our mentors are generally quite dedicated in playing their role as a mentor, by responding as quickly as possible. If at all, any mentor is repeatedly unresponsive, we will either remove tasks for their projects partially / entirely, or — if possible — have existing mentors / admins provide supplemental mentor-ship.
Q: We would like to see 25 example tasks.
A: https://github.com/SciRuby/sciruby/wiki/Google-Code-In-2017-:-Tasks
- Name : Ruby Science Foundation
- Website URL : http://sciruby.com/
Q: Upload your organization logo. Please provide as a 24-bit PNG (against transparent background), 1:1 ratio (minimum dimensions: 300px x 300px).
A: 
Q: Short Description
A: SciRuby is oriented towards providing science and visualization infrastructure for the Ruby Programming Language. We develop and maintain several libraries for this purpose.
Q: Long Description (An overview of your organization. May include limited Markdown.)
A: The SciRuby project is oriented towards providing computational research infrastructure for the Ruby Programming Language. SciRuby consists of a fairly large number of gems, including statsample, statsample-glm, statsample-timeseries, distribution, minimization, integration, rubyvis, plotrb, Nyaplot, MDArray, Publisci, Ruby-Band, daru, rubex, and NMatrix.
NMatrix has been awarded grants by the Ruby Association in 2012 and 2015, and has a goal of supplying Ruby with a robust, versatile linear algebra library with support for both dense and sparse matrices. Statsample and its related packages aim to provide Ruby with statistical analysis packages, while daru, nyaplot and gnuplotrb take care of data analysis and visualization. Nyaplot was awarded the Ruby Association Grant in 2014, and Rubex received it in 2016. As a result of the work done in GSoC 2017, daru has expanded with introduction of 2 new plugin-gems : daru-io for Import/Export of data and daru-view for visualizing data.
Working on SciRuby is a chance to get involved at the ground floor on a project which is viewed as critical by many Rubyists, including Ruby's creator, Matz. In fact, all the grants issued in 2016 by the Ruby Association (which is headed by Matz) have gone to scientific projects.
- Tags : ruby, science, web, data, gpu
- Programming Languages and Technologies : Ruby
- Primary Open Source License : MIT or BSD clause-2?
- Chat, Mailing List or Contact Email : https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sciruby-dev
- Google+ URL (optional) :
- Twitter URL (optional) : https://twitter.com/SciRuby
- Blog URL (optional) : http://sciruby.com/blog/
Q: Extra Task Information - Common Task Information (optional)
A: (Max 250 characters)
- Common Task Information Link (optional): -