We'll need some people to make this happen.
Coordinator needed[edit source]
We need a main Summer of Make pilot coordinator (this should probably not be me (Mel), as I have to run Summer of Content. willing to co-coordinate from the background but can't really spearhead.) Job includes doing - or better yet, delegating:
- Decide on how much stipends should be. Also, each project should get a materials budget.
- Coordinating pilot mentors (below)
- Figuring out legal logistics of paying interns (Mel can help)
- Figuring out legal logistics of open-licensing the projects (Mel can help)
- Coordinating publicity (Mel can help)
- Getting funding for t-shirts, and making and distributing Summer of Make t-shirts
- Being a public face for the program in general; talking with potential sponsors, orgs, etc.
It should be not so bad for the pilot round since we are dealing with a very small group - only 10 projects to supervise. Volunteers?
Project managers needed[edit source]
We need a team of pilot project managers (this position will only exist for the pilot, most likely) We need 5-10 people who will each take ownership of a project and make sure it happens through any means possible. This means:
- Come up (however you want, with whomever you want) with a project idea for a pilot Summer of Make Project. Scope/difficulty should be such that 1-3 bright engineering/architecture students - undergraduate seniors and up - should be able to autonomously produce a finished physical prototype in 10 weeks of fulltime work. Existing programs & projects & internship spots that are already happening are wonderful, so long as the results can be entirely open-licenced or released into the public domian. Projects should also have an end customer - all projects should end with live testing with users (the look on people's faces when they use your stuff is what makes the experience really transformative and worth it, really).
- Either offer to mentor the project yourself, or take on responsibility for finding a mentor for the project. Mentoring can be long-distance and entails being there for your intern(s) to ask questions and advice of when needed, peeking in occasionally to make sure a project is on track, and writing midterm and end-of-summer evaluations (paragraph-long) as feedback - minimal time commitment, maybe 1hr/week unless you want to get more involved and do more.
- Take responsibility for recruiting & selecting interns for the project (we'll all pool together to do this by sending announcements to mailing lists and such, but there should be someone making sure every project gets covered, and someone to read apps for each individual project and pick interns).
- Take responsibility for defining funding/materials needs for the project, and then finding them. (Again, we'll pool together to ask for donations, but someone needs to make sure the resources for each project are obtained.) Note that this does not mean funding the project yourself! (That's the easy way out.) This means convincing someone *else* to pay for it, whether that's your organization, another, a grant org, a local business, holding a fundraiser.
Everything else should be taken care of by Summer of Make.
Proposed Projects[edit source]
I just wanted to mention that there is a Proposed projects page that might help to give people some ideas.
Keep up the good work! --David.reber 14:33, 19 April 2008 (PDT)