Few thoughts about Google Summer of Code

… and observations …and questions … mostly inspired by GSoC Mentor Summit

1. Mentor Summit was a great event! I didn't expect it to be THIS :) Very pleasant …and very hard for me: so many people, language and culture shock :) Great experience for me personally. Thank ESUG for choosing and sending me there.
2. Bad news: Smalltalk is not popular. Well, it's not that new actually, we know it. But I didn't manage to fix it :) Seriously: actually, it looks like everybody knows Smalltalk (they know it existed I mean; few knows it still exists), but it is treated like a black and white movie. People say "wow! it's cool" and go to see Avatar. :( So developers don't take Smalltalk seriously. We (Smalltalkers) know it's a mistake. But we have to show that for others. And I found myself unable to do that there. I found language and, more likely, culture barrier is too big to overcome. I didn't manage to set up a two-way communication with others. So I listened mostly.
3. And I've heard many interesting ideas… apparently, organizational ideas mostly. I need some time to process them. So, for now I'll just outline some directions…
4. Did we summarize our GSoC results? I thought I've missed them, but apparently we didn't do it. At least I found only this page http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code-2010-esug/downloads/list. I didn't care much before, but now I think it is very important to look closer at the projects we did within GSoC, understand where we succeeded; where we failed; did we benefit and could we get more; make some plans for the future... etc.
5. I think we should pay more attention to GSoC. It is very important for our small society. Of course, we can't be sure smalltalkers will be invited again next year. (One of the things I tried to understand at summit but still I don't: how does Google select mentor organizations?) But this work will be very helpful, useful, advantageous… what ever.
6. We should be more serious about monitoring and controlling our projects. Since money are involved here, we have a right to. That's money from Google, but still. I think it should be a bit different from the way free projects are evolved within Smalltalk society. Since we have such opportunity we have to benefit as much as we can.
   
7. Smalltalk gives me competitive advantages. For that matter I don't want to :)  but now I understand even better: we have to promote Smalltalk. I know everybody knows that, but I still want to state it once again. And promoting is not only about advertising and praising. We should be more open. We should find a way to start some cooperative projects with other societies/languages. I don't know how to do it. And it's extremely hard for me as I believe in Smalltalk superiority :) But still we have if we don't want Smalltalk to die. In general, it looks like making Smalltalk more open should be our priority, and this is one of the few ways to enhance prestige of Smalltalk among developers.

--
Dennis Schetinin

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Thanks for the feedback Dennis. Regarding your points:

Dennis Schetinin wrote

   2. Bad news: Smalltalk is not popular. ...

Well, that's not entirely true :) The world.st site has so far had visitors from 73 countries with the top 10 coming from: Germany, United States, Uruguay, United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Russia, Argentina, Colombia, Austria.

Dennis Schetinin wrote

   7. ... we have to promote Smalltalk ...

Agree, Smalltalk seems to be strong in countries where it is (still) used in education.  To further promote this, more educational material will be made available for others to use as they see fit.  A number of lecture presentations have already been uploaded and more will follow.  We plan to make them available through http://www.world.st/presentations  There are also more and more screencasts published by community members.

Dennis Schetinin wrote

   7. ... we should be more open ....

Most Smalltalk projects are already open.  Commercial success stories is probably something which would be nice to make the headlines more often.