OpenAstronomy
Better advertising discussion
When a senior undergrad or junior grad student approaches this or this webpage, they're met with a wall of instructions without a clear advertisement that makes sense to a student who may be eligible to apply. Perhaps we could improve this by adding a drop-down tab on the webpage called "For Students", and the landing page for students can describe the following:
- what GSoC is (from Google's perspective)
- what OA/astropy/sunpy are (relevance to target student)
- how much experience in astronomy/physics, and software dev is necessary to apply (with emphasis on astronomy)
- for whom GSoC is a good summer salary option (senior undergrad/junior grad); examples of project scope, on the interval: [build a webpage, build a new package].
- testimonials from successful past GSoC students describing how the program fit into their career and who they'd recommend it for (I'd be happy to write the first one).
- finally, a link to the student application guidelines
Does this sound good to everyone? Ideally, in emails sent around advertising GSoC for OA, we'd send a link to this new page first.
Since I'm pitching this idea, I'd be happy to create the first PR.
@bmorris3 - Sounds great!
In addition, if we want to be more engaging and friendly, and if anyone is up for making it, a 1 min video giving an intro would be great IMO. I'm not sure if as a busy astronomy grad student that encounters the page I would read through a lot of text. But if @bmorris3 explains what is is and recommends it to me in person, maybe even with a friendly puppy in his lap, you know ...
This is probably not directly related, but for SOCIS last year I had great success writing emails directly to student associations or universities that I knew. I received tons of high quality applications, and I focused only in Spain.
@Juanlu001 I think that's a good idea!! I've tried to email institutions for them to advertise it, but student associations are very good channel!!
