2018 Email Announcements

This is an archive of all broadcast emails sent to GCI 2018 Mentors and Org Admins.

January 22, 2019: Site will be archived Feb 20th - be sure to download task data before then

We will be archiving the GCI 2018 contest site on February 20, 2019.

Starting February 20th you will no longer be able to log in. Winners, finalists, and completed tasks will continue to be visible. Task details (work product and comments) are not published via the archive.

If there is anything (such as student work product) you wish to preserve, please download it in the next few weeks.

You may find the GCI API useful for extracting some task data. No official API is available for downloading work product files.

Best,
Stephanie

December 12, 2018: Important Reminders for Mentors to wrap up the contest

TO: Org Admins and Mentors

Thank you for another amazing year! And great job to all of our new mentors and orgs keeping up with an excited bunch of students!

With the adjustment to the timeline we expected a possible decrease in student participation this year and while we had about 400 less students complete tasks this year compared to last year's record numbers we had MORE tasks completed in this year's contest -- 15,236! Great job to all 822 of you who helped 3,123 students from 77 countries in this year's contest!

There are still about 50 tasks waiting to be reviewed across orgs, please double check your queue is clear before the review deadline tomorrow, Thursday, December 13th at 17:00 UTC.

Selecting Winners through dashboard

Starting tomorrow, Thursday, December 13th at 17:00 UTC, Org Admins can visit their dashboard and select their organization's:

  • 2 Grand Prize winners
  • 1 Backup Winner (in case another org chooses one of your Grand Prize winners or they are disqualified for some reason, etc.)
  • 3 more Finalists

Org Admins will have until Thursday, December 27th to enter their Winners and Finalists. Your org should be thinking about how your community will determine who the winners and finalists are.

The candidates for these 6 slots are restricted to the 20 students who completed the most tasks for your organization. The 20 students will be clear from your dashboard view.

These 6 students will all be considered your Finalists and will all receive a tshirt and hoodie and a special certificate. Grand Prize Winners will also receive a four day trip for themselves and a parent/legal guardian to Google headquarters in California.

Per the Contest Rules, orgs should choose their Grand Prize Winners and Finalists based on the comprehensive body of work the student completed in the contest period from October 23, 2018 to December 12, 2018. As stated in the Contest Rules: Each entry will be judged according to the following factors: creativity, thoroughness, and quality of work. The Organization may additionally factor the contestant's involvement in the Organization's community in the judging.

Students who have been Grand Prize Winners in the past are not eligible to be winners again. They can be named as Finalists. You don't need to check if the student was a previous winner, we will. If there is an issue (very unlikely) we will move the backup winner into a Grand Prize Winner slot (and we'll notify you).

Announcing GCI winners and finalists

We will be contacting Grand Prize Winners and Finalists around December 27th/28th as we need additional paperwork from the students and their parents before we can release their information publicly. So it is possible they may reach out to you directly to say thank you - we tell them not to post anything publicly which includes to the org's mailing lists until after the Jan 7th public announcements.

Please do not announce your org's winners or finalists before the announcement is live on the Google Open Source blog January 7th at 17:00 UTC (9am PT).

Feedback form

Please take a few minutes to fill out our post-GCI feedback survey: https://goo.gl/forms/zXu7AUzxVJbV1XAV2

I read all of the comments (really). I can't promise I can read through all of them in the next couple of weeks (now it's my turn to be swamped : )) but I can promise to review all comments over the next 3 months so I can make improvements for future programs. It's a very important tool as we strive to continuously improve and grow the contest. Your feedback is instrumental to that process. Thank you in advance for any feedback, ideas, or comments you provide.

Important Dates

  • Thursday, December 13th 17:00 UTC - Deadline for mentors to review student's work
  • Thursday, December 27th 17:00 UTC - Deadline for organizations to choose their 2 Grand Prize Winners, their backup winner and the other 3 finalists. You will be able to select your winners starting December 13th and can continue to edit your selections until Dec 26th.
  • Thursday, January 3rd - Email tokens will be sent to all mentors who indicated they wish to receive a tshirt where you'll need to select your tshirt size and shipping address with our fulfillment company, Shumsky.
  • Monday, January 7th - Winners and Finalists announced on g.co/gci and Google Open Source blog
  • Sunday, January 13th - Deadline to select your tshirt size and shipping address
  • Early February - Tshirts for mentors and students will be shipped

Thank you all!

Best,
Stephanie

December 5, 2018: Final Week Notes

TO: Org Admins and Mentors

Thank you for doing such a great job keeping up with the student task reviews and for all of the time and enthusiasm you have all put into helping students this year!

Only 1 week to go before you can stop worrying about reviewing tasks for another 10+ months. Yippee!

Thank you!

Important Dates

  • Monday, December 10th 17:00 UTC - Deadline for GCI students to claim their final task
  • Wednesday, December 12th 17:00 UTC - Deadline for GCI students to submit their work: Note that you have to either approve the work or reject it, you can not send it back for more work after this deadline.
  • Thursday, December 13th 17:00 UTC - Deadline for mentors to review student's work
  • Thursday, December 27th 17:00 UTC - Deadline for organizations to choose their 2 Grand Prize Winners, their backup winner and the other 3 finalists. You will be able to select your winners starting December 13th and can continue to edit your selections until Dec 27th.
  • Thursday, January 3rd - Email tokens will be sent to all mentors who indicated they wish to receive a tshirt where you'll need to select your tshirt size and shipping address with our fulfillment company, Shumsky.
  • Monday, January 7th - Winners and Finalists announced on g.co/gci and Google Open Source blog
  • Early February - Tshirts for mentors and students will be shipped

Choosing your Grand Prize Winners and Finalists

Disclosing Friendships with possible winners: We realize there are quite a few former GCI students and other mentors who have some kind of friendship (maybe go to same school, etc.) with some of the students that will likely be in your org's top 20.

Please remember that if you are friends with a student being evaluated you MUST disclose that friendship with the other mentors when that student's work is being reviewed (essentially leaving you out of the discussion of that student's work).

We know everyone wants to be fair and the best way to do that and for there not to be any question about impartiality is to remove yourself from the discussion of your friend's work. The other mentors will appreciate the honesty and will evaluate your friend just like everyone else will be evaluated.

Selecting Winners through dashboard

Starting on Thursday, December 13th at 17:00 UTC, Org Admins can visit their dashboard and select their organization's:

  • 2 Grand Prize winners
  • 1 Backup Winner (in case another org chooses one of your Grand Prize winners or they are disqualified for some reason, etc.)
  • 3 more Finalists

Org Admins will have until Thursday, December 27th to enter their Winners and Finalists. Your org should be thinking about how your community will determine who the winners and finalists are.

The candidates for these 6 slots are restricted to the 20 students who completed the most tasks for your organization.

These 6 students will all be considered your Finalists and will all receive the GCI Finalist hoodie and a special certificate. Grand Prize Winners will receive a four day trip for themselves and an adult to Google headquarters in California.

Per the Contest Rules, orgs should choose their Grand Prize Winners and Finalists based on the comprehensive body of work the student completed in the contest period from October 23, 2018 to December 12, 2018. As stated in the Contest Rules: Each entry will be judged according to the following factors: creativity, thoroughness, and quality of work. The Organization may additionally factor the contestant's involvement in the Organization's community in the judging.

Students who have been Grand Prize Winners in the past are not eligible to be winners again. They can be named as Finalists. You don't need to check if the student was a previous winner, we will. If there is an issue (very unlikely) we will move the backup winner into a Grand Prize Winner slot.

If you have any questions or concerns feel free to contact us at gci-support@google.com.

Best,
Stephanie

November 27, 2018: GCI Week 5 Updates for Mentors and Org Admins

TO: Org Admins and Mentors

Thank you all for doing an amazing job this year! New student registrations are starting to slow down but you are all likely to get a last minute rush from the 10-20 top students all trying to get a finalist or winner spot- so be prepared for that.

There is also usually a mad rush for those students who procrastinated and are trying to get their 3 tasks completed to earn the t-shirt. This will likely continue until the deadline for task claims - Monday, December 10th.

Some interesting numbers

  • Over 2640 students from 74 countries have completed at least 1 task
  • 4 students have each completed 50 tasks or more
  • 1,562 students have already earned a t-shirt (completing 3 or more tasks)
  • 11,400+ tasks completed in these first 5 weeks

Choosing your Grand Prize Winners and Finalists

Starting on Thursday, December 13th at 17:00 UTC, Org Admins can visit their dashboard and select their organization's:

  • 2 Grand Prize winners
  • 1 Backup Winner (in case another org chooses one of your Grand Prize winners or they are disqualified for some reason, etc.)
  • 3 more Finalists

Org Admins will have until Thursday, December 27th to enter their Winners and Finalists. Your org should be thinking about how your community will determine who the winners and finalists are.

The candidates for these 6 slots are restricted to the 20 students who completed the most tasks for your organization.

These 6 students will all be considered your Finalists and will all receive the GCI Finalist hoodie and a special certificate. Grand Prize Winners will receive a four day trip for themselves and an adult to Google headquarters in California.

Per the Contest Rules, orgs should choose their Grand Prize Winners and Finalists based on the comprehensive body of work the student completed in the contest period from October 23, 2018 to December 12, 2018. As stated in the Contest Rules: Each entry will be judged according to the following factors: creativity, thoroughness, and quality of work. The Organization may additionally factor the contestant's involvement in the Organization's community in the judging.

Students who have been Grand Prize Winners in the past are not eligible to be winners again. They can be named as Finalists. You don't need to check if the student was a previous winner, we will. If there is an issue (very unlikely) we will move the backup winner into a Grand Prize Winner slot.

Important Dates

  • Monday, December 10th 17:00 UTC - Deadline for GCI students to claim their final task
  • Wednesday, December 12th 17:00 UTC - Deadline for GCI students to submit their work: Note that you have to either approve the work or reject it, you can not send it back for more work after this deadline.
  • Thursday, December 13th 17:00 UTC - Deadline for mentors to review student's work
  • Thursday, December 27th 17:00 UTC - Deadline for organizations to choose their 2 Grand Prize Winners, their backup winner and the other 3 finalists. You will be able to select your winners starting December 13th and can continue to edit your selections until Dec 27th.
  • Monday, January 7th - Winners and Finalists announced on g.co/gci and Google Open Source blog
  • Late January - Tshirts for mentors and students will be shipped

Important Links:

Best,
Stephanie

November 15, 2018: Halfway through GCI 2018

TO: Org Admins and Mentors

This is our biggest and smoothest GCI yet, thanks to all of you! Things continue to go amazingly well with more students completing more tasks than ever before.

Just a couple of things -

  1. Please pay attention to response times. 36 hours max, 24 hours or less preferred. A few orgs have been slipping over the past couple of weeks -- after some reminder emails they're mostly back on track. Timely responses are very important to keeping the contest running smoothly.
  2. Always press "needs more work" when sending the task back to the student. This will restart the timer and make it clear who then has the next action. (Just like a chess clock.) You can always give the student more time if necessary.
  3. Controlling your emails. Emails contain a X-For-Filtering footer that you can use to keep your email under control. Filter on "Interacted-True" to find emails related to tasks you've commented on.
  4. submitted_date is now in the Task Instance API. The documentation isn't updated yet, but it should be working. It includes the date and time which should help you prioritize responses

Please continue to let us know if you run into any issues or glitches.

Keep up the great work everyone!

Important Links:

Best,
Stephanie

October 28, 2018: Day 5 clarifications and important notes for all mentors and org admins

TO: Org Admins and Mentors

You've made it to day 5 of GCI 2018! Congratulations!

First day stats

The last 5 days have been insanely busy for a few of you (7 orgs have had 150+ tasks completed in the last 5 days, with one org having 530 completed (good thing that org has over 100 mentors!). Three organizations have had less than 20 tasks completed so far, don't worry, it will get busier. There are always ebbs and flows so don't get too comfortable yet. : )

We are very glad we have 27 orgs this year as the students are being spread out amongst all orgs. We are again well on our way for a record breaking contest. The first couple of days the numbers were huge. Right now we have had as many students register at the not quite 5 day mark as we had 8 days into the contest last year. And likewise we have had over 1100 students complete a task at this point (it took 6.5 days to get to that point last year).

When student work is not enough for you to approve

Please remember that when a student submits work to you and it is not quite what you were looking for you need to hit the 'needs more work' button to send it back to the student to continue working on. That resets the system so that when the student is ready to re-submit their edited work they can include the link/file and hit submit (instead of just writing a comment or supplying the link). This also resets the submission clock for mentors to review and sends you a notification email that work has been submitted.

If you don't hit ‘needs more work' the system will show the Org Admins and Google Program Admins that the task has been waiting for review for an extended period of time since the system is looking at that first (and only) submission by the student as the amount of time it has been waiting for review. The student can not re-submit officially because their "submit" button is greyed out since the system is reading their first submission and it was not sent back for more work by the mentor in the system thus resetting it to allow a new submission.

Mentor Response Time and Other Issues

A record low number of participants (1) have complained to us about mentors taking more than 36 hours to respond. This is amazing, please keep it up.

Overall, from our side, this is the smoothest GCI ever with the biggest number of participants and mentors too!

We encourage orgs that are being slammed to try and find a way to give overloaded mentors a break to rest. This is a marathon not a sprint. We don't anyone burning out. We are trying this on our team too.

We have had students complain about their mentors not responding to them within a couple of hours and we have firmly written back to them letting them know you are all volunteers trying to help them and that you have to respond within 36 hours though you try to respond under 24 hours as much as possible.

Personal Information

Thanks to the mentors and org admins who have asked us about certain tasks and even some that have reported tasks others have posted as being inappropriate with the strict personal information restrictions this year.

As a mentor, please guide students towards appropriate and safe sharing. They are going to share what they share but please encourage them to be careful - it is a very valuable lesson that most teenagers don't quite understand yet.

If in doubt don't post your task and ask us at gci-support@google.com. We are all trying to do the right thing for the students and we understand everyone is trying to wrap their head around what exactly is personal information, so please ask us your questions, we won't bite. : )

Website

If you discover a bug, typo or have a feature request for next year please send it to us at gci-support@google.com. For bug reports please give us as much info as possible (screenshots when relevant are appreciated).

Please don't forget that the team is here to help! If you need any advice or guidance do not hesitate to reach out to us directly.

Thank you for your hard work to make this the biggest (and best) GCI ever! You have done an amazing job keeping up with more students than ever before. Keep up the great work everyone!

Important Links:

October 17, 2018: GCI Final Reminders - less than 6 days til start of GCI

TO: Org Admins and Mentors

With less than a week to go before GCI 2018 starts for students, we wanted to go over a few things to prepare you for the busy weeks ahead.

  1. Read the roles and responsibilities

    • There are always a lot of questions about what the expectations are for each role in the GCI and GSoC programs. Please read the linked document so you know what Google expects of you and other participants.
    • Individual organizations may have additional roles and responsibilities. Talk to your Organization Administrator for more information.

  2. Enter your tasks into the system now

    • Right now only 4 orgs have published 60 or more unique tasks.
    • Org Admins: Be sure to have a minimum of 50 unique tasks (we strongly encourage you to have 75) entered into system before Tuesday, October 23rd at 9am PT. We encourage you to enter them ASAP so if there is a problem or any confusion we can help you fix it. Definitely don't wait until a few hours before the contest starts!
    • Don't publish all your tasks at the start of the program. This way you can easily (and quickly) publish more over the first few weeks of the program as your initial load of tasks rapidly disappear.

  3. Do not create any tasks that require students to supply personal information

    • For example, real name, age, what country they live in, pictures of themselves, hobbies, etc. This is personal information and can not be asked or required of students in any manner. If you are unsure about a task please email gci-support@google.com and we can okay it or say it's not acceptable.

  4. Mentor Count

    • Right now 66% of orgs have 15 or more mentors! Remember, tasks can't be published without at least 1 assigned mentor. You can continue to add more mentors throughout the program as needed.

  5. Webhooks and API

    • If you wish to receive webhook notifications of task instance activity, you must email us the URL to send them to. We need to configure it manually for each organization. See the API documentation for more information.
    • Several organizations have contributed samples of how they use the API to manage tasks. We're listing those samples on our API page. (If your code isn't listed, email us and we'll add a link.)

  6. Translation tasks

    • We haven't specifically banned translations tasks this year BUT please think carefully about any translation tasks that you offer. In general, we'd encourage you to avoid them. If a task can be mostly completed with Google Translate or another automated translation tool, it is not a good task and you should not offer it. Good translation tasks should require deep knowledge of the target language -- and you must be able to verify that the work was done correctly. These tend to not be "translation" tasks, but "language" tasks.
    • Zulip has written some documentation as to different classes of "translation" tasks and what to look for.

    • Good examples:

      • Developing a language specific style guide for translators to use.
      • Research into UI changes/challenges for different languages. (For example: German has above average word length, and might not fit on your normal buttons.)
      • Find and fix examples where a current translation has a word that doesn't make sense (and explain why it's wrong). (For example: Many languages have multiple different words that mean "button". Are you using the right one?")

    • Bad examples:

      • Translate our app/documentation/poster/etc. into language X.

    • It's worth repeating, you must be able to validate any translation work done. For example, if you don't speak Klingon, you have no way of knowing if the student translated into proper Klingon, or into Romulan. (And the consequences of that could be dire.)

    • If you're not sure if you can make the right kind of translation tasks, we suggest you just don't offer them. Even if you tell them to not use automated translation tools, many students will anyway.

  7. Bug Reports and Feature Requests

    • If you discover a bug, typo or have a feature request for next year please send it to us at gci-support@google.com. For bug reports please give us as much info as possible (screenshots when relevant are much appreciated).

Important Links:

Please don't forget that the program administrator team is here to help! If you need any advice or guidance do not hesitate to reach out to us directly. As always, please contact us at gci-support@google.com if you have any questions or concerns. We're looking forward to the biggest and best GCI ever! Thank you all for being a part of the program.

October 4, 2018: Updates - 2.5+ Weeks before GCI starts

TO: Org Admins and Mentors

Thank you for being a GCI 2018 Mentor or Organization Administrator! We are 2.5+ weeks from the start of GCI 2018. We know you are very busy creating tasks, inviting mentors, and getting your community ready for GCI but please read this email carefully. It's long, but it contains important information.

gci-mentors mailing list

All Org Admins and Mentors who opted in have been added to the gci-mentors mailing list. Many of you have already started using the mailing list to ask for and offer advice. This is especially useful for new organizations and mentors. We hope that you continue to support one another throughout the contest!

Task API and Webhooks

You can use the API or provided CSV Uploader to bulk upload tasks. If you wish to receive webhook notifications of task instance activity, you must email us your endpoint URL. (Details are in the API documentation.)

Mentoring with multiple organizations

We realize some of you wish to mentor with more than one organization. The system does allow this but before doing it, please consider that being a GCI mentor takes a lot of time to do properly. Don't spread yourself too thin trying to help multiple organizations.

GCI begins Tuesday, October 23rd 16:00 UTC for students

Before October 23rd, all orgs should:

  • Have published a minimum of 75 unique tasks comprising at least 100 task instances across all 5 task categories (we strongly encourage you to have at least 100 unique tasks ready - even if some of these are not published yet).
  • Have 5+ beginner tasks each with many instances available. Most students will claim a beginner task for their first task. Having multiple mentors that can review the beginner tasks is strongly encouraged.
  • Read these tips on creating good tasks.
  • The more tasks you have in your queue at the start of the contest, the easier your life will be (really, we can't stress this enough).
  • Have at least 10 mentors registered in the system (15+ would be ideal)
  • Start discussing how your org is going to decide on its finalists and winners at the end of the contest. Be sure all mentors are aware of the criteria and how your org will be evaluating difficulty and community involvement so that everyone is on the same page for the whole contest. It doesn't hurt to take notes on the students doing outstanding work.

Creating good tasks

  • Do not create any tasks that require students to supply personal information. For example, what country they live in, pictures of the student, hobbies, etc. This is personal information and can not be asked or required of students in any manner. If you are unsure about a task please reach out to gci-support@google.com and we can okay it or say it's not acceptable.
  • Tasks should have a specific tangible output. Code, graphics, documentation, tests, test verification, etc.
  • It is not a "task" to require someone to make an account, sign up for a mailing list, or follow you on social media. Some of those things are overhead, some of the others are blatant marketing and don't benefit the student. We understand that sometimes this kind of trivial task is used as a beginner / hook task, but you'll need to find other things that are not trivial and don't violate privacy concerns.
  • No tasks asking students to write blog posts about themselves. You can ask students to write a blog post about some kind of research related to your org, etc. but not a task asking them to write about their favorite tasks or why they are participating, etc.

Thanks in advance for your help. If you have any questions about the GCI contest please contact me or the GCI program administrators at gci-support@google.com.

How does it work for students?

Read this page to learn the process a student follows to participate. You might get questions about how it works.

Help Promote GCI!

One of the key reasons GCI has grown over the past 8 years is because of your help to promote it to students and teachers. Here's more information as to how you can help people learn about GCI.

Students Plagiarizing/Cheating

This is a contest for teenagers, which unfortunately means it is likely some cheating and plagiarizing will occur. It is not the norm, but having just one student who cheats can be incredibly frustrating. Here is what to do:

  • If you believe a student copied someone else's work or is cheating in some other way please contact us immediately at gci-support@google.com.

    • Include as much information as you can as to why you suspect this is cheating. This should include a link to the task instance, as well as any other documentation, information (the work they copied from) or logs you have.

  • We will review the information promptly. If we agree that it is cheating, we will freeze the student's account (preventing them from accessing the system and making them ineligible to receive any prizes). We will also email them to let them know why they have been removed from the program.

  • Do not feel bad about reporting a student cheating or plagiarizing - it is not fair to the other 99.95% of students who are working hard in the contest.

  • This is a valuable lesson the students need to learn. Our team has no problem banning a student for bad behavior and cheating, neither should you.

Bad Behavior

In many cases student participants don't realize when they are acting or communicating poorly. They may not be familiar with your community standards and code of conduct.

  • We urge you to give the student the benefit of the doubt during initial interactions. Try to teach them the correct way to interact with other students and your community. They will often be thankful -- many may not realize what they were doing was wrong/inappropriate.
  • Threatening or harassing other participants (Students, Mentors, or Google representatives) is a violation of the Contest Rules. Please report cases promptly, and we will take swift action to remove the offender from the contest.

Expectations

Some questions have come up around the goals of GCI. Check out an extensive email we wrote that you can find on the GCI-mentor list from 11/11/2016.

GCI Mentor Email Archive

We will keep an archive of all of these information emails that we send to all mentors and OAs for GCI 2018 and we will keep adding it to the footer of all emails for the rest of the contest so that as new mentors are added they can easily go back and read the previous emails and it is easier for folks to reference the emails.

Please let us know if you have questions about any of this information. You can always reach us at gci-support@google.com. We hope you are all getting excited about GCI 2018! Long, deep breaths everyone, here we go! :)

If any of you will be at the GSoC Mentor Summit please be sure to attend the GCI sessions, particularly the ones around creating good tasks and best practices for orgs.

September 18, 2018: Important Info for Org Admins- please read carefully

TO: Org Admins

Congratulations on being selected as a Google Code-in 2018 mentoring organization! Welcome to the 5 new GCI organizations, and welcome back to our veteran organizations, we're thrilled to have you back with us!

You can start entering your tasks now on the site. Published tasks will not be visible for the public until the contest starts Tuesday, October 23rd at 16:00 UTC. Please do not wait until the Monday night before the contest starts to upload your tasks -- it makes us nervous. :) We encourage you to upload some tasks as soon as possible to make sure they look the way you expect them to look.

You can use the API or provided CSV Uploader to bulk upload tasks.

Be sure that the link of sample tasks you sent as part of your application is not public on your page right now. We have a blog post going out today that links to the URL you put for your org and in a couple of cases the orgs might have also had their ideas list on that page. Students may not start working on tasks until the contest starts.

Below is a quick summary of the main points to keep in mind as you prepare for GCI 2018. For a more comprehensive list of important details please read our Tips and Guidelines for Org Admins and FAQs.

  • Mentors must be invited by OA's using the mentor's preferred Google account.
  • Mentors may be as young as 13. A special Parental Consent form (Mentor Participant) is required and will be sent to any 13-17 year old prospective mentor when they first register with your org. OA's must be 18 years or older.
  • Consider having multiple "instances" for some tasks (ex: you can have 20 of the same task available for students to work on, rather than making copies of the same task over and over again. This is a good strategy for beginner tasks.)
  • We strongly encourage you to have a minimum of 50 unique tasks comprising at least 100 task instances available on October 23rd, the start of the contest. The more tasks you have in your queue at the start of the contest, the easier your life will be for the next 7 weeks - trust us on this.
  • Be sure to have tasks in all 5 categories throughout the contest.
  • Tasks should range in difficulty from "I'm totally new and have no programming skills" to "I'm a comfortable programmer." Most participants will do easier tasks, but you'll be surprised by how many start easy and work their way towards harder ones.
  • You do not need to publish all of the tasks on the first day of the contest. We encourage you to publish more tasks every few days during the first few weeks of the contest when demand is particularly high. Fresh tasks help keep students interested!
  • In 2017, the average number of tasks completed per org was 650.

IMPORTANT- Things to keep in mind when creating your tasks- and information you can not ask for in tasks- this is very important.

  • Only Org Admins can publish tasks so you are ultimately responsible for what tasks are available for students. Mentors can create tasks but you (Org Admins) have to publish them (you can do bulk publishing, so don't worry).
  • Do not create any tasks that require students to supply personal information. For example, what country they live in, pictures of the student, hobbies, etc. This is personal information and can not be asked or required of students in any manner. If you are unsure about a task please reach out to gci-support@google.com and we can okay it or say it's not acceptable.
  • Tasks should have a specific tangible output. Code, graphics, documentation, tests, test verification, etc.
  • It is not a "task" to require someone to make an account, sign up for a mailing list, or follow you on social media. Some of those things are overhead, some of the others are blatant marketing and don't benefit the student. We understand that sometimes this kind of trivial task is used as a beginner / hook task, but you'll need to find other things that are not trivial and don't violate privacy concerns.
  • No tasks asking students to write blog posts about themselves. You can ask students to write a blog post about some kind of research related to your org, etc. but not a task asking them to write about their favorite tasks or why they are participating, etc.

Important Notes for your Org Profile page:

  • Your Org Profile page is currently viewable by anyone coming to the contest site and is editable throughout the contest.
  • Your Long Description is what the public will see - it should tell the students, parents, teachers, etc. what your org does in a clear, and concise way. This is the first, and often only thing, people will read about your org. Make sure it is interesting (without typos) and gives students a quick understanding of what type of work your org does, it essentially is the hook to get them to go and look at your tasks and community.

If you opted-in to the GCI-mentor email list, you should be receiving an invitation in the next few days to join the group. If you joined last year you are still on the list and do not need to rejoin.

New contest changes for 2018:

  • We have renamed the task category "User Interface" to "Design" - mostly for simplicity
  • Orgs will be reviewing the top 20 students when determining their winners and finalists
  • Orgs will be selecting 6 finalists (instead of 5), and 2 of those 6 finalists will be named winners for each org.
  • Students have to have their Parental Consent form reviewed by Google before they can claim their first task. This means students may grow impatient, particularly the students during the first week of the contest when our team is slammed reviewing thousands of forms in just a couple of days. But it is a requirement for us to continue to run this contest so it is what it is.

Veteran GCI Mentors and Org Admins have a wealth of knowledge around best practices and are always ready to help! You can use the gci-mentors list to reach them. The archives are also full of useful information.

You may also wish to read the "GCI Organization Advice" document written by Mentors from RTEMS, BRL-CAD, and others as well as the Deterring and Detecting Cheating thread from a couple of years ago to help you prep your mentors.

If you have any questions or find any bugs please reach out to us at gci-support@google.com.

We're looking forward to the biggest and best Google Code-in yet!