Is that 1600-1700 UTC (which is 0900-1000 PDT) or 1700-1800 (as listed)? That might be a very difficult time for me.

@srishakatux: It would be less confusing to use a standardized time zone (UTC) instead of a random local time zone that is only used 8 months a year. Thanks!

Was this discussed anywhere else first before deciding on this? I am
worried about having mandatory meetings on specific dates and times because
we have many students all in different timezones and with different
schedules.

(Just commenting on the hours, not in the opportunity of these meetings)

I usually create an event at timeanddate.com and then use the resulting link, which makes it very easy for everyone to check their local time. Another option that we have now is Phabricator's Calendar, which includes the possibility to import an event to whatever calendar application people use, of course in their own timezone.

Thanks @Qgil and @Aklapper for the suggestion! I will add it to the description.

@Mvolz Hi! I Ieft a note about it in the Zulip group chat a few weeks ago that this was coming. We have students from three different time zones (9 belonging to IST (Indian) + 1 to IST (Israel) and 1 to CDT). I mostly considered a time which may not be too late for everyone but yes I should have done a check-in with candidates first!! After I hear your thoughts, I will send participants a doodle poll for better scheduling.
About the 'mandatory' part, if we don't keep it that way, no one will show up and we will run into the same problem again. After having a chat with previous organization administrators, I came up with this idea of organizing weekly IRC check-ins. Do you have any suggestions for doing it better?

Doodle poll shared with all participants for the first meeting > https://beta.doodle.com/poll/d6sztgd4r3fm9bzs

First meeting is on Tuesday, June 20th, 2017, 17:00 UTC. Mentors and students have been notified.

Logs from first meeting are here

As a follow-up of this meeting, we created a Request for feedback & Social thread on the Zulip group gsoc17-outreachy14.

Overview of discussion points of this meeting are below:

• Introductions
• Brief summary of project candidates are working on
• Their aha moments or frustrations while coding to share with the group
• Current status of their project
• Their project goals for the first evaluation. On track?
• Q&A about the program timeline