google summer of code

Ha. After talking to aspilicious tonight about Google Summer of Code (note: still one day left to propose a project!), I dug around in my old e-mail archives tonight and came across my original GSoC proposal from 2005.

I just saw this float past the stream in #drupal...

A couple weeks ago, Amber Gillies had asked if she could interview me about Google Summer of Code and my experiences in the Drupal project as part of the piece, Open source technology is hungry for new college grads. Yeah... just *try* to get me to shut up about how awesome GSoC and Drupal are. :D She did a very good job of turning my firehose of an e-mail into coherent sentences. ;)

Edit: Holy crap, this has been Slashdotted, too.

In case word hasn't reached you yet for some reason, Summer of Code 2008 is a go, and this is the week for college/university students to submit applications to work on projects for their mentoring organization of choice over the summer. Our hope is of course that a whole bunch will choose Drupal, which is an awesome, knowledgeable, and fun community to be a part of, and very supportive of SoC students (I know, because I was one myself back in 2005! :D).

As part of my duties for the Drupal Association, I help to administer initiatives that help bring in new contributors, like Drupal's involvement in Google Summer of Code. A huge thanks to the admin team -- chx, cwgordon7, and dmitrig01 -- for their tremendous efforts in getting the program kick-started!

We're trying something new this year that we haven't done in years past: public community review of student ideas and proposals, prior to their submission as formal applications for Summer of Code. There are multiple reasons why we chose to "beta test" this approach, which I will detail after the break.

However, for those who want to help bring new contributors to the Drupal project, and have a hand in deciding what new awesome projects get funded over the summer with Google's multi-thousand dollar investment, please jump in and help review some student proposals! The absolute deadline for student applications is Monday, March 31, 2008 at 17:00 PDT, so it's imperative that students get their questions answered and their proposals reviewed and refined as soon as possible so they have ample time to get their applications in.