From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Anthony Sorace Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="Apple-Mail=_1B2B241E-D73E-4CD8-8C58-7980EA518D77"; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; micalg=pgp-sha1 Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2012 11:13:42 -0500 Message-Id: <28D367DF-E023-47AF-BC7A-1A09339EB2D1@9srv.net> To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net>, plan9-gsoc@googlegroups.com Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v1257) Subject: [9fans] GSoC 2012 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 6474e796-ead7-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 --Apple-Mail=_1B2B241E-D73E-4CD8-8C58-7980EA518D77 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Folks: The fine folks over at Google's Open Source Programs Office have announced the 2012 edition of Summer of Code. I intend to submit an application for Plan 9 to again participate. I'd like your help in making this year a success. We had one major problem last year. Between Google's decision to focus on bringing in a larger number of smaller organizations and our own group's tendency to be pretty hands-off on marketing, we got an abysmal showing in the student application process. We got very few applications (7, from memory), and only 3 of those (at best) were viable. We were given two slots for student projects. This is bad for a few reasons. Obviously it means we don't get as many people exposed to our code and our community, we don't get as much work done, and we don't have the opportunity to create new contributors, which is the fundamental point of GSoC. It also makes our numbers pretty vulnerable when, as happened last year, one student goes silent at midterms and never resurfaces. This year, I'd like to make an explicit call for help from our community in getting the word out. I know we have several members who're attached to higher education institutions; that's really the best route here. It's likely that your school provides several ways of getting this program in front of students; It'd be wonderful if you could look into those. I've spoken to a few of you individually, but I'm sure there are several more I'm not aware of. If you'd like help in terms of written text, presentation outlines, whatever, just let me know. There's a good collection of such things that folks have done for GSoC in the past, and I'm happy to point you at relevant ones of those or help you create more specific things. Just let me know what you need. A good place to start is the FAQ[0]. In the mean time, I'll be going through the wiki and giving it a good scrubbing, moving the 2011 pages out of the way and preparing for 2012. I'd encourage anyone who's got some free time to take a look at that, as well. And, of course, we'll need projects! Think about what would make a good summer-sized project for a student. And if you're at all interested in Plan 9's participation in GSoC, I'd suggest joining the Google group for the topic[1], where most of the discussion in the summer goes on. Aside from that one major issue, last year went well. I was able to get good feedback from a few people during the application process, mentors signed up without hassle, reviews of student applications were done well and promptly. I'd like to thank everyone who's participated so far, and I hope you'll sign up again once that's open. Anthony [0] = http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2012/f= aqs [1] http://groups.google.com/group/plan9-gsoc= --Apple-Mail=_1B2B241E-D73E-4CD8-8C58-7980EA518D77 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=signature.asc Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name=signature.asc Content-Description: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin) iEYEARECAAYFAk9Htz4ACgkQyrb52b5lrs7+PwCfTDJIBxeEIN2iB12r7kZSrSPA VWUAnRMXJvLAsS2IuW9sdQGsV3WBrVhn =ag4X -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Apple-Mail=_1B2B241E-D73E-4CD8-8C58-7980EA518D77--