CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

The "conversation" on IRC yesterday about the FSF's idea for a Bitcoin payment processor a group of Stanford students are working on got me thinking about Google's Summer of Code program.  The Bitcoin processor is a really interesting project, but without much structure the students aren't making much progress.  GSoC provides that structure.

I've participated as a mentor for the GSoC program twice with Drupal and Creative Commons as the mentoring organizations.  It can be a really rewarding experience both for the student, the mentor, and the organization... but only financially rewarding to student and organization. 

Mentors are considered volunteers and don't get paid.  The Organization gets a small amount of $$, but students get a stipend of $5000 to work full time on their project for the summer.  That amount of $$ creates a pool of very talented students from all over the world.  Drupal has had several computer science PhD candidates as "students".

I don't think CiviCRM has ever applied to be a mentor organization, but those applications need to be completed between 3-14 February, 2014.  The application process is pretty boilerplate with the exception of "What is the URL for your Ideas list?".  That's what tripped Drupal up last year and resulted in the organization not being approved to accept submission from students approved to be part of GSoC.  Google vets the students, but they submit their own project ideas to organizations that may or may not be from the list the organization comes up with.  The key is that as a community, we need to put some time into coming up with a list of project ideas that 1) student could complete in a summer and 2) are interesting enough that Google thinks students would want to work on them.  These can't be grunt work/data entry type projects.  The goal is to challenge the student to do something new that will also benefit the organization/project.

The list of unfunded MIH projects is a good starting point, but ideally each idea would also have 2 developers willing to mentor the student through the project.  You can read more about what's required of the organization and the mentors here...

http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2014/help_page

Open source projects who'd like to participate in Google Summer of Code in 2014 should choose at least two organization administrators to represent them.

I'm willing to volunteer time to be one of those people.  I know how the GSoC works and can help navigate that process.  It would be great if someone more involved in CiviCRM was the other org admin who can help get existing mentoring organizations to vouch for CiviCRM...

Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here.

Are you an established or larger organization who would like to vouch for a new organization applying this year? If so, please list their name(s) here.

I'm happy to answer any questions I can about the GSoC program and what my experience has been like as a mentor.  I know there are a few former GSoC students lurking around CiviCRM who'd make great mentors. 

Is anyone else interested?

I wish I would have seen that thread last year.  As @xavier now knows, most of the work for the organization administrators happens well before the February deadline.  The project ideas needed a lot more work.  Basically as an organization, we need to show that if approved we'd actually be ready to mentor students on these projects. 

The Bitcoin project is already being done.  That was just an example of the type of project, but I started reworking it as if it was a GSoC proposal on the wiki (http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRM/Google+Summer+of+Code+-+2014).

This is what the list of project ideas looked like from a year Drupal was accepted looked like...

https://groups.drupal.org/node/138009

Basically as an organization, CiviCRM is applying to Google with this wiki.  It needs to show that we've put some thought and effort into these ideas and that we have a pool of potential mentors who are qualified and willing to help students with these projects.  This is the list students would actually review before submitting their project proposals back to the organization.

Students first apply to Google to be part of GSoC.  Only after being approved do the students submit proposals of there own with more details and a proposed timeline that that look like...

<a href="https://groups.drupal.org/node/222909">[GSoC Proposal] Translation Management Tools Server</a>
<a href="https://groups.drupal.org/node/222679">[GSoC proposal] Enhancing Feedback module (D7)</a>

Those GDO posts are actually pre-proposals.  Drupal suggested students submit to GDO for feedback before submitting through Google's system to have a better chance of being selected.   

As an organization, the mentors rate the actual student proposals.  Then Google allocates a specific number of slots to each organization using some secret algorithm/process based on the number of students who have proposed projects to the organization.  Students accepted into the GSoC program aren't tied to a specific organization.  CiviCRM would be competing for project proposals from the students.  Students can submit proposals to multiple organizations.  If multiple organizations rate their proposals highly, the student gets to choose which organization they want to work with. 

The ideas we're generating now may be completely ignored by students.  They are free propose something we never thought of, but if they do that the student would have to convince someone the organization considers a qualified mentor to sign on to the project.  Projects without mentors won't move forward.

It sounds like @xavier is in. 

Anyone else from the <a href="http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php/topic,23262.0.html">last year</a>?  @Erik Hommel, @donquixote, @petermcandrew, @mneimeyer?   

+1 @krenyen. It would be great to choose projects that would get some support/usage from well-known organizations, and I agree that we should maybe order the suggested projects so that the more interesting ones (like Bitcoin and Email Blast UI) come in at the top.

@xavier... It would be at the top of the list -- if someone gave it a better description.

The organisation applications for GSoC 2014 starts in a week. I am interested in applying with CiviCRM on UI improvements. The ideas wiki has some potential projects.

@xavier and others,  could you help me in taking this forward?

Count me in!