Summertime in the northern hemisphere means it’s time for Google’s Summer of Code (GSoC). In this great program, Google pays students to work on various open source projects for 10 weeks. Drupal was once again selected to mentor students. Our 11 students are working on some pretty cool projects with 26 community mentors. The work began on May 23rd and the deadline for their projects is August 23rd. Drupalize.Me is proud to support these students by providing them with free memberships for the duration of the projects so they can dive right into Drupal 8.
Drupal has been involved with GSoC since its beginning in 2005. A number of long-term contributors started out in GSoC projects — probably the most well known example is Angie “webchick” Byron (you can even read her original project proposal). The program means students get real, paid, experience, and open source projects benefit not only by getting development work done, but also the chance to grow the community. If you'd like to follow along with the students' work over the coming months, check out the Google Summer of Code group.
There is a LOT of work that goes into running GSoC. Aside from the work for the students themselves, the volunteers who manage the project have to solicit, vet, and choose the projects, find and pair up mentors, and then of course, help the students get oriented and digging into the Drupal community. The mentors also devote their time and enthusiasm to help the students get off on the right foot, provide resources, and give them development guidance as they learn. I’d like to say a HUGE thank you to Google and the Drupal community volunteers who make this amazing program possible.
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