Meet Your Mentors: Announcing Accepted Project for Our Sixth Google Summer of Code

We've just announced the list of accepted mentoring organizations for Google Summer of Code™ 2010. Congratulations to all of our future mentors!

After reviewing just over 365 applications, we finally narrowed our selection to 150 Free and Open Source projects. The accepted projects are now busy adding details about their participation in Google Summer of Code to the program website, but you can already take a look at the list of accepted projects and their Ideas Lists.

As with every year, we had to make some very tough decisions in 2010. We simply weren’t able to accept every great project that applies. Once again, we are also bidding fond farewell to some past participants in favor of bringing new projects into the program. We greatly appreciate everything they have contributed to the program in past years and hope they will remain actively involved in our community. We want to thank everyone for their applications and would encourage those who were not accepted to apply for future instances of the program.

What Happens Now?

No doubt many would-be Google Summer of Code students are wondering what their next steps should be. You'll have about 1.5 weeks to learn about each participating organization before student applications open on March 29, 2010. Use this time to meet your potential mentors and to discuss how you'd like to contribute to their organization, especially your ideas for improving their code base. Keep on eye on the program mailing lists, as we'll post notes about additional resources for learning about our mentoring organizations there.

Most organizations have provided individual points of contact for each project suggestion, and you can always propose ideas and look for guidance on project mailing lists or forums, as well as on IRC. You can also look for your potential mentors in the program IRC channel, #gsoc on Freenode.

Remember, some of our most successful proposals come from ideas suggested by the students themselves, so take advantage of this time to explore what areas of development most excite you. You can then find people to help you brainstorm about your initial thoughts and further refine them. Don't be nervous about how your ideas will be received; take some time to think through what you'd like to accomplish, propose a plan of action, then work with your potential mentors to iterate, iterate, iterate.

Congratulations to all of our future mentors! We look forward to working with all of you this year, and to working with many of you once again.

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team