A call out to all students: if you have ever thought it would be cool to write code and see it make a difference in the world then please keep reading. We are excited to announce the next editions of two programs designed to introduce students to open source software development, Google Summer of Code (for university students) and Google Code-in (for 13-17 year old students).
Google Summer of Code
Back in 2005, Google made a commitment to support open source software contributors. In addition to our other programs to build and support the contributor base, we thought a great way to increase awareness was to introduce the wide world of open source to college students. Google Summer of Code was born: match student developers from around the world with open source software organizations to work on a project while on break from their universities.
With over 8,300 mentors in 100 countries around the world, the 8,500 student developers have produced a stunning 50 million lines of code. The program will now be reaching its 10th instance in 2014.
We told you on the Official Google Blog just a few highlights of what we’ll be up to this year, and now we want to tell you all the details:
We’re pleased to be running a program that touches a lot of lives around the world, and we hope this will be a celebration of all the accomplishments we’ve seen from so many of our participants. Watch this blog for announcements about our travel and our efforts over the next year. Here’s to 10 Things!
- 10 visits to countries with high participation throughout the year.
- 10 developer events in promotion of the program.
- 10 mentors who have participated in Google Summer of Code will be featured on our open source blog.
- 10% additional student stipend (a total of $5500 for students who successfully complete the whole program).
- 10% more students than we’ve ever had participate in the program before.
- 10 more mentoring organizations than we’ve ever had in the program will be participating in Google Summer of Code 2014
- 10 year student reunion event will be held on Google’s Mountain View campus next year for all the students who have participated in the program.
- 10 year reunion mentor summit will be held on Google’s Mountain View campus for all our Google Summer of Code organization alumni.
- 10 students/organizations will be chosen to highlight their work at the Google booths at open source events throughout the year.
- 10 student projects from the past nine years will be highlighted on the open source blog and YouTube.
Google Code-in - Program starts for students November 18th
For the fourth consecutive year we are thrilled to announce Google Code-in, an international contest designed to introduce 13-17 year old pre-university students to the world of open source development. Open source projects are about more than just coding, and this contest highlights a variety of ways to contribute to open source projects. Every year, open source software is becoming more important around the globe; from government, healthcare, relief efforts, gaming, to large tech companies and everything in between.
When you read the term open source do you think:
If you’ve wondered about any of these questions and are a pre-university student (age 13-17) then we hope you will join in the fun and excitement of the Google Code-in contest starting Monday, November 18th.
- What is open source?
- What types of work do open source projects do?
- I’ve only taken one computer science class, can I contribute to an open source project?
- I’m not really into coding, what else can I do to contribute to open source?
- I’ve never participated in open source or an online contest before, can someone help guide me?
- Open source sounds cool, how can I get started?
For seven weeks from mid November to early January, the Google Code-in contest will have students working with 10 selected open source projects on a variety of tasks. These projects have all successfully served as mentoring organizations in previous Google Code-in contests or have worked with university students in our sister program, Google Summer of Code.
The different categories of tasks that students will be able to work on include:
Over the past 3 years we have had over 1200 students from 71 countries complete tasks in the contest. In April, we flew the 20 Google Code-in 2012 Grand Prize winners and a parent to Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters for a 5 day/4 night trip where they enjoyed talking with Google engineers, an awards ceremony, a Google campus tour, and a full day of fun in San Francisco.
- Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
- Documentation/Training: Tasks related to creating/editing documents and helping others learn more
- Outreach/research: Tasks related to community management, outreach/marketing, or studying problems and recommending solutions
- Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
- User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction
Visit the Frequently Asked Questions page on the Google Code-in 2013 site for more details on how to sign up and participate. And please help us spread the word to your friends around the globe! If you are a teacher that would like to encourage your students to participate, please send an email to our team at ospoteam@gmail.com. We would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Stay tuned to the contest site and subscribe to our mailing list for more updates on the contest. We will announce the 10 open source organizations that will be participating in the contest on November 1. The Google Code-in contest starts for students on November 18, 2013. We look forward to welcoming hundreds of students from around the world into the open source family again this year.We hope you will help us spread the word about these two programs to all the pre-university and university students in your life. Stay tuned to this blog for more announcements in the coming weeks about both programs.
By Carol Smith and Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs
