On the 9th of March, Google Summer of Code™ veterans Vincent Verhoeven (student for both KDE and Thousand Parsec), Ruben Vermeersch (K.U. Leuven researcher and GNOME Google Summer of Code admin) and Bram Luyten (@mire co-founder and mentor for DSpace) gave a presentation about the Google Summer of Code 2010 program to an audience of interested students.
The Google Summer of Code schedule is quite challenging for Belgian students because of the large overlaps between the program and their examinations. However, the presenters made it clear that with careful planning in the application, and transparent communication with mentors, successful participation is definitely possible. As an added bonus, if students can find a mentor in a company, participation in Google Summer of Code can be counted as an internship for some of the master's programs at K.U. Leuvens, which adds even more value on top of the stipends.
For many of the attending students, it sounded too good to be true, as we saw true stares of disbelief when the stipend of 5000 USD in exchange for a few months of programming was announced. Vincent's testimonials of his experiences as a student for the KDE and Thousand Parsec projects, and Ruben's recruiting talk for GNOME "Become the Next GNOME Rockstar," convinced them in the end.
The slides, a recording of the event (in Dutch) and additional information is available.
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