Google Code-in 2014: all wrapped up

Google Code-in 2014 (GCI) is in the books! This has been an exciting year for GCI: we celebrated the fifth anniversary of the contest and experienced our largest student participation to date.

Congratulations to all of the students who had their first experience with open source software development during GCI 2014. Over the last seven weeks, 667* students from 54 countries completed 3,260* tasks in the contest.

We had 12 open source organizations dedicated to teaching teens about open source and their communities participate this year. These organizations created almost 4,000 tasks for students to choose from in the following categories: coding, user interface, documentation, training, research, outreach, and quality assurance. Some of the tasks students completed in the contest include: writing small pieces of code, creating tutorials, redesigning landing pages, optimizing social media accounts, creating new plugins, finding and fixing bugs, creating webcasts on accessibility testing, and building test cases.

GCI gives students the opportunity to put the skills they have been learning in the classroom to use on real software projects while also learning how to communicate effectively with people from all around the world by participating in these open source communities. The collaboration aspect of GCI is the key to the success of the program and the real benefit to the students. During the course of the contest, they learn that open source software projects are a true team effort and there are many ways that you can contribute to a community.

Stay tuned: we will announce the 24 Grand Prize Winners for the GCI 2014 contest here on February 2nd. Currently the mentors are busy reviewing the final work submitted by students, and then each of the 12 organizations will decide on their five finalists (who will all receive a special finalist sweatshirt). Of those five finalists, two students will be named the Grand Prize winners for each organization. Each Grand Prize winner and a parent will receive a 4 day trip to Google’s California headquarters this June where they will meet Google engineers, take part in an awards ceremony, and enjoy a fun-filled day of adventure in San Francisco.

GCI would not be possible without the heart of the program: the GCI mentors and organization administrators. These mentors and org admins spend countless hours creating and reviewing hundreds of tasks while also teaching students about all facets of open source development: community standards, new and exciting technologies, code reviews, version control systems, IRC, and everything in between. They are volunteers who are passionate about introducing teens to their open source communities and their reward is seeing the light go on in a student when they become excited about open source software development. A HUGE thank you to all of these mentors and org admins who make this program a success!

In the coming weeks we will share some statistics from this year’s program as well as posts about some of the extraordinary work students completed during Google Code-in 2014.

Congratulations Students, Mentors, and Organization Administrators on a job well done!

* The final evaluations are currently being graded; these numbers could increase in the next few days.

By Stephanie Taylor, Google Code-in Program Manager

In the thick of things with Google Code-in

Over the past three and a half weeks, teenagers from over 50 countries have been busy completing tasks in the Google Code-in 2014 (GCI) contest.  511 students have already successfully completed 1,985 tasks with the 12 open source organizations mentoring students this year!

Some of the tasks students have completed include: automating and optimizing social media accounts, writing test suites, improving mobile UI, designing website landing pages, creating training slides, working on internationalization efforts and fixing and finding bugs in the organizations’ software.

2,391 students from 86 countries have already registered for the contest. A big welcome to the students from the 21 countries participating for the first time in GCI: American Samoa, Antigua and Barbuda, Azerbaijan, Brunei, Burma, Chile, Ethiopia, Gambia, Georgia, Guatemala, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritius, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Suriname, and Taiwan! We look forward to seeing many of these students completing tasks over the next few weeks.

The countries with the most students completing tasks so far are:
United States - 141
India - 113
Bulgaria - 44
Singapore - 19
United Kingdom - 19

Students, there is still plenty of time to get involved with Google Code-in to earn certificates of completion and a Google Code-in 2014 t-shirt. New tasks are being added daily to the contest site so if you don’t see something that grabs your interest today, check back again every couple of days. Currently over 1,500 tasks are open for students to choose from.

The last day to register for the contest and claim a task is Sunday, January 18, 2015 with all work being due on Monday, January 19, 2015 at 9:00 am PT.

Thank you to all of the mentors and organization administrators who have volunteered to help students during the seven week contest. We couldn’t do this without all of their hard work and dedication to teaching students about open source software development.

Good luck to all of the students participating this year!

By Stephanie Taylor, Google Code-in Program Manager

Google Code-in: sixteen and counting

Today we have a guest post from Chirayu Desai, one of the twenty amazing teenagers from around the globe who took top honors in Google Code-in 2013. Read more about Chirayu and his introduction into the world of open source software below.

If I told you a 16 year-old kid could work on software which runs on millions of devices, contribute to an operating system which is present on more than a billion devices, and work on code that goes into spacecraft, would you believe it?

Believe it! I am that very 16 year-old writing this blog post three months after visiting the Googleplex in California (a long-time dream) as one of the 20 grand prize winners of Google Code-in 2013 (GCI). Check me out on a Segway! I’m the one on the right.

I first read about GCI online, and I immediately decided to participate. I felt that it was the perfect opportunity for me to not only get involved in an open source project but also get to know new people. I chose RTEMS because I liked their hello world task — it involved setting up a development environment for RTEMS, compiling a test program, and running it in a simulator.

So what is involved when completing tasks for GCI? It isn’t just about writing code, but also really understanding the code and contributing back to it. While working with an open source organization, you have to ensure that the code quality meets the project’s guidelines.  The code must be as accurate and efficient as possible — no quick hacks here.

As an open source contributor, I worked with version control systems (they’re awesome, really), mailing lists (old school, but still effective) and code review systems. I then got feedback from my mentors, applied it, rinsed and repeated. The exciting part wasn’t just the coding process, but everything associated with working on such a project. I wrote the code, wrote tests for the code, read and closed bug reports, collaborated with other people, etc. It’s much more in depth than what I would experience with a personal project and I learned a ton!

As a high school student you may have worked on a personal project in your spare time, or maybe you even know a few coding languages. But I believe working with open source projects and participating in GCI gives you much more. I now know that when I get a job one day, I won’t just have to write code, I’ll also have to get it reviewed, and review other people’s code. This is not something you learn by working on personal projects, but by working collaboratively — something I practiced and refined by participating in GCI. In addition, the mentors assigned to help students were very supportive would help us students with everything that we needed which was really encouraging.

I really enjoyed participating in the contest. Even though I had worked on open source software before, my Google Code-in experience was completely different from anything I’d ever done. Flying halfway across the world and getting to meet the people with whom I had worked was something I didn’t imagine would ever happen. Every 13-17 year old pre-university student has the opportunity to participate in GCI, you just need to take that first step. Then you too can be a part of something that could change your life — I know it changed mine.

By Chirayu Desai, Google Code-in Grand Prize Winner, 2013

Are you interested in participating in Google Code-in this year? Keep an eye on the program website for important dates and information.

KDE shines with help from Google Code-in students

Google Code-in (GCI) is a contest that helps encourage teens (13-17 year olds to be exact) to participate in the wide world of open source development. KDE, an organization that focuses on the development and distribution of free and open source software for desktop and portable computing, has been a proud GCI mentoring organization for the last four years. Dennis Nienhüser, one of KDE’s mentors, discusses his experience with the program below.

How does one become a contributor to Open Source? Some start with the wish to fix that certain annoying bug in their favorite software. Others want to extend it by adding a new feature. However one arrives, the path to completing a seemingly easy task is often not clear. Where's the source for that button? How do I make my changes take effect in the software? Finding the right path can be a frustrating journey many are not willing to endure. Google Code-in (GCI) aims to help out; pairing prospective teen contributors with mentors from established open source organizations ultimately builds a path to successful contributions.

To increase motivation, GCI is organized as a contest. Pre-university students 13-17 years old from all over the world can choose from a large pool of code, documentation, research, quality assurance and user interface tasks. The pool is created by the mentors of the participating open source organizations who continue to add to it throughout the contest. A task is a set of work in one of the above five categories that can be completed in a short time, taking approximately a few hours to a day to complete. In addition to self-contained tasks, task series are also created where similar work is split into several tasks or related work is split into sequential tasks. This way all sorts of work can be converted into manageable pieces for open source newbies.

However, GCI is not meant to be a way of distributing work. It’s more of an ongoing communicative event — students and mentors exchange ideas, collaborate, and task after task gets closed. The core of the contest involves choosing a task (or several tasks) and completing it during the seven week contest. Afterwards, the number of successfully completed tasks is summed up. One completed task earns the student a certificate. Three or more qualifies the person for a groovy t-shirt certain to make their friends jealous. Students who are among the 20 top performers win a trip to Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California.

A successful GCI for a student means finishing tasks -- fortunately they're fun to work on. Maybe even addicting! Why else would someone work on tasks from dusk till dawn? Our industrious students added documentation videos for all sorts of KWin effects, updated KGeography to show recent changes, and polished KStars features. A new touch typing course for the US English keyboard layout and keyboard layout files for more languages were created for KTouch. Python support of KDevelop was extended in a series of tasks, and Amarok got several new testers to verify bugs. The Trojitá email client got a couple of usability improvements. All sorts of new features found their way into Marble, among them are extensions of KML support, polishing of the new Cloud integration and initial support for tours. Inner and outer planets of the Solar System are now shown as well as the Moon with its phases. There were 115 Marble GCI tasks alone, a considerable portion of the 259 total closed tasks for KDE. At the end of the contest Mikhail Ivchenko from Russia and Benjamin Kaiser from Australia each completed over 40 tasks and were selected as KDE’s two grand prize winners, earning them a trip to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.

A big thanks to all of our hard working students and mentors.  We are hopeful KDE will be able to participate in GCI again later this year!

By Dennis Nienhüser, KDE Mentor

Are you interested in participating in Google Code-in this year? Keep an eye on the program website for important dates and information.

My Google Code-in grand prize trip

Today’s post comes from Mateusz Maćkowski, one of the 20 grand prize winners of Google Code-in, an open source programming contest for 13-17 year old students. Mateusz came all the way from Poland to California for the trip and details the four days of technical presentations and fun activities the winners took part in.

The Beginning
I first found out that I was a grand prize winner for Google Code-in 2013 (GCI) for the Wikimedia Foundation in the middle of January, about a week after the contest ended. I then had three months for my excitement to build before my trip in April to the United States to meet the other 19 Grand Prize Winners and a mentor from each of the 10 participating open source organizations.

Day 1
The opening meet and greet dinner started the festivities and as we entered the room, we were greeted by Stephanie Taylor, Cat Allman and Mary Radomile, three of the four members of the Google Open Source Programs team responsible for organizing and preparing the contest and trip.

After spending about an hour eating and chatting with other Grand Prize Winners, their family members, and our mentors we received backpacks full of goodies (t-shirts, stickers, notebooks, a jacket, etc.) followed by a short icebreaker game. Each student received a list of personality traits or talents (such as “Can paint”, “Has a dog”, “Can speak fluently three or more languages”, etc.).  We each had to find another person who matched the particular description. It was a great way to interact with each of the other students. The winners were the two people who were able to match the largest number of people. After the game, we received more swag, and – a huge surprise to most in the room – Samsung Chromebooks!

Day 2
The next day all 50 of us piled onto a large bus in San Francisco heading to the Googleplex in Mountain View, California. When we arrived in Mountain View we cruised around the various buildings of the Google Campus before settling into our large event room for the day.

We started with a brief presentation from Stephanie on various information and statistics about GCI. After that we had our awards ceremony where Chris DiBona, Director of Social Impact and Open Source at Google, gave us each of our awards. Our mentors then presented each of us with a plaque for our achievements. We took tons of individual photos and group shots (just a few of the many to come) and then headed to lunch.

Google employees from all parts of the company and from each of the countries represented by the Grand Prize Winners joined us for lunch.  It was great to be able to talk one-on-one with a Polish Googler about their experiences in Silicon Valley. After lunch another Googler spoke about the famous Google self-driving car project.

Next up was a tour of the Google campus. The tour included some of the most recognizable places at the Googleplex, including the Android statues representing each of the Android releases. As you can see, it was a perfect spot for group and individual photos.

After the tour concluded several more Googlers gave talks about their products and services — Google Giving, Google Maps, Chrome and the open source project Samba. The last Googler talking that day was a contributor to Melange, the open source software that Google Summer of Code and Google Code-in is run on. He is a past Google Summer of Code student and has been an active contributor to Melange for several years.  

Day 3 – “San Francisco Fun Day”
We spent our third day touring San Francisco. We had the choice between two tours: a Segway tour, or a visit to Alcatraz. I chose the Segway and couldn’t have been more excited. For me, it was one of the best parts of the whole Grand Prize trip.

After the Segway tour it was time to visit the California Academy of Sciences, which is one of the largest natural history museums in the United States.

The last event of the day was a surprise — all we knew was that we’d go on an “adventure”. What an adventure and nice surprise it was! We took a yacht tour in San Francisco Bay under the Golden Gate Bridge and around Angel Island. We spent the evening talking with other students, mentors and several Google employees. Day 3 was just as cool as the previous one.

Day 4
The last day of the 2013 GCI Grand Prize trip took place at the Google office in San Francisco. It was a nice and easy walk from our hotel to the office along San Francisco’s Embarcadero which is a large walkway along the waterfront. There was a breakfast buffet waiting for us, and because it was Google, the choices were, to say the least, significant. During and after the breakfast we listened to Google speakers who talked about Google Summer of Code and the Go programming language.

We then had a short tour of the San Francisco office where we could see beautiful views of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge.

After a few additional speakers, it was finally time for what I was anticipating most — the mentors from each of the 10 GCI open source organizations gave short lightning talks (3-5 minutes) about their projects and the work the GCI students accomplished during the 2013 contest

Finally it was time to return home. Below is an image of human misery — flying away from San Francisco at night seen from the airplane window…

When people ask me about the trip my response is usually “It was fantastic until I had to return!” My final words? Participate in Google Code-in! A friend told me that I shouldn’t really care about winning, because the number of people participating is so high that I wouldn’t stand a chance. When I later told him that I was chosen as a winner, his face was “priceless”. Even if you don’t end up on the Grand Prize Trip, it is definitely still worth the time and effort. It was a great experience for me to be able to create software that is actually used by MediaWiki users from around the world as a teenager.

By Mateusz Mackowski, GCI Grand Prize Winner for Wikimedia

Google Code-In 2013: RTEMS project report

Today's post comes from RTEMS, an open source Real Time Operating System that supports a variety of open standard API’s. They have participated as a Google Code-in mentoring organization for the past 7 years.

Between November and early January, the RTEMS Project participated as one of ten mentoring organizations in the Google Code-in (GCI), a contest for pre-university students that encourages the involvement of students age 13-17 in open source communities.

During the seven week time-frame for GCI, RTEMS Project had 39 students complete 265 tasks under the tutelage of 15 mentors. That is an average of over five tasks per day! Many new students to RTEMS completed the Getting Started with RTEMS task, which provided both useful feedback about new users interested in working with RTEMS and prepared the students for hands-on programming work with our systems. We are proud of the efforts and accomplishments of all the students and grateful to the Google Open Source Programs Office, our mentors, organization administrators, and the open source community that helped support them along the way.

Below are descriptions of some of the more notable accomplishments that the students achieved in each of the five task categories: Code, Documentation/Training, Outreach/Research, Quality Assurance, and User Interface.

Code

• C99 “restrict” keyword added to Newlib C Library for POSIX conformance.
• Ported the Rhealstone Benchmark to RTEMS, now available in testsuites/rhealstone.
• Refactored over a dozen BSPs to conform to guidelines determined by Vipul Nayyar’s GSoC 2013 project.
• Refactored portions of the monolithic sp09 test case into new, finer-grained tests.
• Created or fixed 9 POSIX timing tests.

Documentation / Training

• Determined guidance for doxygen use in BSPs and added doxygen comments to about 40 BSPs.
• Fixed documentation in the RTEMS POSIX user manual and in multiple test cases.

Outreach / Research

• Created 2 video tutorials for Getting Started with RTEMS.
• Updated the RTEMS wiki page up to date for the first time in six years (using references from Google Scholar).

Quality Assurance

• Investigated and/or fixed over 20 bugs in the RTEMS Bugzilla.
• User Interface
• Updated the rtems-graphics-toolkit repository and fixed some bugs.

Thanks again to everyone involved in making GCI 2013 a successful one for RTEMS Project.

By Gedare Bloom, RTEMS Project Org Admin

Google Code-in and Haiku: four years strong

Google Code-in wrapped up in January and the 20 Grand Prize Winners have been announced. Haiku, a veteran GCI organization, is here to talk about their experience and history of participating in GCI. 

This was the fourth year of Google Code-in, and the fourth for Haiku to participate as a mentoring organization for students. This contest came at a good point this year for Haiku as our package management merge happened just a few weeks prior to the start of the contest and thus gave us plenty of ideas for tasks. Nearly half of our tasks were somehow related to writing recipes for packages to be built into .hpkg files. We also opened our Coverity scan results for students to try their hand at fixing some of those issues for the first time. Along with these tasks, there were several others which ranged from fixing specific bugs from Haiku's Trac tickets, to writing new programs. Examples include a blogging program and a spider solitaire game, and even a few projects for artistic students who created a new flyer and some new icons.

This year we had five students who completed 20 or more tasks, more than any of our students completed during GCI 2012. We had 42 students who completed a total of 245 tasks for Haiku which is more than have been completed in any previous year for Haiku, so it was a very good year for us. Of the 42 students, 19 of them completed three or more tasks which qualified them to receive a Google Code-in 2013 t-shirt.

I'd like to thank the 19 Haiku mentors, which included three former Google Code-in students, and all 42 students who completed at least one task for Haiku this year. Also a special thanks to those who were on IRC to help handle the flood of students during the contest, for their patience in answering all the questions that the students were asking. It was another very productive (and fun!) Code-in.

By Scott McCreary, Org Admin for Haiku

Google Code-in 2013: Numbers, Numbers, Numbers

In January, Google Code-in, our contest introducing 13-17 year olds to open source software development, finished up with really exciting results.

We had 337 students from 46 countries complete an astounding 2,113 tasks in the seven week contest. Students worked with 10 open source organizations on coding, documentation, training, user interface, research, outreach tasks, and quality assurance tasks. 60.2% of students completed at least three tasks in the contest.

Countries
The countries with the most students completing tasks are shown in the pie chart below:

This year there were six countries who for the first time had students complete tasks in Google Code-in:  Bangladesh, Ecuador, Greece, Hong Kong, Lebanon and Pakistan.

Pre-university/high schools
The five schools with the most students completing tasks in Google Code-in 2013 are:

• Dunman High School in Singapore took the top spot this year with 20 students participating in this year’s contest, up from 13 in 2012.
• Technical School Electronic Systems (associated with Technical University- Sofia) in Bulgaria was in the top five for the 4th year in a row with 18 students.
• Sacred Heart Convent Sr. Sec. School, Jagadhri - India - 7
• Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology - Virginia, USA - 5
• Freehold High School - New Jersey, USA  - 4

Age of Students
The graph below depicts the ages of the students participating in this year’s contest.

Mentors
There were 194 dedicated mentors from 40 countries guiding students throughout the contest. This year we had mentors from a few new countries including Egypt, Jamaica and Liberia.

More interesting stats

• 67 students participated in at least one previous Google Code-in contest
• 9.5% of the students are female
• We had 11 grand prize winners this year range that were 15 or younger at the start of the contest
• Wikimedia and Apertium both had a whopping 273 tasks completed by students

A huge thank you to all of the students, mentors and organization administrators who made Google Code-in 2013 a success! And thank you to all the parents and teachers who encouraged students to learn more about open source software development.

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs Office

Google Code-in update: halfway through the contest

Today marks the halfway point for Google Code-in 2013, a contest for 13-17 year old pre-university students interested in learning more about open source software development. There is still plenty of time for students to compete in the contest, 3.5 weeks to be exact.

Students will earn a certificate by completing one task in the contest and can earn a Google Code-in 2013 t-shirt when they complete 3 tasks. Many students are also working very hard for a chance at one of the 20 grand prize trips to Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters next April.

During the contest students work on tasks in categories like coding, documentation, quality assurance, outreach, research, training and user interface.  Each of these tasks is assigned a mentor who can help the student if they have questions while completing the task.

Google Code-in is a great way for students to use the skills they have been learning in the classroom and apply them to a real open source software project.

Google Code-in 2013 statistics at the halfway point of the contest:

• 1,085 tasks have been completed with the 10 open source organizations thus far
• 266 students from 43 countries have completed at least one task in the contest
• Countries with the most students completing tasks so far are:

United States - 86
India - 39
Romania - 18
Singapore - 16
Germany - 10

• Over 2,300 students have registered for the contest from 89 countries
• There are 11 new countries to add to the list of registered students for Google Code-in: Anguilla, Armenia, Cambodia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Kyrgyz Republic, Lebanon, Mauritius, Panama, Swaziland and the US Virgin Islands.

For contest rules, frequently asked questions and the timeline you can visit the contest site. We encourage students to continue checking the Google Code-in 2013 list of available tasks as new tasks are being added daily for students to work on. The last day to register for the contest and claim a task is Sunday, January 5, 2014 at 17:00 UTC.

Students can join the group discussion list for answers to general questions about the contest from other students, mentors and Google Code-in program administrators.

Good luck students, keep up the awesome work!

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Google Code-in: a student perspective

We have a guest post from former Google Code-in student, David Li, discussing his inspiring Google Code-in experience.  Enjoy.

Panic. Confusion. Bewilderment.

Scrolling down the infinite list of tasks, my face shifted from a merely quizzical expression to one of befuddlement as I saw task after task involving C, Perl, or some other knowledge that I did not understand. 

And then I saw SymPy. Hey, that's written in Python, right? 

For me, Google Code-in was an easy way to get involved in real programming - in writing code that other people would use - as a high school student. The competitive nature of the program naturally held my interest, and the mentors were perfect for novices like me, as I began knowing barely git commit and git status. And even though I still couldn't handle many of the tasks - "Implement ODE solvers", with my two months of calculus was rather intimidating to see listed - I found a niche that I could contribute to.  

My first tasks were not that exciting: formatting docstrings and cleaning up warnings and then I moved on to Sympy's website. I felt much more confident with HTML than with Python and found that I enjoyed these tasks the most. Other students and I fixed bugs, implemented a mobile website, and most noticeably, redesigned the theme of the site. I was proud of our contributions. 

After the competition concluded I felt that we had unfinished work left. SymPy Live had bugs and the mobile interface we wrote was rather unpolished. Naturally, I couldn't let those bugs stand, especially after having put in so much effort implementing some of those features in the first place...and so I submitted another pull request. And then another. SymPy's developers didn't have the time to focus on their websites, so I began to maintain them, fixing bugs and adding features. 

While digging through SymPy's repositories, I found an abandoned website - SymPy Gamma. The site had had no updates in years. But its premise interested me - an open source Wolfram|Alpha competitor - and I began to dream up and implement new features: basic plotting, a new design, steps for differentiation. By now open source had become my hobby, more so than just programming for its own sake had been; I could contribute to and work with a community, and that was rewarding beyond the task of simply writing code. 

I am glad Google offered this opportunity to get involved in open source. I learned more about software development than any school could have taught, and I was introduced to a welcoming community, one that appreciated any contribution made. I hope that the users of the myriad projects of Google Code-in enjoyed the improvements that we, the students, made, and I hope other students take the opportunity to involve themselves with open source communities. 

By David Li, former Google Code-in 2011 student and current Sympy contributor

Google Code-in 2013 just started last week and will continue until January 6, 2014. Interested pre-university students (13-17 years old) can register at google-melange.com and start earning prizes. Good luck students!

From your CS class to the real world: a deep dive into open source

Cross posted from the Official Google Blog

Today marks the start of Google Code-in, a global online contest for pre-university students (13-17 years old) interested in learning more about open source software. Participating students have an opportunity to work on real world software projects and earn cool prizes for their effort.

For the next seven weeks students from around the world will be able to choose from an extensive list of tasks created by 10 open source projects. Some tasks require coding in a variety of programming languages, creating documentation, doing marketing outreach or working on user interfaces.

Participants earn points for each task they successfully complete to win T-shirts and certificates. At the end of the contest, 20 students will be selected as grand prize winners and flown to Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters. Winners will receive a trip to San Francisco, a tour of the Googleplex and a chance to meet with Google engineers.

Google Code-in 2012 grand prize winners at the Googleplex with a self driving car

More than 1,200 students from 71 countries and 730 schools have participated in Google Code-in over the past three years. Last year, our 20 grand prize winners came from 12 countries on five continents!

We hope this year’s participants will enjoy learning about open source development while building their technical skills and making an impact on these organizations. Please review our program site for contest rules, frequently asked questions and to get started!

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Google Code-in 2013 and Google Summer of Code 2014 are on

At Google we are passionate about introducing students from around the world to open source software development. Since 2005, Google has worked with over 10,000 students and over 440 open source projects in a variety of fields to create more code for the masses.

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:  

1. 10 visits to countries with high participation throughout the year.
2. 10 developer events in promotion of the program. 
3. 10 mentors who have participated in Google Summer of Code will be featured on our open source blog.
4. 10% additional student stipend (a total of $5500 for students who successfully complete the whole program).
5. 10% more students than we’ve ever had participate in the program before.
6. 10 more mentoring organizations than we’ve ever had in the program will be participating in Google Summer of Code 2014
7. 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. 
8. 10 year reunion mentor summit will be held on Google’s Mountain View campus for all our Google Summer of Code organization alumni.
9. 10 students/organizations will be chosen to highlight their work at the Google booths at open source events throughout the year.
10. 10 student projects from the past nine years will be highlighted on the open source blog and YouTube.

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! 

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:

• 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?

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. 

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:

1. Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
2. Documentation/Training: Tasks related to creating/editing documents and helping others learn more
3. Outreach/research: Tasks related to community management, outreach/marketing, or studying problems and recommending solutions
4. Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
5. User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

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. 

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 [email protected]. 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

Google Code-in Grand Prize Winners visit Google

In late April, the Google Open Source Programs Office hosted the 20 grand prize winners of the Google Code-in (GCI) 2012 contest. From November 2012 - January 2013, 334 students from 36 countries completed coding, documentation, user interface, quality assurance, research, outreach and training tasks for ten open source organizations. At the conclusion of the contest, the 10 open source organizations each chose two students as their grand prize winners based on the student’s comprehensive body of work.

The 20 grand prize winners received a five day trip for themselves and a parent to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. These students traveled from 12 countries (Argentina, Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, China, India, Ireland, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Uruguay and the midwestern and eastern USA) to enjoy some northern California hospitality.

Grand Prize Winners in front of Android statues at Google

Day 1: Meet and Greet Dinner Party

The first event of the trip, a meet and greet party at our hotel near Google’s campus, was designed to break the ice and get the students talking to one another and to shake off a bit of their jet lag. With two students from each of the organizations the students had already virtually ‘met’ at least one other student before they arrived in California. Students immediately started sitting around the tables and introducing themselves while enjoying a variety of appetizers. We handed out the first batch of swag items and enjoyed an ice cream cake before heading off to catch some sleep before a full day at the Googleplex.

Day 2: Googleplex

The morning started with a short introduction about the Google Code-in program (for the parents) and the distribution of some Google Code-in attire for the students. Students were excited to get started with the day to hear from a variety of Google engineers and to have the opportunity to ask them questions.

Next, Chris DiBona, Director of Open Source Programs at Google, talked about the history of open source at Google and how the GCI program started. Chris then led the award ceremony where he distributed plaques to the winners and posed for pictures with the students. We had two students who were Grand Prize Winners in previous Google Code-in programs who were back for their second trip to the Googleplex. Chris wrapped up by answering questions the group had about Google in general.

Students were then treated to an interactive tutorial by Jeremy Allison on how to design a file server. Justin Mattson gave a talk about life as an engineer at Google and what it is like working on the Android team. We then broke for lunch at the nearest Google cafe where Googlers from many of the student’s home countries sat with the students to chat with them over lunch.

Students in front of self-driving car

After lunch students were treated to a short video and a talk by Dmitri Dolgov about Google’s self-driving cars, complete with a trip to the parking lot where the group could see a self driving car in person, posing for some pretty cool pictures. 

Next up, Nathaniel Manista talked to the students about physical spaces that foster creativity and life as an engineer. Then Mark Diaz discussed Google life and working as a Field Tech at Google. Shawn Pearce wrapped up the afternoon with a chat about Git and Gerrit Code Review.

And next, one of the activities students had been waiting all day for — a tour of the Googleplex. The tour isn’t complete without a stop at the awesome Android statues depicting all of the Android releases, where the students and parents posed for a slew of pictures.

Grand Prize Winners and Parents at Google

After a walk in the fresh spring air around the main campus at Google, the students settled in for Grant Grundler’s talk about Chromium. Sudhakar Chandra chatted about the internationalization (i18n) efforts at Google, a perfect fit with this group speaking so many different languages.  

The final talks of the day were from Google Open Source Programs team members, Carol Smith and Mary Radomile. Carol talked about the Google Summer of Code program, our program for university students (18 years and older) where students spend an entire summer writing code for an open source project. The program is a natural next step for these students and, in fact, we have one Google Code-in Grand Prize winner who was recently accepted as a student for Google Summer of Code 2013. Mary Radomile wrapped up the talks at Google with answers to some general internship questions that students had been inquiring about.

Students went shopping at the onsite Google store then after a hearty dinner at Google everyone boarded the bus to San Francisco to get a good night’s sleep before a very full day 3.

Day 3: San Francisco Fun Day

Students in front of cable cars

The busiest day of our trip started off early with a third of the group boarding the ferry to Alcatraz for a self guided tour of the historic San Francisco prison and the other two thirds of the group heading off on segway tours of the Fisherman’s Wharf and North Beach neighborhoods of San Francisco.

After our morning adventures the group met up for a picnic lunch in Aquatic Park by Ghirardelli Square where we then boarded 2 motorized cable cars (we couldn’t all fit on one) for a tour of all of the highlights of San Francisco, including stops atop Nob Hill, Civic Center, and Twin Peaks. 

Students in front of Golden Gate Bridge

After a windy ride we stopped at the Golden Gate Bridge for everyone to tour the bridge on their own and take some classic San Francisco pictures.

The final activity of the day was a definite favorite, a dinner yacht cruise on the San Francisco Bay. Within the first 15 minutes of boarding the boat the students had pulled chairs and sofas together on the upper deck where they had their own ‘inner circle’ going on. The yacht traveled under the Golden Gate Bridge, around Alcatraz and we even saw a couple of dolphins playing near the boat. The cruise was a great opportunity for everyone to visit and hang out on the deck with amazing views of San Francisco.

Students on Yacht, final evening of trip

Day 4: Farewell brunch at Google San Francisco office

Our final morning allowed everyone to sleep in a little bit and then walk through the breakfast line at the Google San Francisco office. The smiles really got big when the students received their final gift, a Nexus 4 phone with the charging orb. Before leaving Google the students had time to say their goodbyes and to relax and visit with each other after three nonstop days. We practically had to kick the students out of the room because they were all having so much fun designing a file transfer protocol together that took up 4 entire whiteboards!

This was the largest group of Google Code-in winners that we have ever hosted. It was such a treat and privilege to chat with the students and to watch them engage with one another about ‘tricks of the engineering trade’ and make lasting friendships. For the majority of the students the Google Code-in contest was their first introduction to open source software development and now they are hooked!

Some fun quotes from the students:

“GCI (the contest itself) was easily the most rewarding experience I've ever had - coding for a FLOSS project, with mentors that were always there to help me was challenging and fun. And the best part was seeing the code I had actually written live on the official project repositories.  About the trip, it was amazing to be in the so-called "Silicon Valley", at the heart of one of the most important IT companies! The experience of visiting the Googleplex and attending speeches from experts will certainly last in my memory for my lifetime. I especially enjoyed "designing" a file transfer protocol with the other students on a whiteboard.”  --  Nicolás Satragno, Argentina 

"Most awesome birthday ever! One probably cannot imagine the feeling of celebrating a birthday at the other side of the globe, on a boat with Googlers, going beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, while speaking with 19 other cohorts about all kinds of top-tier computer-related stuff and them actually understanding it. It's amazing."  -- Vladimir Angelov, Bulgaria 

“Although it wasn't my first exposure to open-source development, it was the most rewarding open-source collaboration to date (not even considering the grand prize it resulted in). I met interesting and new people, and even learned an entirely new framework out of it (Qt). But then I had the grand prize trip. So far, it was the best four days of my life. I got to experience the headquarters of a company I've always loved and hope to work for one day. I met other kids like myself from all over the world. I listened to and spoke with brilliant and passionate engineers. So thank you for creating a program to get teens like me more involved with open-source development, and for creating such a fun and rewarding trip.”  -- Drew Gottlieb, USA

Congratulations to all 20 Grand Prize Winners and to all of the students who competed in the Google Code-in 2012 contest, we hope to continue to hear more great things from all of you in the years to come.

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Google Code-in 2012: it’s numbers time

Earlier this month, Google Code-in, a contest introducing 13-17 year olds to open source software development, finished up with really exciting results.

We had 334 students from 36 countries complete 1,925 tasks in the 7 week contest.  Students worked with 10 open source organizations on coding, documentation, training, user interface, research, outreach tasks, and quality assurance tasks. 58.7% of students completed at least 3 tasks in the contest.

Countries
The countries with the most students completing tasks are shown in the pie chart below:

This year there were 5 countries who for the first time had students complete tasks in Google Code-in: China, Kenya, Kuwait, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay.

Pre-university/high schools
The 5 schools with the most students completing tasks in Google Code-in 2012 are listed below.
- Technical School Electronic Systems (associated with Technical University- Sofia) in Bulgaria had the most students participating in the contest for the second year in a row with 44!
- Dunman High School in Singapore had 13 students participate in this year’s contest (only 1 student from all of Singapore participated last year).
There was a 3 way tie between the following schools to wrap up the 5 participating schools:
- Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute in Canada
- Precious Blood Secondary School in Kenya (an all girls school)
- Colegiul National “Mircea cel Batran” in Romania

Age of Students

Mentors
There were 174 dedicated mentors from 40 countries guiding students throughout the contest. This year we had mentors from a few new countries including Macedonia, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the Slovak Republic.

A huge thank you to all of the students, mentors and organization administrators who made Google Code-in 2012 a success! And thank you to all the parents and teachers who encouraged students to learn more about open source software development!

Stay tuned to this blog for the announcement of the 20 Grand Prize winners on February 4th.

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs Office

Google Code-in 2012 comes to a close

Congratulations to the 334* students who have been busy completing 1,913* tasks for the last seven weeks in the Google Code-in contest.  The 13-17 year-old students received a hands-on introduction to open source software development by working directly with 10 open source projects that have developed tasks for the students, complete with mentors to offer guidance along the way.

Students completed tasks like writing small pieces of code, creating tutorials to help new users of the software, reporting bugs, writing documentation for the open source projects and everything in between.

Stay tuned to this blog as we will be announcing the 20 Grand Prize Winners (2 from each open source organization) on February 4th. The Grand Prize Winners receive a trip for themselves and a parent/legal guardian to Google’s Mountain View, CA headquarters for four days this April where they will meet with Google engineers, explore the Google campus and enjoy a day full of adventures in San Francisco.

Congratulations again students on your accomplishments, we hope you had fun working with the open source organizations and mentors and will continue to stay involved in the community or with other open source projects in the future.

A huge thank you to all of the mentors and organization administrators who have spent many busy nights and weekends helping students learn about the many aspects of open source software development. This contest would not be possible without all of your dedication and excitement in sharing your passion for your projects with these students.

In the next few weeks we will post more stats on the contest and snippets about some of the extraordinary work the students completed during the Google Code-in.

Great job Students, Mentors and Organization Administrators!

* The final evaluations are currently being graded, these numbers will likely rise in the next few days.

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Google Code-in 2012 - Halfway Home

We are at the halfway point of the Google Code-in 2012 contest and we wanted to share some exciting stats with you. The contest is designed to introduce 13-17 year old pre-university students to the world of open source software development. During the first few weeks we have had 297 students complete at least one task in the contest. For many students this is their first introduction to the open source community.

Along with striving for certificates and t-shirts, many students are working toward the grand prize trip to Google’s Mountain View, California Campus for 20 hard working contestants next spring.

Google Code-in 2012 by the numbers

Registered Students 

• Currently over 1900 students from 81 countries have registered for the contest. 
• There are two new countries to add to the list this year- United Arab Emirates and Zimbabwe
• The countries with the most registered students are (in order): 

United States    877
India                 208
Canada               92
Bulgaria              81
United Kingdom 72
Romania              68
Australia              35
Poland                 29
South Korea        29
Spain                   29

Students who have already completed tasks

• We are excited to announce we have students completing tasks for the first time from the following countries: China, Kenya (6 students so far), Kuwait, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Uruguay
• For the following countries the student participation in 2012 has already at least doubled from earlier years: Argentina, Australia, Ireland, Singapore, and South Korea. 

Students still have plenty of time to participate in the contest. The last day to register as a student and claim a task is January 13, 2012 and all work must be submitted by January 14, 2012 at 17:00 UTC. 

Students can join the Google Code-in discussion list to ask questions of other students and program administrators.  We have a short screencast that describes the details of the contest and you can check out the Frequently Asked Questions and Contest Rules on the program site for more details.

Good luck and have fun!

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Google Code-in 2012 contest starts today!

… and Go! The Google Code-in 2012 contest has officially started!  If you are a 13-17 year old pre-university (high school) student interested in computer science who would like to learn more about open source software development while earning cool prizes, sign up on our program site today.  Students have the opportunity to select tasks from 5 categories (coding, documentation/training, quality assurance, research/outreach and user interface) that are designed by 10 open source organizations that will provide mentors for the students.  Students earn certificates, t-shirts and Grand Prize Winners will win a trip for themselves and a parent or legal guardian to Google’s Mountain View California campus in 2013. Each of the 10 open source organizations will choose 2 of the 5 students that complete the most tasks with their organization as their Grand Prize Winners for a total of 20 Grand Prize Winners for Google Code-in 2012- that’s twice as many Grand Prize Winners as last year!

Last year, 542 students from 56 countries competed in the contest: this year you could be one of the students from around the world learning new skills and making new friends by experiencing the awesome world of open source development.

If you’d like to sign up, please review the Contest Rules and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on our program site. You can join our discussion list to ask any other questions. For details on important dates for the contest, see the calendar. If you meet the eligibility requirements you can create your account on the program site and start claiming tasks today!

Join us today, Nov 26th, as members of Google’s Open Source Programs Office host a Live Google Code-in Hangout on Air on the Google Education page at 2pm PST to discuss details of the contest and to answer questions from viewers. If you can’t make the live Hangout on Air it will be recorded and posted on our Google Open Source Student Programs YouTube Channel within a couple of days.

The contest ends on January 14, 2013 so start claiming tasks today.  Good luck and have fun!

By Stephanie Taylor, Google Open Source Programs