Google Summer of Code meetups, Episode 7: Cluj-Napoca, Romania

On March 23rd a Google Summer of Code meetup was held in Romania as part of the GDG Cluj-Napoca meeting with almost 50 students in attendance. The event featured a couple of experienced open source developers, Stas Suşcov and Attila-Mihály Balázs, who were interested in inspiring university students to participate in open source development. Stas is a former Google Summer of Code student and Attila-Mihály is an open source enthusiast. They discuss their experiences in open source and some of the benefits of participating in the Google Summer of Code program below.

I participated twice as a student in Google Summer of Code, in 2010 and 2011, for the WordPress Foundation. For my first summer project I worked on a social learning platform called Courseware for BuddyPress social network. Two years later, together with my friend David, we launched our own startup based on my Google Summer of Code experience, The Courseware Project. Before becoming a student in the program, I had already been involved in a lot of local and global open source communities (Ubuntu, Mozilla, WordPress) and being part of Google Summer of Code was a natural outcome which greatly improved my professional abilities and relationships with people involved in these projects.  

During the meetup I tried to share my experiences and answer as many questions as possible about being a Google Summer of Code student and give helpful tips on how actions to take so the organization will want you for another year as a participant or mentor once you finish your current project. 

By Stas Sușcov -  former Google Summer of Code student and Developer/Operations at Coursewa.re  

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As a user and creator of open source technology I’m a big believer in its benefits. That’s why when I saw this year’s Google Summer of Code announcement I thought: I need to promote it to as many students as possible. My presentation was a very quick introduction to the concept of open source, the possible reasons for contributing and what steps somebody should take when starting to work on an open source project. The slides used in the presentation are available under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license. 

In my opinion the main benefits for students who contribute to an open source project through the Google Summer of Code program are:

• learning how to use tools like IDEs, VCSs, issue/bug trackers, build systems, etc. - these are integral parts of a programmer’s daily life but rarely mentioned in studies at universities
• learning how to work with an existing project and its infrastructure - most of the projects people end up working on already exist, but in university most of the projects students are taught about are described as being created from-scratch
• learning how to communicate with others, especially remotely - as much as 80% of a programmer's job is communication and working on an open source project is a great way to practice this
• having something tangible to show on one’s resume
• and finally the monetary benefits are also nice 

By Attila-Mihály Balázs, developer at Udacity

I would like to thank again the organizers (GDG Cluj-Napoca) and my co-presenter, Stas. My goal is to make Romania the number one contributing country to Google Summer of Code.

By Attila-Mihály Balázs, developer at Udacity and open source enthusiast

Google Summer of Code meetups, Episode 6: Cairo, Egypt

With a lot of passion and enthusiasm, around 80 Computer Engineering students attended a meetup hosted by GDG Cairo at Faculty of Engineering of Ain Shams University in Cairo, Egypt on Saturday, April 13th. Students were from all levels of schooling with a majority being 1st and 4th year students.

Under the guidance of PhD Bassem Amin, from the Computer Engineering department, GDG Cairo hosted a panel of Google Summer of Code alumni to give an introduction about the Google Summer of Code 2013 program to prospective students.

The meetup started with a presentation by Mostafa Muhammad, a 2008 and 2009 Google Summer of Code alumnus who worked with the Joomla! organization. He gave an introductory speech about the Google Summer of Code program and the 2013 program timeline. He emphasized that participating organizations understand that applicants are students with moderate skills and that they are still learning, which is why a mentor is paired with each student to help with questions they have when working on their project. Mostafa stressed the importance of the students’ written project proposal and their general fit with the project when organizations are choosing their students.

Cat Allman, from the Google Open Source Programs Office, joined the live Hangout giving a very interesting talk about the program, exciting the students who then asked her questions about the background needed for the program.

Next, Mohamed Tarek, a former Computer Engineering student and Google Summer of Code 2009 and 2010 alumnus, explained in more detail the steps for applying to the program using the Google Summer of Code 2013 website. He gave a demo on choosing an organization and reviewing their ideas list, how to use the mailing lists, using the IRC channel for questions, and where to look for other contact information provided by each organization.

The microphone was then passed to our youngest speakers, Google Summer of Code 2012 alumni, Islam Wazery and Ahmed Refaat, both Shrouk Academy Computer Science graduates. Islam discussed how to write a quality proposal and gave a demo on his own accepted proposal to KDE from 2012, complete with a slideshow.

Islam Wazeery talking about writing a proposal

Seif Lotfy, a Google Summer of Code mentor for the past five years with KDE and GNOME, gave a final talk on how to increase the chances of your proposal being accepted by the mentoring organizations from the perspective of a mentor reading through the proposals.

We concluded the meetup with our speakers hosting a Q&A panel and answering some more detailed and specialized questions asked by enthusiastic students.

From left to right: Ahmed Refaat, Islam Wazery, Mohamed Tarek and Mostafa Muhammad during Q&A panel

We would like to thank all of the attendees and everyone who contributed to making this meetup a success.

By Mohamed Abdellatif, GDG Cairo Organizer

A new kind of summer job: open source coding with Google Summer of Code

(cross-posted from the Official Google blog)

If you’re a university student with CS chops looking to earn real-world experience this summer, consider writing code for a cool open source project with the Google Summer of Code program.

Over the past eight years more than 6,000 students have “graduated” from this global program, working with almost 400 different open source projects. Students who are accepted into the program will put the skills they have learned in university to good use by working on an actual software project over the summer. Students are paired with mentors to help address technical questions and concerns throughout the course of the project. With the knowledge and hands-on experience students gain during the summer they strengthen their future employment opportunities in fields related to their academic pursuits. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

Interested students can submit proposals on the website starting now through Friday, May 3 at 12:00pm PDT. Get started by reviewing the ideas pages of the 177 open source projects in this year’s program, and decide which projects you’re interested in. Because Google Summer of Code has a limited number of spots for students, writing a great project proposal is essential to being selected to the program. Be sure to check out the Student Manual for advice.

For ongoing information throughout the application period and beyond, see the Google Open Source blog, join our Summer of Code mailing lists or join us on Internet relay chat at #gsoc on Freenode.

Good luck to all the open source coders out there, and remember to submit your proposals early—you only have until May 3 to apply!

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source team