| Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is as program where students are paid a stipend by Google to work on a free open source project. Students work on the project full-time for four months (May to August). Mentors are actively involved with students starting at the end of February when students start to work on and submit their applications. (see the timeline) |
We are looking for project ideas and mentors to participate in GSoC 2020. GSoC project ideas are coding projects that university or college students can accomplish in about four months. The coding projects can be new features, plugins, test frameworks, infrastructure, etc. Anyone can submit a project idea, but of course we like it even better if you offer to mentor your project idea.
We accept new project ideas at any time, BUT we need a series of ideas READY before February 5th, 2020 at 7pm UTC, which is the deadline for the Jenkins organization to apply to the GSoC program. So send us your project ideas before the begining of February so they can get a proper review by the GSoC committee and by the community.
How to submit a project idea
For 2020, we have simplified the process.
Simply create a pull-request with your idea in a .adoc file
in the idea folder.
It is no longer necessary to submit a Google Doc, but it will still work if you want to do that.
See the instructions on submitting ideas which include an .adoc template and some examples.
Current list of ideas
We currently have a list of project ideas for students to browse, copied from last year. Note that this list is subject to change.
What does mentoring involve?
Potential mentors are invited to read the information for mentors. Note that being a GSoC mentor does not require expert knowledge of Jenkins. Mentors do not work alone. We make sure that every project has at least two mentors. GSoC org admins will help to find technical advisors, so you can study together with your students.
Mentoring takes about 5 to 8 hours of work per week (more at the start, less at the end). Mentors provide guidance, coaching, and sometimes a bit of cheerleading. They review student proposals, pull-requests and the students presentations at the evaluation phase. They fill in the Google provided evaluation report form at the end of coding periods.
What do you get in exchange?
In return of mentoring, a student works on your project full time for four months. Think about the projects that you’ve always wanted to do but never had the time…
Having a mentoring opportunity also means that you get to improve your management and people skills.
As well, up to two mentors per organization are elligible to participate in the Google Mentor Summit taking place each year. The Jenkins Org Admins try to send different mentors each year. It is also possible to win an additional seat at the summit in the "last minute draw" (Google draws mentors at random to fill the cancellations and empty seats).
See this post from one of the 2019 mentors on the kind of experience this was.
GSoC is a pretty good return on the investment!
For any question, you can find the GSoC Org Admins, mentors and participants on the GSoC SIG Gitter chat.