SoC, What are you doing this summer?

For those of us in Canada, it can be hard to think about summer.  Even in Victoria we had a late blast of winter, which makes it feel like summer will never come.  However, for open source developers, summer is just around the corner – Summer of Code that is. The Google Summer of Code program provides funds and the infrastructure to enable students to work on open source software from May to August.  This is the 5th year Google is putting on this program and they just opened up the the application for member organizations.  Once again, Eclipse will be applying for participation.

I have been contacted by a number of students with some great ideas, including Fabian Steeg, who wants to bring Graphviz’s DOT language to Zest.  This is a great idea, and will hopefully open the door to end user graph based customization within Eclipse.  

While the student application process has not formally started, I would encourage students to start thinking and preparing their ideas.  As a former student, here are a few tips:

1. Blog – Write about your ideas and get some early feedback
2. Subscribe to the Eclipse SoC mailing list and the Google Summer of Code Group
3. Blog – Write about your experiences with Eclipse, let people know just how passionate your are about the technologies
4. Get involved with the Eclipse projects now – Subscribe to the developer mailing lists, get a bugzilla account, help triage bugs, review the news groups – Generally help out and let people know who you are
5. Blog – Have I mentioned this yet?  If you have an Eclipse blog with some content considering adding yourself to planet eclipse.
6. Add your proposal idea to the SoC Wiki page

 I imagine Google Summer of Code will be very competitive this year, so getting an early start will give you a competitive advantage .  Honestly, the participating in the Google Summer of Code program was one of the best decisions I made.