Google Summer of Code student selections

[Rick Harding]

Today the Google Summer of Code student selections were announced. For Bookie, that meant that we filled our two slots allocated with our two mentors. On the one hand, it brings to a close an amazing round of participation in Bookie as an open source project. We had 20 people land over 110 commits worth of patches in Bookie since the opening of GSoC. That is AMAZING! What is also amazing is the quality and effort that everyone put into their work. Everyone was eager to learn how to add tests to their patches, and they worked so hard to get their code landed. Bookie is a better open source tool for managing bookmarks now than it was 2 months ago, and that is because of the students.

I also want to say that the students did more than land branches, they invigorated the community. We had many users jump in irc to help answer questions, guide students through the process, and even QA and code review some of their work. I know the enthusiasm that the students brought motivated me to make the time to help move things forward. After all, if a student just spend 3 days figuring out how to create a bug fix, write a test for it, and get it up for code review; then surely I can manage to find the 30 minutes to pull it down, review the code, and QA the work. This period motivated me to update documentation, make sure the install process worked for a wider audience, and was a large motivator that Bookie is interesting as a tool to other people besides myself.

I want all of the students that were not selected to know that their work and effort has been greatly appreciated. We enjoyed working with everyone. We had 32 applications for 2 spots. In talking with other organizations we had a crazy amount of competition for our little allocated spaces. I wish we had a dozen more mentors as over one half of those proposals could easily have been accepted and had a great summer. This was a very difficult process for us.

Now, that aside, the fun doesn't have to end. If you're a student and have found the time contributing to Bookie valuable. If you've learned something, gained some material for that resume, or just had a good time, DON'T STOP! We're not going anywhere. Bookie isn't closing up shop. We are more than happy to carry on mentoring and working with you all. We tried very hard during this process to make sure that all students were given the best chance to take something positive away from this application process. We'll continue to do the same.

We owe it to all of you any explanation you want regarding your application. I'll be honest, most of the time the answer will just be we had to pick two out of about 15 really great applications. The scores assigned were one point apart at the top of the selections. Feel free to ping me in irc and ask me anything you'd like.

We do want to congratulate Sambuddha and Pradyumna for being accepted and we look forward to their projects adding great features to Bookie this summer. If you find the work interesting, come help them out. Get involved, help with the work, the code reviews, and the testing of the new features. This was our first year participating in Google Summer of Code, but you can be assured it will not be the last. While it was amazingly crazy and busy at times, it's been immensely rewarding for us to work with you all.

Rick Harding