Join IOOS’ Google Summer of Code 2025 application - call for mentors by Feb 10. We need your help!
Micah Wengren - NOAA Federal
Join IOOS and mentor a student for Google Summer of Code 2025!
IOOS plans to apply for our fourth year as a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) mentoring organization in 2025. To have the best chance of being re-accepted, we need as many quality projects ideas and mentors from our extended DMAC community (you!) to include in our application by the Feb 11 deadline.
The most successful GSoC project ideas involve previously-existing, open source software packages that might benefit from the addition of a new feature, capability or related application or tool, resolving a thorny bug that you don’t quite have time to address yourself as a package maintainer, or the addition of use-case examples that involve developing and publishing new code (e.g. Jupyter notebook usage demonstrations).
GSoC is not for getting assistance from a student (aka ‘contributor’) with writing documentation or for starting new projects without pre-existing open source code. The program is designed to teach contributors about your software and project maintainer community (even if only yourself), how to write better code, and to learn about the process of open source software development itself.
Please note: you don’t need to be affiliated with IOOS directly to participate - if your software is open source and is used for oceanography or ocean data management, we’re happy to include your project ideas as part of our application as a oceanography community-oriented GSoC mentoring organization. If accepted for this year’s program, we’ll do our best to ensure a diverse set of projects are put forward to receive funding for student/contributor stipends by Google.
Submit your project idea for GSoC 2025 by filling out this GitHub form: https://github.com/ioos/gsoc/issues/new?template=gsoc-project-proposal.yml.
Draft or initial project ideas are OK. Project ideas need to include basic background information (project description and purpose, expected skills, mentor names), but it’s a fairly easy lift to propose a new project. If IOOS is accepted for the 2025 program, project ideas can be further refined or improved over the next month until the contributor application period begins in March.
Please submit your project ideas by Monday Feb 10 to allow us to organize our application by the deadline on the 11th, and reach out to Micah (micah....@noaa.gov), Matt (Mathew...@noaa.gov), or Filipe (oce...@gmail.com) to discuss your project ideas or with any other GSoC questions.
Thank you! Apologies for any cross-postings.
Micah, Matt, Filipe
Additional GSoC Background:
Information about IOOS’ previous involvement with GSoC, including past projects, contributors, and mentors, is available in the https://github.com/ioos/gsoc repository.
Mentor expectations: GSoC mentors are expected to be able to commit several hours per week working with contributors on their project: reviewing submitted code/documentation, meeting with contributors directly if feasible, and providing regular feedback on their progress, giving direction or guidance, and raising any issues you see with their work to maximize the likelihood their project is successful at the end of the program.
Mentors also must submit a midyear review and final review for their contributor’s project at specific points during the summer coding period. Completed mentor reviews are critical assessments of a mentor’s and organization’s commitment to GSoC and their students - so we’ll be reaching out to all mentors to ensure no deadlines are missed.
GSoC 2025 includes three sizes of student projects (the time they’ll have to complete it): small at ~90 hours, medium at ~175 hours, large at ~350 hours. Project ideas can be proposed for any of the three sizes - use your best estimate for how long it should take a student to complete the project in determining the size, and keep in mind that the size will likely impact for what duration you’ll be actively mentoring the contributor over the summer.
See the following links for more useful information about the GSoC program:
GSoC 2025 program announcement: https://opensource.googleblog.com/2025/01/google-summer-of-code-2025-is-here.html
GSoC 2025 timeline: https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline
Defining project ideas: https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/defining-a-project-ideas-list
Tips for mentoring: https://google.github.io/gsocguides/mentor/what-makes-a-good-mentor
Multiple mentors can mentor a single contributor project, so teams of mentors are encouraged, however it is recommended that an individual mentor only mentor one project.
Submitting multiple project ideas at this time is encouraged, if you have several in mind. During the project ranking phase in April each mentor will have to select a single project to put forward for assignment of a ‘slot’ (or funding for your selected contributor/project) by Google, so you will need to select one contributor and project at that time if you submitted more than one during the initial application phase.