My frustration grew as I was struggling to find the perfect sentence to motivate Pakistani students to join Google Summer of Code this year. Naturally, I ended up scrolling my Facebook page diverting myself from the task at hand and came across a sponsored post from Javarush saying, “Become a programmer and lose your Brain’s virginity.” I could not have thought of a better and fun way to get the message across to all students out there.
Programming is probably the best exercise for your brain. Your mind is being utilized to its full capacity when you think of all the efficient ways to tell the computer what needs to be done. And what can be more interesting than exercising your brain for the biggest tech-giants on Planet Earth?
Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program for student developers to write code for open source projects from different organizations and get paid $5500 once the project has been completed. This year Google will be launching its 11th Google Summer of Code for student coders across the world. In the past ten years, we have seen only 30 coders from Pakistan who participated in Google Summer of Code. Our country has some of the finest developers and white hat hackers who are reknowned locally but we need to showcase out talent at International level too.
Last year, Shumail Mohy-ud-Din from Pakistan successfully completed Google Summer of Code project for International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF). His project focused on completing and enhancing the G-Node conference application for Android Platform. The application had to provide basic functionality and electronic conference guide for conference participants. He will present his GSoC project at a conference this year which is to be held in Singapore.
Successfully completed Google Summer of Code 🙂 Thankyou #Google>, @INCForg & my Mentor – C.Garbers ♥ #GSoC14#GSoCpic.twitter.com/bWSR4uuQS8
— Shumail Mohy-ud-Din (@shumail365) October 27, 2014
The procedure of Google Summer of Code is simple and straight forward. Tech Organizations from around the world apply for GSoC every year and publish open source projects on their websites. Students can take a look at these projects and work on them beforehand in preparation for proposal submission.
Google selects organizations from the pool of applicants and release their names on GSoC website. After that, student proposal submission period opens up in which they can either submit a proposal for one of the organization’s project or for their own project. Google assign mentors from organizations to the selected students for GSoC. Mentors guide students, check their weekly progress and help them throughout the project.
Check out the timeline of GSoC 2015 here. This year the organizations and their projects will be announced soon, so keep checking GSoC website. Here are the list of organizations and their projects which were accepted last year. So, as soon as the list is released, go through the projects, find your interest and make an excellent project proposal. Best of luck!
