SoC Report 2008

Google Summer of Code 2008 Report

 * Contact name: Wolf Bergenheim

Summary
OSGeo participated as an umbrella organisation for 11 OSGeo projects. OSGeo received 20 student slots. Most of these students completed their project either partially or completely. The goal for OSGeo is twofold: Gain new developers for the projects and produce new code.

About Google Summer of Code
Quoting the Google Summer of CodeTM 2009 site "Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. We have worked with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together nearly 2500 students and 2500 mentors & co-mentors from nearly 100 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all."

Projects involved
Ten (10) OSGeo projects were involved with GSoC. Together the mentors mentored 20 students. Most of the students were very successful in their projects. The projects involved were:
 * 1) GRASS
 * 2) GeoServer
 * 3) GeoTools
 * 4) uDig
 * 5) Mapbender
 * 6) GDAL
 * 7) OpenLayers
 * 8) OpenJUMP
 * 9) QGIS
 * 10) Laval University

A few students stayed on and became developers in their projects.

Areas for Improvement

 * More mentors for SoC would help to guarantee a better result.
 * Many students had problems with weekly reports. Ideally the mentors should help motivate the students in this area, Without a progress report it is impossible to gage how the project is going.
 * Participation in the Mentor Summit by two mentors would be good.
 * More communication between mentors would improve mentoring and the student experience.

Conclusion
Google Summer of Code for 2008 was a success for OSGeo. Although OSGeo did not participate in the Mentor Summit a lot of things were still learned on how to improve things. Hopefully 2009 will be as good or even better.