GSOC Student Applications Open

Students who want to participate in the Google Summer of Code project this year should apply online now! The deadline for applications is April 8, but the load on the servers increases as that date approaches, so apply now to avoid the rush and make sure your application is received in time.

Google Summer of Code

Since 2005, the Python Software Foundation has been sponsoring Google Summer of Code (GSoC) projects to pair students with mentors from Python-based projects for real-world development experience. Students who are accepted into the program will spend the summer working on an open source project in Python, and be paid US$5,000 if the project is completed.

Projects

In addition to the mentors from the core Python team, several umbrella teams are already involved with the PSF for GSoC. Details about the proposed project ideas and prospective mentors can be found on the wiki.

Increasing Diversity

The PSF is committed to increasing the diversity of the Python community. One way we are working toward that goal is by encouraging women and other minorities to apply to participate in GSoC through one of the PSF-sponsored projects. The Mailman, SciPy, and PySoy projects are especially active in seeking minority applicants this year.

Important Dates

Student application deadline: 8 April

Students and Mentors paired up: 22 April

Announce accepted Students: 25 April

For more details about the schedule, see the GSoC timeline on the project web site.

Updated: The original version of this post incorrectly stated that students could earn US$4,500 instead of US$5,000.

Funding the Python Miro Community

A year ago Will Kahn-Greene started the Python Miro Community, a web-site that indexes Python-related videos regardless of where those videos exist on the Internet. The PSF has provided US$1,800 to finance continuation of this work, including US$900 for one year of Miro Community service costs. The remainder of the grant will go toward further development of the Python Miro Community.

Miro Community

The Miro Community offers an easy way to collect and curate videos already on the internet. It is one of several projects of the non-profit organization Participatory Culture Foundation all centered around supporting distribution of video content on the Internet. Among these is Universal Subtitles, a toolset and community to add subtitles to any web video.
The Python Miro Community indexes Python-related videos from many separate hosting sites on the Internet. The collection includes metadata for the videos to make them searchable and more useful to people. The site currently holds around 550 videos, covering a wide variety of Python-related topics from Python user groups, Python-related conferences like PyCon, and other sources.

Funding usage

US$900 of the grant will go towards Miro Community service costs as PCF rolls out Miro Community 1.2, which has a tiered service plan. The other US$900 of the grant will go towards improvements to Python Miro Community:

• integrate Universal Subtitles into the site
• fixing Miro Community software to allow transcriptions to be part of the search corpus
• fixing Miro Community software to allow for automated data validation

See also Will's blog on the grant and for additional information.