Google Summer of Code 2017
We’re excited to announce that Open States has been accepted as a participating organization in Google Summer of Code 2017!
It’s been a few years since we last participated (while at Sunlight), but Google Summer of Code has been a fantastic experience for Open States in the past and we’re glad to be participating again.
If you aren’t familiar with GSoC, it is a program in which Google pays stipends to college students that are willing to spend their summer working on select Open Source projects. This means we’ll have at least one student working on Open States with us over the summer.
What’s Next?
Now that we’ve been accepted we’re looking to connect with interested students. The next three weeks provide time for students to get to know us, look over our ideas page (or draft their own proposals) and start planning what they’d like to work on if selected.
We’ll be having these conversations in our Slack, please join the #gsoc channel if you’re interested.
The student application period is from March 20th-April 3rd, after which we’ll work on selecting our students based on the strength of their applications and community involvement. Each student will then be paired with a mentor for the duration of the summer, mentors are expected to check in with their students regularly and help guide them towards successful completion of their project.
Our organization page has more details on what we’re looking for.
Tips for Students
We’re really glad you’re considering working with us! If you’re looking to participate we’d really love to see you engaging with the community: introduce yourself, write a patch, tell us what you’d like to work on with us over the summer.
If you’re going to be near DC- let us know and maybe meet up with us or stop by our code sprint.
We’re a younger Open Source community, and GSoC is a great opportunity for us as well as you, we’d really like to engage with students that we feel will be a part of the project going forward even beyond the summer. At the same time, we want to give you an opportunity here to be an integral part of the Open States team. In the past GSoC participants have become core contributors to the project, we’d love to see that to happen again.
Not a Student?
If you’re not a student but still want to help out, we’ll be ramping up our contribution docs, etc. as part of this. So while we can’t offer a stipend to work on the project, this summer will be a great time to get involved. If you haven’t already, consider signing up for our DC code sprint and introduce yourself in Slack.
Also, we’re definitely interested in talking to potential mentors. Feel free to reach out directly to James or Miles on Slack if you’d like to discuss mentoring a proposal this summer.
Originally published at blog.openstates.org.