DebConf 7 just wrapped up last week and Summer of Coders were out in force. Andrew Stribblehill, one of Google's software engineers, was kind enough to send us a report from the conference:
Google was pleased to support the recent Debian Conference, held this year in Edinburgh. Ten Googlers, six of us Debian Developers, attended and thoroughly enjoyed it. Google is pleased to encourage the kind of community involvement that DebConf fosters.
Google also supports Debian through the Summer of Code initiative. There were over a hundred proposals and we winnowed them down to the best nine. These include work to help Debian's QA team, a live CD project and a system which tests the snapshot CD images for correctness. Debian derives value not just from the project funding but also from the Summer of Code structure -- self-contained projects with a clear goal, oversight and reporting.
What was special for us about DebConf is that it gave our Summer of Code participants, both mentors and students, possibly their only opportunity to meet face to face. We find this can be a great source of encouragement after a few months' hacking in relative isolation.
It was an excellent conference. Until Debconf 8!
Thanks to Andrew for sending in the report. If any of the Summer of Coders who attended DebConf 7 want to share their experiences, just post a comment.
Robert Watson, organization administrator and mentor for the FreeBSD project, recently visited Google and treated our employees to a talk on "How the FreeBSD Project Works." Robert's talk provided insights into FreeBSD's governance as whole, and his remarks on FreeBSD's processes for onboarding new developers and how their existing structures aided the project's participation in Summer of Code are of particular interest. You can check out the video of Robert's presentation to learn more.
And for those of you who are wondering, you won't necessarily be talked into recording a podcast if you visit Google Mountain View. We might just persuade you to give a talk. Or you can talk us into hosting your talk. Either way works.
Seriously though, when any Summer of Coders are in the Mountain View area, you are most welcome to visit and give a presentation to Googlers about your Summer of Code project or your other open source activities. You know where to find us.
You've probably already heard about all the cool stuff you can do if you visit our Mountain View, California USA Headquarters: help yourself to a delicious free lunch, check out our replica of SpaceShipOne or take a look at our corporate solar panel installation. If you're a Summer of Coder, though, you're likely to be talked into a recording a podcast.
While we're used to reading status updates on mailing lists or hammering out next steps in IRC, Sidnei da Silva has done one better; he's recorded a video status report on his Summer of Code project, including an overview of Plone, Zope and his efforts to improve WebDAV in Plone.
Speaking of status, midterm evaluations for the program are coming up in just under two weeks. We're looking forward to hearing more about all the progress our students have made thus far and learning more about mentor-student communications.
Thiago Macieira, three time organization administrator for the KDE project, wrote in to give us an update about Summer of Code activities at the upcoming aKademy 2007 conference:
During the hackathon, there is also a BoF planned to discuss KDE's participation in Summer of Code. It'll be an opportunity to share experiences, discuss the lessons learned and for our students to talk to non-participants about their experiences in the program.
The aKademy organisation has also been able to reimburse the travel fees for some of the students -- past and present, accepted or not -- who have already shown exceptional commitment. This would not have been possible without the help of this year's sponsors, including Google.
Whether aKademy will be fruitful for the Summer of Code attendees or if the developers just succeed in giving the students more work (on other parts of KDE) remains to be seen. :-)
We hope to see you there!
Thanks to Thiago for the update. We'd love to hear from Summer of Coders about their plans for the conference or their experiences when they attend. Post a comment and give us the scoop!
In our latest podcast episode, we got the chance to chat with Paul Biondich, mentor and organization administrator for the OpenMRS project. You'll get a chance to learn from Paul about the history of OpenMRS, life as a brand new organization in Summer of Code, and the social change uses of open source in developing nations. You can also learn ways the project could use more help from the open source community.
While we're very excited about the global impact of Summer of Code, sadly we only have three students from all of Africa this year, two of whom are studying abroad. We asked for feedback on what we can do to build awareness of the program in Africa, and Wojciech Gryc volunteered to help by letting folks know about SoC during his upcoming trip to Kenya. We had a chance to learn more about Wojciech's work to spread open source in Africa, and we thought you'd enjoy hearing about his efforts there.
Wojciech writes:
As a Summer of Code student working for OpenOffice.org, my social interests often steer me to a fundamental human problem: can these tools be used to promote international development? Indeed, they can. Half-way through my coding, I am leaving for Nairobi, Kenya to run workshops and tutorials on OpenOffice, Inkscape, and many of the other open source projects being helped through Summer of Code.
And it's amazing how far such workshops can go. In January 2006, Emanuele Lapierre-Fortin and I traveled to Chad to run the first project of this type. We helped Rafigui, Chad's only youth-led newspaper, to turn a set of donated laptops into media centres powered by Linux other open source software. This was done through Five Minutes to Midnight, a media organization I initially started in high school. The workshops were short – only three weeks long – but were enough to allow Rafigui to adopt the software. This summer, they're now running their own set of workshops for other organizations in Chad.
This project continues our earlier work. With a $300 grant, our partner organization, Shining Hope for the Community, purchased a printer; they requested some Ubuntu CDs and used the software to start the only youth-led newspaper in Kibera, Kenya - Africa's largest slum. The youth involved are all highly motivated and interested in improving both their surrounding community and their coding skills. It seems fitting that the software that powers their work was built using a similar mindset.
Even though their are numerous technical challenges, the work is well worth it. By giving people access to computers and training materials, they gain the ability to improve their own communities in a way that fits them through a focused, grass-roots approach. Shining Hope for the Community's newsletter has already been used to spread important health messages by a local clinic. The youth involved are using the skills they've gained to work towards becoming professional journalists. Indeed, some organizations have taken the idea of open source to the next level, developing software for disaster management and reporting of human rights abuses.
So as you code and develop, design and debug, spend a moment thinking of some of the unique and interesting applications your software can have, and some of the unique social problems it could solve.
Our thanks to Wojciech for sharing his story. You can learn more about his trip to Kenya on the Article 13 Initiative site.
If anyone would like to share their story about using open source for social change or philanthropic efforts, post a comment and let us know!
