Google Summer of Code: APAC Represent!

Posted by Pamela Fox, Maps API Team

Google Summer of Code is coming up in a few months. In this program, you spend the summer (or winter) working on features for open-source projects and get paid for it - thinking about it makes me wish I was still a student. To get an idea of what you could be working on as a student in GSOC, read through the descriptions of 4 past students below. If you're interested in having a similar story, make sure you apply before April 3rd.

Ankit Guglani (Singapore Management University)

Ankit worked on the CC-logger project for the Creative Commons organization, where the goal was to analyze switching patterns and click-through rates to the feeds. His tip to maximize the social aspect of the GSOC experience is to "use the IRC channel to make friends - you meet really interesting people." You can stop by now, #gsoc in Freenode.

Blooma Mohan John (Nanyang Technological University)

Blooma contributed to DSpace, an open-source solution for accessing, managing, and preserving scholarly works. Her project made it easier to do batch imports of content into the system, and is now being used by research and academic institutions globally.

Eugene Tan Jie Ming (Nanyang Technological University)

Eugene contributed to Thousand Parsec, a cross-platform turn based space empire building game. He wrote a 3-d graphics client with a nice user-interface that interacted with the backend server. Eugene suggests that students take extra steps to learn more about real-world software development; "Besides just learning the version control system, try asking the devs about their tools (text editors, IDEs, possible language-specific customizations) and workflow, and consider giving them a go."

Nur Aini Rakhmawati Gunawan (National Taiwan University of Science & Technology)

Nur spent two years in the GSOC program, first as a student and then coming back as a mentor, working on Joomla! both times. As a student, she worked on publishing via email, and as a mentor, she worked on the project exposing Joomla data as RDF and Linked Data. Nur says that both years were learning experiences; "A mentor is not a superior person who knows everything, my student gave me a lot of knowledge as a PhD student."