Dear students, dear prospective mentors,
Google has already put out the word that GSoC will continue next year.
Given the huge success of our summer of code, we’re pretty sure we’ll
also continue participating.
Of course, it’s too early to say anything definitive about next year’s
GSoC, except for the fact that we’ll most likely be part of it.
Still, if you’re interested in GSoC, you should read on. There’s one
section each for
- Students
- Faculty members
- Anyone who might be a mentor (i.e. anyone else)
Students
If you’re a student next year (i.e. enrolled at a university somewhere
in the world), you’re probably eligible for GSoC. This means you have
the opportunity to write free software during the summer, get paid for
it (by Google), collect fame and nerd cred by participating in a
prestigious program, and win a t-shirt.
GNU Radio has participated only twice so far, but both years, we had no
students fail, and many interesting projects were tackled. Perhaps some
of the past students want to weigh in here, but my impression as mentor
and admin was that it’s a huge opportunity to learn lots and actively
contribute.
If this sounds interesting, you should think about participating earlier
rather than later. When we evaluate proposals (which act as
applications), we take your previous coding experience into account, as
well as your ability to use a mailing list and interact with an open
source community. If you have been active in the GNU Radio project
before submitting a proposal, that can count to your favour.
Being active in this community can definitely increase your chances. One
of our main goals with GSoC is to find people that stay with us and
continue contributing. This will help us get to know you before the
short application phase.
Faculty Members
If you like, you can help us with GSoC–become a mentor, suggest
projects etc. But right now, all I ask is that you encourage
students who want to participate in GSoC. Sadly, every year, we
hear of students who don’t apply for GSoC because it doesn’t fit
into their curriculum, or simply because advisors oppose the idea
of students working on something like GSoC during the summer.
A student returning from GSoC will most likely have learnt lots about
signal processing, coding, collaborating in a software project and
general radio stuff. You will get a better student in return!
GSoC and university can also go together really well. As an example, two
years ago, one of our students participated in GSoC while he was
finishing his degree’s final project. This was possible because mentors
and university cooperated such that his GSoC project had a very large
overlap
with his final project, and he didn’t lose any time with GSoC. Such
win-win-win situations are rare, but not impossible. If you’re a faculty
member and believe there is space for cooperation, please contact me
off-list.
Potential mentors
How about mentoring a project? You can support up-and-coming new SDR
hackers, teach wisdom and promote projects you’re enthusiastic about.
Mentoring is some work. But it’s also lots of fun! So think about if
you’d like to mentor, and sign up next summer.
Martin
–
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Communications Engineering Lab (CEL)
Dipl.-Ing. Martin B.
Research Associate
Kaiserstraße 12
Building 05.01
76131 Karlsruhe
Phone: +49 721 608-43790
Fax: +49 721 608-46071
www.cel.kit.edu
KIT – University of the State of Baden-Württemberg and
National Laboratory of the Helmholtz Association