2010 is here and its time for another Summer of Code, courtesy of Google! For those who don't know, Summer of Code is an amazing program in which student developers are paid a stipend by Google in exchange for working on open source projects along with mentors from those projects. Drupal has benefited enormously from Summer of Code over the years. Many of our most productive and well-known members are former Summer of Code students, including Drupal 7 core maintainer Angela Byron (webchick), Drupal 6 core maintainer Gábor Hojtsy and many many more. For more information see the Summer of Code FAQ.

2010 marks Drupal's sixth year being accepted as a mentoring organization. Last year we successfully completed 21 student projects and it would be great to match or even surpass that this year, but there are two things we need to make that happen - Students and Mentors!

Students

Student applications are now open for Summer of Code! It is highly recommended that students join the Summer of Code 2010 group and add their idea there for community discussion before submitting a proposal. This will allow you to get valuable feedback from the community as well as allow you to interact with potential mentors. Many mentors also hang out on IRC and this is a great place to introduce yourself and get feedback on your ideas. Some other resources potential applicants should be familiar with before applying are

• General requirements for all Summer of Code projects
• HOWTO: Write a Summer of Code proposal
• Advice for Students

Once your idea is fleshed out and planned you can submit it at the Summer of Code website. There, mentors will continue to comment and help you refine your proposal. Don't wait too long, the application deadline is 19:00 UTC on April 9th! Students may submit more than one application, however quality is always preferred over quantity!

Mentors

Every Summer of Code student is assigned primary and backup mentors. These are members of the Drupal community (like YOU) who are knowledgeable about Drupal and passionate about spreading the open source love to the future developers of tomorrow! Mentoring a project is an extremely rewarding experience which strongly benefits all parties (student, mentor and Drupal.) It does require a time commitment, estimated at around 5 hours a week. The Google Advice for Mentors page offers some excellent information about what is involved for mentors and mentoring organizations.

If you're interested in becoming a mentor for Drupal then go forth and apply at the Summer of code website! If we're going to match or surpass the lofty goals of last year, we need all the help we can get. Feel free to ask on IRC or the Summer of Code group if you are interested in more details about the experience and what it entails from previous mentors.

Community members

In addition to great students and mentors, we need great project ideas. If you've ever thought "it would be really cool if Drupal could just..." then you've got the start on a project idea. Suggest a SoC project idea in the SoC 2010 group. Bear in mind that proposed projects should be "do-able" within a 3 month time frame by a student who may not know anything about Drupal (but it's safe to assume they know how to program).

You can also help, whether you have a specific idea of your own or not, if you help review the existing SoC project ideas by providing students and other community members with feedback. A lot of students won't know the finer intricacies of what contributed modules already exist, what priorities are important to the Drupal project, and where their energy is best spent, and folks already involved in the community are in the best position to tell them this.

We also need some folks to be active in #drupal on irc.freenode.net to answer student questions, pointing them to resources in the handbook or API documentation, or point them to people who know a lot about a given area of expertise. If this sounds like fun to you, just hop on IRC. :)

Summer of Code has been an immensely important and successful program for Drupal. Let's make 2010 the best year yet!

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