Earlier today, Google announced their list of selected Google Summer of Code 2008 mentoring organizations, and we are pleased to inform the community that we have been selected once again. This will mark the Drupal project's fourth year of participation in this important program, which provides a great opportunity for the Drupal community to bring in talented new contributors, award existing long-term contributors, and get some exciting new coding projects done at the same time! More information about the program is available in the Google Summer of Code FAQ and program timeline.

Some of Drupal's Summer of Code success stories include:

Aron Novak, a two-time Summer of Code return champion who has done tremendous work on the FeedAPI module and now works for Development Seed.

Fabiano Sant'Ana (wundo), who maintains the widely-used CAPTCHA module recently started the first Brazilian Drupal shop.

Rok Žlender, whose success on the SimpleTest automator led him to be one of those at the forefront of our efforts to integrate unit testing into core. He works full-time with Drupal at NowPublic.

Konstantin Käfer, also with NowPublic, continues to churn out great jQuery-enabled modules and important JavaScript core patches for Drupal.

Angela Byron (webchick) who is now a consultant for high-profile Drupal websites with Lullabot and is on the board of directors for the Drupal Association.

Gábor Hojtsy, an existing Drupal contributor who was able to spend the summer doing extremely important work on i18n in Drupal core and tools for translators, and now spends his days as an engineer for Acquia.

So if you're:

• a post-secondary student looking for an exciting project with a thriving development community and tons of smart people you can work with
• an existing Drupal contributor who happens to be in college/university and would love a chance to get paid over the summer to work on the Next Big Drupal Thing
• a seasoned Drupal developer with some time over the summer, who'd truly enjoy mentoring and helping the next generation of contributors make Drupal the best that it can be
• a Drupal community member who might not have the time or coding experience to mentor, but knows where to find resources and enjoys helping others find them
• someone with a great project idea for an improvement in Drupal that would be perfect for a student to work on over the summer

...then there's something for you in Summer of Code! Read on to find out more. :)

Prospective Students

Remember that it is never too early to start getting involved! Subscribe to the developer mailing list, look over the developer's guide and API reference, catch up on the lessons at the Drupal Dojo and take on a few bite-sized tasks at DROP. Start playing with Drupal and some contributed modules to see what you can do.

Most of all, start thinking about your project proposal. Stop by in #drupal on irc.freenode.net and post your project ideas to the Summer of Code 2008 group to get community feedback, prior to submitting your applications. If your idea has been well-received by the community in advance of your application, this will greatly increase your chances of being accepted to Summer of Code.

The Advice for Students page has more tips for students who want to get involved in Summer of Code. Don't forget that we will start accepting applications on March 24!

Mentors

If you have some free time from now until the end of August, and either experience with Drupal development or expertise in a particular area of interest (for example, newspapers, education...), then please sign up to be a mentor! The more mentors we have, the more students we can take on, and the more diverse types of projects we can accept.

Apply to join the Drupal SoC-2008 Mentors group and the join the Google's SoC mentor web app. These groups are moderated, and your application will be reviewed. Please describe who you are, what your level of Drupal experience is, and your motivation for being a mentor.

The Advice for Mentors page has more tips on mentoring students.

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 2008 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. :)