Planet SoC

By Shawn Pearce, Open Source Team and Git Developer

Many of you may remember our most recent episode of the Google Summer of Code™ podcast, Getting Giddy with Git. Now that we’re heading into the program home stretch, we’re back with an update on the success (and failures) of Summer of Code within the Git community.

LH sez check it out….

A few months back, Fitz was kind enough to introduce me to Craig Wacker of the MacArthur Foundation. Craig had been hoping to glean some insights into our management of the Summer of Code program, and we spent some quality time brainstorming about the next Digital Media and Learning Competition.

And where I’ve been hiding…

Actually, I’ve been hiding right in plain sight. Life is busy as usual ‘round Hawthorn Landings, so here’s the quick list of what’s been going on since my last posts on kittenly-joy and Twitter deliberations.

• Our 10 GHOP Grand Prize Winners visited the Googleplex and a great time was had by all.
• Came down with a nasty cold directly thereafter and missed Foo Camp. Boo!

By By Michael Hanselmann, Systems Administration Team

In mid-July 2008 we had the fourth instance of the Open Source Jam in Zurich, an event for Open Source developers and users to meet, collaborate and network. This time it was a combined event with Google Summer of Code™ participants.

By Ajay Kumar, 2008 Student for the Sahana project

At the end of July, several Google Summer of Code™ students got a chance to visit Google Bangalore. This being my first Summer of Code, I was very excited to visit the Google office and get a feel of what life is like when you work at Google. We had a bunch of students visit from all across India, and getting to meet them in person after days of talking on IRC added to the excitement!

By Marcus D. Hanwell, Google Summer of Coder

On Tuesday, July 15th, I had the opportunity to visit the Google Pittsburgh office. I had visited once before for a talk given one evening. I thought it was a great opportunity to meet other participants in Google Summer of Code™ along with Googlers that were into free/open source software.

For Episode 18 of the Google Summer of Code™ podcast, we were fortunate enough to be joined by two mentors from the Git project, Shawn Pearce and Johannes Schindelin. Among other topics, we discussed the pleasures and perils of distributed version control systems, preparing an organization’s application for Summer of Code, and some of the amazing work already completed by Git’s 2008 GSoCers. You’ll also get to learn the secret of Shawn’s IRC handle and Johannes’ commit messages, in addition to hearing about some great features in Git created by Summer of Coders and useful advice on engaging student developers in your community.

Many thanks to Johannes and Shawn for joining us!

T-shirts never expire.

That is all.

This kitten with no name is now known as Scarlett:

My kitten is still awesome, still named Ripley and still named after Sigourney Weaver’s character from Alien and Aliens.

So. Cute.

By Leslie Hawthorn, Open Source Team