Google Code-In 2014 Application Wiki

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Utilize this wiki to organize our application for Google's Code-In 2014 contest. Our plan is to have an initial application draft ready this Friday November 7th. Please edit this wiki and add your feedback. Application URL @ http://www.google-melange.com/gci/org/application/google/gci2014

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Organization id: Drupal
Organization ID is used as part of various URL links throughout the site. You may reuse the same id for different years of the program. ASCII alphanumeric characters, digits, and underscores only.

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Organization name: Drupal

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Organization description:

"Come for the software, stay for the community"

Drupal is an open source content management platform powering millions of websites and applications. It’s built, used, and supported by an active and diverse community of people around the world.

Use Drupal to build everything from personal blogs to enterprise applications. Thousands of add-on modules and designs let you build any site you can imagine. Join us today as we finalize our newest version of Drupal that might change the world!

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Organization home page url: https://www.drupal.org/

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Main organization license: GNU General Public License version 2.0 (GPLv2)

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Veteran/New: Veteran
Choose veteran if have participated in this program in the previous years

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Backup Admin: slashrsm
The username of the user who will serve as the backup admin for this organization.

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Why would you organization like to participate in Google Code-in 2014?:

Similar to finding a talented programmer to work on any type of project, open source contributors are not easy to find. As a mentoring organization Drupal believes that Code-In is the perfect opportunity to attract the next generation of contributors as early as possible. Over the years Code-In (and SoC) have provided our organization invaluable resources of students working on our project. Not only are students working on tasks during the GCI/GSoC programs, but we're retaining contributors better than anyone in our community dreamed. Our goal is to continue this trend by mentoring students interested in not only web development, but mentoring students to properly join a community of people from around the world contributing to a system that is literally changing the world. Plus it is fair to say that Drupal is not only benefiting from these resources, but we're educating students on many skills not taught in school such as community collaboration in a virtual environment. Not to mention it seems the students seem to have a bit of fun working with us.

On another note, our newest version of Drupal (8) released our first beta a few weeks ago. This is perfect timing for students to participate in a variety of tasks such as documentation, testing, code, and more. Drupal 8 is a major step forward for our community, but will have an even larger impact in the world of open source web related development. This is the perfect chance for students to learn that Drupal 8 will change the world and provide students an advantage in learning the newest/hottest trends in web.

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What years has your organization participated in Google Summer of Code? Please indicate the years you have participated in Google Code-in or GHOP if applicable.

Drupal participated in Google Summer of Code in 2005-2012 and 2014. Drupal has participated in Code-In during 2008, 2010, and 2013.

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**Please provide a link to your tasks page. This is one of the most important parts of your application as it lets us see what type of work you plan to have the students work on for Google Code-in and shows you already have some ideas of the types of tasks students would work on. Please be sure to include at least 5 tasks from each of the 5 categories and include a few beginner tasks as well. This is similar to the Google Summer of Code Ideas page. **

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sFf5wnuCSkNauNw26-Kml0snplF4Fx0j...

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What programming languages does your organization use?

PHP, Javascript, CSS

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What is the main development mailing list for your organization? This question will be shown to students who would like to get more information about applying to your organization for Google Code-in 2014. If your organization uses more than one list, please make sure to include a description of the list so students know which to use.

Main listing of lists @ https://drupal.org/mailing-lists, but more specifically. http://lists.drupal.org/listinfo/development

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What is the main IRC channel for your organization?

IRC channel #Drupal on freenode is the "main channel", but we have many sub channels. Specifically for this program we have #drupal-google

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Please tell us about how your organization has prepared for Google Code-in, including what (and how many) mentors and organization administrators have agreed to help, what your schedule and response time will be during the holidays (and otherwise during the contest period) and how you plan to deal with unresponsive mentors.

Each year Drupal continues to promote our GSoC/GCI initiatives within our community and we're excited to be prepared for GCI 2014. A major realization is that it is important to work on GSoC/GCI throughout the entire year and keep an open task list to document ideas as they come up. Creating an open to the public Google Spreadsheet allowed anyone to sign up as a mentor and/or add task ideas. Keeping our task list in a spreadsheet has prepared us to easily import tasks into Melange if we're accepted.

In terms of internal community reach out and overall advertising of our initiatives, our biggest asset has been Drupalcon. Our community organizes two major conferences each year named Drupalcon and we have successfully organized birds of a feather style meetings this year at both Drupalcon Austin (https://groups.drupal.org/node/424843) and Drupalcon Amsterdam (https://groups.drupal.org/node/440663). Even though we write blogs about our work and communicate with as many people as possible virtually we find it is best to recruit participants in person when we have a chance to explain the awesome benefits of both programs. In addition, these in person meetings provide a chance for mentors to meet in person to discuss positive/negative experiences. Our next goal is for GSoC/GCI out reach is for volunteering alumni to do presentations about their work at local Drupal meetups in hopes of sparking interest in both student and mentors.

During the GCI 2013 Grand Prize Trip we noticed that organizations had prepared gift bags for their winning students. As it turns out, it is not easy to collect various types of Drupal items on short notice. Since that time we have started an internal initiative to collect various pieces of cool Drupal memorabilia to provide our Grand Prize students. In 2014, we plan to provide Grand Prize students with an awesome gift bag of Drupal goodies such as tshirts, stickers, buttons, books, and more to take home. In 2013, we realized that utilizing DrupalLadder.org with GCI students is a win-win situation. Drupal Ladder is a system created to help new users to Drupal get started and learn on their own in a variety of topics. Not only can students learn how to get started contributing to Drupal, but they can also update the documentation to improve the experience for future users. Since many students are a bit younger with minimal technical experience we advise new students to start with introduction tasks related to learning various Drupal Ladders. Example, our most common ladder is the "Drupal Core Ladder" which is built up of multiple "lessons" a student finishes in order to complete the entire "ladder" enabling them to contribute to our project. Example of the Drupal Core Ladder and it's lessons at http://drupalladder.org/ladder/ee503327-50be-1904-8d04-9499098cad64

At this time of application, we have 20+ mentors from around the world that have already signed up and more than several mentors interested in helping if Drupal is selected as a mentoring organization. Many of the mentors are returning alumni from previous year of GSoC/GCI. Plus we're excited to see many of our GSoC 2014 students stepping up to help mentor GCI students.

Our "core mentor" group is made up of four individuals from three regions of the world including Asia, Europe, and North American. Two of our core mentors (Matthew and Janez) have participated in both GSoC/GCI as organization admins for Drupal in previous years and are confident in the upcoming challenges faced by both mentors and students. A third member of our team (Varun) participated in our "gci core mentor" group last year and helped play a role as backup mentor in several scenarios. Finally, our fourth core team member (Chandan) represented Drupal at the GSoC 2014 Reunion as a delegate (and was one of our top GSoC 2014 students). Chandan is excited to help ensure students can easily start working on tasks.

A priority is to provide students with mentors from around the world in various time zones. This will ensure we can keep up with various questions in a global economy without too much conflict of schedule or holidays. New this year we have built a list of "backup mentors" whom are available to step in if another mentor disappears. Internally within our org, we decided mentors have 36 hours to respond to student questions/review and after that time one of our "backup mentors" will be available to step in to help. Our "backup of the backup" falls to our core mentor group who's responsibility is to monitor/verify questions are responded to within 36 hours and will step in if a backup mentor is not available. When a mentor has stopped responding for more than 36 hours, our core team of mentors will assign tasks to new mentors. Finally, when mentors register, we requested they document time they won't be available due to holidays.

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Comments

REVIEW PLZ

Slurpee's picture

This is a rough draft of what will be submitted to Google as our Code-In 2014 application. Please review it's content and comment if you find any information that should be changed. Deadline is submit application is Nov 10th 2014.

Only PHP is listed here as

cs_shadow's picture

Only PHP is listed here as the programming language. Shouldn't we also add Javascript (especially) and CSS (might not be a great idea) which are also widely used in Drupal.

Submitted, now we wait.

Slurpee's picture

Drupal's application for Google Code-In 2014 has been officially submitted in Melange. At time of application we have 20+ mentors signed up and 120+ tasks organized. Google will announce the 10-12 accepted organizations on Wednesday November 12th. If we're accepted, we will need more mentors and tasks. More info soon...