Google Code-In as an OIC opportunity

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

In today's call, discussing prospects for finding other kinds of interoperability testing without coordinated plugfests, I mentioned Google Code-In.  I promised to dig deeper.  Here is what I found.

 - Dennis

First, Google Summer of Code stipends are now $5,000 USD and I can understand why some of the students are pretty competitive when there is a single choice among ones with similar proposals.  I've contracted code for less.

See <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code>.  

Google Code-In is the annual program for pre-university students.  Because students are generally under 18, there are no stipends.  There are certificates and bling (T-shirts).  There is also a free trip to Google for the two grand prize winners from a single sponsoring organization. 

Google Code-In 2012 started on 2012-11-26 and ended on 2013-01-14 (so the end-of-year holiday period is included).  <http://www.google-melange.com/gci/document/show/gci_program/google/gci2012/help_page>.

Generally, sponsoring organizations provide mentors and have had experience sponsoring GSoC projects.  QA and documentation are allowed activities.  

Here's the current status,
<https://developers.google.com/open-source/gci/2012/>,
<http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2013/02/google-code-in-2012-grand-prize-winners.html>.
There were 10 mentoring organizations and hundreds of participating students.  The list of mentoring organizations seems to be empty, though.

We're a bit short on the mentoring side, though.  I think OASIS would be the organization.  If the same time-line is used for GCI 2013, it will be announced, with a request for participating organizations, in September 2013.  

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