Just thought I would mention a couple of things about GSOC.
First, thanks to all for the interest. It is great to see ML alive and well in universities. We have several good applications already. Since the ASF is only alloted a certain number of picks, we go through an internal ranking process to decide which projects get them (they try to spread them out over many projects). So, while we have 4 willing mentors, it doesn't necessarily mean we will get that many students.
However, to go along with that I would encourage all students to go through their proposals and make sure they can fill in details about their plans as much as possible, as well as their bios, etc. Also, please don't be shy about discussing your plans here. One of the requirements of doing this project is going to be to interact with your mentor and the community.
Finally, I would certainly like to encourage those who don't get selected to stick around and contribute. I am sure others in the community can vouch for this: being an active contributor/committer to a project like this is a real edge when it comes to getting a job doing what you want to do. Think about being in a job interview for a ML company and saying, yeah: I contributed algorithm X to Mahout which was used to by Y on a 100 node cluster, or I contributed these 10 patches to Mahout plus I'm an active discussion participant, go look it up. It gives potential employers an incredible track record to review and shows you know how to get along with others in a "work" environment.
At any rate, enough of the pep talk. Good luck to you all, I look forward to evaluating the ideas!
Cheers, Grant
