Hello all, It's that time of year again and the Mifos Initiative is looking to participate in Google Summer of code for the 10th year. Last year, we had our largest class of interns ever with 17 interns and we look to build upon that growth but can only do so if we have a dedicated group of mentors who are sincere, active, and understand the commitment it takes.
This year we'll once again be having interns work on our Mifos X web and mobile apps, Fineract 1.x and Fineract CN, as well as more projects around our AI for All strategy, our Payment Hub EE and payments integration, our Open Banking layer, and for the first time projects related to OpenG2P. Google Summer of Code applications are due February 19. I am finalizing our application but need to ensure we have a committed group of mentors and a solid ideas list. I have already been discussing ideas with our past GSOC mentors and recent GSOC alum who will becoming mentors for the first time. We'll be adding our mentors and refining our ideas list at: https://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/spaces/RES/pages/2267381810/Google+Summer+of+Code+2021+Ideas GSOC 2021 Details (GOOGLE MADE SOME MAJOR CHANGES TO THE PROGRAM THIS YEAR) The coding program officially runs from June 7 to August 16, 2021. This year in order to increase the reach of GSOC and encourage longer term participation, projects are of a much smaller scale - *175 hour projects spread across 10 weeks vs 350 hour project spread across 12 weeks. * This reflects the recognition that with COVID, students won't have GSOC as their only commitment so we have to narrow the scope of our ideas down to fit into the reduced time commitment cycle and remove our expectation that they have no other commitments outside of school. Stipends for students have also been reduced by half. See Stephanie's email for full details and rationale behind these major changes they're testing out in 2021. 2020 was our biggest year of participation in GSOC to date with 17 interns mentored by the Mifos Initiative. We once again tested the limits of our mentors so I want to emphasize this year that if you express interest in being a mentor, know the commitment it takes. Despite the reduced scope of the projects, it will still take the same level of effort in mentoring the student, scoping and managing the project, etc. so we'll see how these new changes impact our community and long-term retention of contributors. Mifos participation is in addition to whatever participation Apache Fineract might do as part of the umbrella organization, Apache Software Foundation. *Developers!* This program is one of our most impactful ways to extend our software but most importantly grow our community over the long run. Our most active volunteers, committers, and maintainers in the community have all been former GSOC students so if you're a senior community member looking for a great way to give back, this is it! I gave a talk a couple years back that explains how GSOC is truly the lifeblood and organic growth engine for our community - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtxBX7Sbqv0 In case you forgot, here's a link to blogs about past GSOC programs at: https://mifos.org/blog/tag/gsoc/ If interested please *fill out this form* <https://forms.gle/1DbfuBh8aCjNd6Df6> and/or reply to this email thread. If you know someone who would be a good mentor, don't hesitate to invite them. We will later schedule a developer meeting to solidify our list of ideas and answer any questions you might have about mentoring! *Partners & Users!* Regarding our list of Ideas, this year we'll both revisit some of the ideas that weren't picked up last year, continue evolving the apps that students have worked on in the past and try to do more projects on Apache Fineract CN, the Gen 3 architecture, our Open Banking APIs, and OpenG2P. As we did last year, the majority of ideas we'll submit for our application will be related to Mifos X distribution powered by Apache Fineract 1.0 including web app (Community App), mobile apps (field officer, mobile banking, mobile wallet ), and other modules (data import tool, etc.) powered by Apache Fineract as well as our payment integration tools including payment hub and mobile money integrations. You can start adding ideas to our very early stage 2021 ideas page at https://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/spaces/RES/pages/2267381810/Google+Summer+of+Code+2021+Ideas That page is still to be updated for current ideas. We especially need more functional use cases of what the mobile apps should support - if you would like to see new innovation and more development - this is your chance to have your feedback be heard! -- *Ed Cable* President/CEO, Mifos Initiative edca...@mifos.org | Skype: edcable | Mobile: +1.484.477.8649 *Collectively Creating a World of 3 Billion Maries | *http://mifos.org <http://facebook.com/mifos> <http://www.twitter.com/mifos> CHANGES TO 2021 GSOC PROGRAM Hello GSoC Mentors and Org Admins, We are pleased to announce Google Summer of Code 2021 <http://g.co/gsoc>, the 17th consecutive year of the program! As many of you might have heard if you attended the Mentor Summit a couple of weeks ago (or chatted with someone who did) we are making a few changes for the 2021 program. We’ve spent a lot of time evaluating the GSoC program and have been looking at where we can make some changes to help meet the #1 goal of GSoC - bring new, diverse contributors into your communities that stay in your communities after their GSoC program ends. And with the challenges of the pandemic and the strains it has put on everyone’s time (students, mentors and org admins alike) we are looking to provide more flexibility in 2021. What are the changes for 2021 from 2020? 1. *Smaller project size** - *all students participating in the 2021 program will be working on a 175 hour project (instead of a 350 hr project). This change will also result in a few other changes including the student stipend being cut in half. - Currently we are missing out on many wonderful students who could never commit to such a huge project and time commitment but would be great contributors to your community. This is a significant change as we now are no longer strongly encouraging students to focus only on GSoC over their summer. Students have many other responsibilities especially during the pandemic that make it hard for them to spend 30 hours a week on a project. - We realize this is going to require all of you to think about smaller projects and update your project ideas which is why we wanted to give you 3+ months to start talking it through with your communities. - The mentor stipends will be adjusted to $400 per student mentored. In feedback from the mentor summit it was pointed out that the effort from mentors will not be half as much even though the project size is cut in half so we adjusted from $250 to $400. 1. *Shortened coding period* - the *coding period will be 10 weeks* with a lot more flexibility for the mentor and student to decide together how they want to spread the work out over the summer. Some folks may choose to stick to a 17-18 hour a week schedule with their students, others may factor in a couple of breaks during the program (for student and mentor) and some may have students focus 30 hours a week on their project so they wrap up in 6 weeks. This also makes it a lot easier for students with finals or other commitments (weddings, etc.) to adjust their schedules. 2. *2 evaluations (instead of 3)* - There will be an evaluation after 5 weeks and the final evaluation will take place after the 10th week. We are also no longer requiring students complete their first evaluation (though we encourage them to do so), so if a student doesn’t complete the first evaluation they will not automatically be removed from the program. They are still required to complete the final evaluation. 3. *Eligibility requirements* - In 2020 there are many ways students are learning and we want to acknowledge that so we will be allowing students who are 18 years old AND currently enrolled (or accepted into) a post-secondary academic program as of May 17, 2021 or have graduated from a post-secondary academic program between December 1, 2020 and May 17, 2021 to apply to the GSoC program. - What this means is that now the program will be open to folks participating in a variety of different academic programs, not just accredited university programs. This includes licensed coding camps, community colleges, and many other programs that may not be accredited yet but are post-secondary academic programs. These changes were made to help find more diverse students who we hope will stay involved in your communities after their GSoC ends. We look forward to these changes and will definitely be getting feedback from all of you as the 2021 program goes on to see what is working and what we should consider adjusting for any possible future program. The program announcement <https://opensource.googleblog.com/2020/10/google-summer-of-code-2021-is-bringing.html> , timeline <https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/timeline>, marketing materials <https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/resources/marketing> (slide deck, flyers), FAQs <https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/faq>, and short videos <https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/videos> with tips for mentors and students are all available. You'll also notice the 2020 program has now been archived <https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/archive/2020/organizations/>. *Organizations* -- If you would like to apply for the 2021 program please start thinking about the ~175 hr projects you would like students to work on and also reach out to your community members to ask if they would like to be mentors for the program. Having a thorough and well thought out list of Project Ideas is the most important part of your application. Encourage other open source orgs to apply -- Please also consider encouraging other open source projects to apply and be a first time GSoC org - we’re hoping to accept more orgs in 2021 than ever before with a good number of them being first time orgs. When orgs apply they can put your org down as a reference. *Please note that Org applications will open on January 29th. * We are looking forward to another exciting year of GSoC! For any questions about the programs please email us at gsoc-supp...@google.com Best, Stephanie Taylor GSoC Program Lead -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Google Summer of Code Mentors List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to google-summer-of-code-mentors-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-summer-of-code-mentors-list/c6db75dd-0534-41c4-9596-65e2a64772f9n%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/google-summer-of-code-mentors-list/c6db75dd-0534-41c4-9596-65e2a64772f9n%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> .
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