Hi,
Starting today, candidates of Google Summer of Code and FOSS Outreach for Women can submit their proposals officially. See
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2014
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/FOSS_Outreach_Program_for_Women/Round_8
We are hosting an IRC meeting to answer the questions of candidates and mentors tomorrow Tuesday, March 11, at 15:00 UTC (New Delhi 20:30, Amsterdam 16:00, San Francisco 8:00 AM).
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20140311T08&p1=...
As Wikimedia did in previous rounds, we are extending the rules of these projects with a requirement on transparency. All candidates must draft their proposals in mediawiki.org pages, and they must list themselves in the tables of candidates at the pages linked above.
This allows the whole community to watch and get involved in discussions at the related wiki pages, Bugzilla reports, and this list. Please keep an eye to new submissions. Whoever you are, your feedback is welcome.
Candidates must submit their proposals directly to GSoC and OPW as well, but thanks to our application template this shouldn't imply more work that copy & paste:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Mentorship_programs/Application_template
This time we also have many new mentors. Please get familiar with the timeline of the programs. Your most important task now is to assess your candidates, based on their proposal but also on practical assignments like fixing real bugs related to their projects.
By April 7 we will communicate to Google how many slots we want, based on the projects proposed that we believe that can succeed. This year the definition of success will be based on measurable outcome: new feature functional, merged, and deployed in Wikimedia Labs at least.
Candidates and mentors willing to pass the cut must work with this goal in mind. Cmpared with last year, we will focus more on the quality of the projects, not worrying about the quantity of projects we get.