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Google is looking for great young software developers to participate in its upcoming Google Code-in 2013 and Google Summer of Code 2014 events.
The latest editions of the Google Code-in, which is for 13- to 17-year-old students, and the Summer of Code 2014, which is for college students, were announced by Carol Smith and Stephanie Taylor of Google’s open-source programs, in an Oct. 8 post on the Google Developers Blog.
“At Google we are passionate about introducing students from around the world to open source software development,” wrote Smith and Taylor. “Since 2005, Google has worked with over 10,000 students and over 440 open source projects in a variety of fields to create more code for the masses.”
Now new groups of student developers are being sought for the next editions of the two events, starting with the Google Code-in sign-ups on Nov. 18.
“For the fourth consecutive year we are thrilled to announce Google Code-in, an international contest designed to introduce 13-17 year old pre-university students to the world of open source development,” they wrote. “Open source projects are about more than just coding, and this contest highlights a variety of ways to contribute to open source projects. Every year, open source software is becoming more important around the globe; from government, healthcare, relief efforts, gaming, to large tech companies and everything in between.”
The Code-in runs for seven weeks, during which competing students will work with 10 selected open-source projects on a variety of tasks, according to Google. “These projects have all successfully served as mentoring organizations in previous Google Code-in contests or have worked with university students in our sister program, Google Summer of Code,” wrote Smith and Taylor. The 10 tasks include coding, documentation and training, quality assurance, user interfaces and more.
More than 1,200 students from 71 countries have competed in the last three years, according to Google. “In April, we flew the 20 Google Code-in 2012 Grand Prize winners and a parent to Google’s Mountain View, Calif., headquarters for a 5 day/4 night trip where they enjoyed talking with Google engineers, an awards ceremony, a Google campus tour, and a full day of fun in San Francisco,” wrote Smith and Taylor.
Details on how to sign up to compete are available at the Google Code-in 2013 Website. On Nov. 1, Google will announce the 10 open-source organizations that will be participating in this year’s competition.
Google Seeks Student Coders for Code-In, Summer of Code Events
Applications for the Summer of Code 2014 program will open in March, wrote Smith in a separate Oct. 8 post on the Google Official Blog. The Summer of Code, which invites college students to learn about the world of open-source code development, began in 2005 and will celebrate its 10th year in 2014. So far, the program has involved some 8,500 college and university students from more than 100 countries who have created more than 50 million lines of code since the program’s start.
“In addition to our other programs to build and support the contributor base, we thought a great way to increase awareness was to introduce the wide world of open source to college students,” wrote Smith. “Google Summer of Code was born: [to] match student developers from around the world with open source software organizations to work on a project while on break from their universities.”
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the program, Google representatives will make 10 visits to countries with high participation throughout the year and will hold 10 developer events in promotion of the program, wrote Smith. Google will also hike its student stipends for the program this year to $5,500 for students who successfully complete the project. A 10-year student reunion event will also be held at Google’s campus next year for all the students who have participated in the program.
“We’re pleased to be running a program that touches a lot of lives around the world, and we hope this will be a celebration of all the accomplishments we’ve seen from so many of our participants,” wrote Smith.
Google is also active in a variety of educational awards programs each year.
In June, Google announced the 39 recipients of its 2013 Ph.D. Fellowship program, which the search giant promotes as a way to gain new insights and innovations from some of the best minds in colleges and universities around the world. Google launched its Ph.D. Fellowship Program in 2009 to recognize and support outstanding graduate students who were pursuing work in computer science, related disciplines or promising research areas. In the first year of the program, 13 United States Ph.D. students were awarded fellowships. The program has since been extended to Europe, China, India and Australia.
In February, Google sought applicants for its sixth annual Google Policy Fellowship Program, which brings interested college and university students together to spend their summers immersed in the world of Internet policy as Google Policy Fellows.
Also in February, Google awarded its first-ever Google App Engine Research Awards to seven projects that will use the App Engine platform’s abilities to work with large data sets for academic and scientific research. The new program, which was announced in the spring of 2012, brought in many proposals for a wide variety of scientific research, including in subject areas such as mathematics, computer vision, bioinformatics, climate and computer science.