Google Code In 2011 Announced

The 2011 edition of Google Code-In has been announced.  Google Code-In is a unique opportunity for up and coming hackers.  It is a competition, an open source development contest for 13-17 year old students around the world. The purpose of the Google Code-in competition is to give students everywhere an opportunity to explore the world of open source development. We not only run open source software throughout our business, we also value the way the open source model encourages people to work together on shared goals over the Internet.

Each participating project identifies a variety of tasks which students can choose to perform.  Tasks are not just coding - they can involve documentation, testing, or outreach.  These are the categories:

1. Code: Writing or refactoring code
2. Documentation: Creating and editing documents
3. Outreach: Community management and outreach, as well as marketing
4. Quality Assurance: Testing and ensuring code is of high quality
5. Research: Studying a problem and recommending solutions
6. Training: Helping others learn more
7. Translation: Localization (adapting code to your region and language)
8. User interface: User experience research or user interface design and interaction

Black stickers are friom Google Code-In task

The RTEMS Project was fortunate to be one of the twenty organization that participated in the 2010 edition of Google Code-In. We identified about 150 potential tasks had almost 100 tasks done by a variety of students.  One of the highlights was a new RTEMS logo which we are using on stickers and project calling cards. Another student modified the shell scripts which generate our test coverage reports to add a timeline capability.  Some students created Wiki pages for the Board Support Packages that did not have one.  And still other students created question sets for the RTEMS Moodle.

The RTEMS Project is planning on applying again this year.  We have some new tasks in mind for those students who volunteer.  It was an interesting and challenging holiday season for the RTEMS mentors.  I know that I personally did a lot of Google Code-In mentoring and task approval using my phone while visiting family.  We are looking forward to the opportunity be a part of Google Code-In 2011 and to be challenged by the students.