Following on the success of the Google Summer of Code program for university students, the Google Code-in is a contest for pre-university students (e.g., high school and secondary school students ages 13-17) with the goal of encouraging young people to participate in open source. A similar program, the Google Highly Open Participation contest ran in 2007, and in 2010 was changed the format slightly and the Google Code-in program was born. Now in its third year the Google Code-in contest continues to reach students from around the globe. There have been 904 students from 65 countries that completed tasks in the Google Code-in contest in the 2010 and 2011 editions of the program.
For many students the Google Code-in contest is their first introduction to open source development. For Google Code-in we work with open source organizations, each of whom has experience mentoring students in the Google Summer of Code program, to provide “bite sized” tasks for participating students to complete.
The tasks are grouped into the following categories:
- Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
- Documentation/Training: Tasks related to creating/editing documents and helping others learn more
- Outreach/Research: Tasks related to community management, outreach/marketing, or studying problems and recommending solutions
- Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
- User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction
Students earn one point for each task completed. Students will receive a certificate for completing one task and can earn a tee shirt when they complete three tasks. At the end of the contest each of the ten (10) open source organizations will name two (2) grand prize winners for their organization based on the students’ body of work. The twenty (20) grand prize winners will receive a trip to Google’s Mountain View, California, USA headquarters for themselves and a parent or legal guardian for an awards ceremony, an opportunity to meet with Google engineers, and have a fun day in the San Francisco sun.
The contest starts on November 26, 2012. Please read the Contest Rules and the google code-in wiki, and if you have any further questions please email the contest discussion list and one of the contest administrators will be happy to point you in the right direction.
The Google Code-In 2012 Timeline
November 12, 2012: 10 mentoring Organizations Named.
November 26, 2012: Program Starts
Sign up at www.google-melange.com
January 14, 2012: Contest Ends
February 4, 2013: 20 Grand Prize winners announced
Late April/Early May 2013: Grand Prize Trip
For More Information
Visit code.google.com/gci