Hello Mifos & Fineract communities, It's that time of year again and the Mifos Initiative is looking to participate in Google Summer of Code once more. This would be our eleventh year of participation. Our application has been submitted and we're in the process of refining our ideas list in case we do get selected. If we are selected to participate this year, I want to be deeply cognizant of having a committed set of mentors and backup mentors who will be available for the duration of the program to mentor their students in an engaged fashion.
Last year, despite having a smaller number of projects than normal (just ten) we struggled to provide the ideal mentoring experience for our interns and some of our mentors had to take on extra capacity to guide their interns. GSOC still represents a great way to attract highly talented individuals and begin to pass the torch onto the next generation of contributors so it's a great way for our more seasoned community members to participate and give back. We already have a strong set of mentors who have expressed their interest and their commitment to mentor this year but we're still seeking more so we can have redundancy and ensure we deliver our interns the enriching experience and professional and personal growth they deserve. While Apache Software Foundation is applying separately, under the umbrella of the Mifos Initiative, we will focus on our suite of Mifos mobile and web apps for staff and customers but also target projects for Fineract 1.x with a primary focus on peripheral innovation on the edge or making progress on ongoing refactoring, code stability, security improvements, testing coverage growth, etc around the back-end. While we haven't refined the ideas significantly, we will also target work on the Payment Hub, our AI for All strategy, additional modules on top of Fineract, Open Banking and 3PPI APIs and G2P related efforts like OpenG2P. With the project ideas we'll be targeting and focusing on, we'll aim for those on the back-end and Fineract to not impact core development or put overall quality of the platform at risk. We'll hear back on the status of our application by Feb 22 and if accepted, interns can begin applying March 20. We'll be adding our mentors and refining our ideas list at: https://mifosforge.jira.com/wiki/spaces/RES/pages/3296690177/Google+Summer+of+Code+2023+Ideas If you have any questions please contact me or or other org admins @Rahul Goel <rahul.usi...@gmail.com> and @Sanyam Goel <sanyam.bvco...@gmail.com> To express interest in mentoring, please fill the form out at https://forms.gle/7X5c138tDJnmKTzC9 If you have ideas you'd like to list, please reach out to me or the other org admins and we'll help get them added to the wiki page. Later on, I will schedule a community-wide Zoom meeting to have a discussion on potential ideas and answer questions of prospective mentors Most of the changes that took place in 2022 have carried over to the 2023 program. These major changes are listed below. (1) Starting in 2022, the program will be *open to all newcomers of open source* that are 18 years and older, *no longer focusing solely on university students**.* (2) GSoC Contributors will be able to choose from multiple size projects ~175 hour (medium) and 350 hour (large). (3) Google is building increased flexibility around the timing of projects - there is an option to extend the standard 12 week coding time frame to a maximum of 22 weeks More on the 2023 program can be found at https://developers.google.com/open-source/gsoc/resources/downloads/GSoC2023Presentation.pdf The program starts slightly earlier this year with the coding program officially beginning May 29 and for the standard duration projects ending on August 8 and for the extended duration projects November 6. -- *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>
