I recently received confirmation from Symmetry that SAOC 2022 is
a go!
SOAC is open to anyone over 18 who is interested in helping to
strengthen the D ecosystem. Preference is given to undergraduate
and postgraduate students, but anyone is welcome to apply.
Participants are paid a small stipend across three monthly
milestones to work at least 20 hours per week on a project that's
beneficial to the D ecosystem. Then, at the end of the fourth and
final milestone, at least one participant is awarded with a final
$1000 payment and a free trip to the next real-world DConf.
Given that we had no DConf in 2020 and 2021, one SAOC awardee
each from the 2019 and 2020 editions, and two from the 2021
edition, are attending DConf '22. If you apply to SAOC 2022, then
it could be you hanging out on a free trip to DConf '23.
Even if you don't receive the final award, SAOC opens doors to
internships and jobs, as some of our past participants have
learned. It also provides you with material to present at a
future DConf: one of our DConf '22 speakers was a runner-up who
wasn't awarded the free trip, but got a free trip anyway when her
talk was accepted.
We're also looking for potential mentors. Applicants are
encourage to seek out experienced D programmers to act as mentors
prior to sending in their applications, but those who don't will
still have some time to find one if they are accepted. If you are
interested in mentoring a SAOC participant, please let us know at
soc...@dlang.org so that we can help match you up with someone if
the need arises. Mentors receive a one-time payment of $500 at
the end of the event.
For everyone else, please help us [curate the projects
repository](https://github.com/dlang/projects/issues). This is a
list of D ecosystem project ideas in general, but can be a good
source of ideas for SAOC applicants. Candidate SAOC projects
should require at least 4 months of work at 20 hours per week,
and should be tagged with the SAOC tag.
All of the details on everything I've mentioned here can be found
at the SAOC 2022 page:
https://dlang.org/blog/symmetry-autumn-of-code/
