Google Code-in 2011-2012 Started!

Posted on by

At the time this article was published there were about 54 days left to participate. Register as a student and start claiming your task today!

Just to remind you what is all about, here are some data about the contest (extracted from the official site):

  • Description

    The Google Code-in aim to (1) encourage and inspire pre-university students to participate in open source development, (2) help open source projects identify and bring in new contributors, and (3) provide pre-university students interested in computer science and other fields with exposure to real-world software development, including coding work, localization, documentation and open source community involvement. Google worked with various Open Source Organizations and developed a list of Tasks that Participants can attempt to complete. Judges will choose winning entries in accordance with the Official Rules and prizes will be awarded to eligible winning Participants.

  • Eligibility

    The Contest is open to individual students who are at least thirteen (13) years of age and no older than seventeen (17) years of age on November 21, 2011 who are currently enrolled in a pre-university, high school or secondary school program, and who have agreed to the Rules (“Participants”). You must demonstrate the consent of a parent or legal guardian in order to be eligible to receive any prizes as well as written proof of age and proof of enrollment in a pre-university, high school or secondary school program (home schooled kids are eligible too).

  • Contest period

    The Contest begins at 12:00:00 A.M. Pacific Time (PT) Zone in the United States on November 21, 2011 and ends at 11:59:59 P.M. PT on January 16, 2012. You are responsible for determining the corresponding time zone in your respective locations.

  • Judging

    Each Entry will be judged by a panel of experts (the “Judges”) associated with the Open Source Organization that defined the corresponding Task. Open Source Organizations will judge each Entry according to the following equally weighted factors: (1) Creativity, (2) Thoroughness, and (3) Quality of Work. Each Entry determined by the judges to be a successful completion of the relevant Task (i.e., meeting all stated requirements) will be deemed a Completed Entry. Grand Prize Winners will be chosen on the basis of the number of points earned by completing tasks throughout the contest. Tasks deemed by the Open Source Organization as “easy” are worth 1 point, tasks deemed “medium” are worth 2 points, and tasks deemed “hard” are worth 4 points. The ten entries with the highest cumulative scores will be considered the Grand Prize Winners.

  • Prizes for completed entries

    Each Participant submitting at least one (1) Completed Entry will receive one T-shirt with an approximate value of $24 USD (twenty four U.S. dollars). For every three (3) Completed Entries submitted by a Participant, that Participant will receive a $100 USD (one hundred U.S. dollars) prize up to a maximum of $500. Participants may submit as many Entries as they choose but each eligible Participant is limited to one T-shirt and $500 USD (five hundred U.S. dollars) in prizes. No prizes in excess of this limit will be awarded, unless the Entrant is a Grand Prize Winner.

  • Prizes for Grand Prize Winners

    The Grand Prize Winners will receive a paid trip to Google’s Headquarters in Mountain View, California, USA in addition to any other prizes. Each Grand Prize Winner will receive round-trip coach air transportation for himself/herself and one parent or legal guardian from the major airport nearest the Participant’s residence, hotel accommodations for two people for four nights, and all meals.

  • Participating Open Source Organizations

    Apertium, FreeBSD, GNOME Project, Haiku, Hedgewars Project, KDE, LimeSurvey, MoinMoin Wiki, OpenIntents, openSUSE Project, Parrot Foundation, PySoy Cloud Game Engine, RTEMS Project, Sahana Software Foundation, SymPy, The Perl Foundation, Tux4Kids, VideoLAN.

Right now there are 2586 tasks posted by participating Open Source Organizations. It’s impossible to not find something you can do, with patience searching. Grab them while they’re hot!

Leave a Reply