Preparation during Spring, 2011

This may be of particular interest to students considering getting an early start with Sahana for GSOC 2012, although details are subject to change.

The Sahana Community Development Committee would like to welcome everyone to the 2011 Sahana Google Summer of Code and is excited to be a mentoring organization in 2011. Sahana has successfully been a part of the Google Summer of Code every year from 2006 through 2010. These involvements have been very effective in building both the project and the community, so we are looking forward to having another productive year as well.

Instructions on how to participate in the Google Summer of Code are available from the main GSOC site which is used for managing the program. The FAQ provides a lot of useful information about the program and how it works. Please also review the terms of service and the timeline. Interested students should subscribe to the appropriate GSOC discussion lists.

Most open source projects are about developing tools for open source developers as a social good. Sahana software projects are different; they are about providing open source solutions for disaster victims and those seeking to help disaster victims. It is about the essence of humanitarianism; doing good in the world. Completing a project for the Sahana Software Foundation as part of the Google Summer of Code is a great way to contribute to the world and to learn about open source software.

The vision of the Sahana Software Foundation is to build and sustain a global open and collaborative community of contributors to information and communications technologies for disaster management. We have a strong commitment to free and open source community development. We have been a mentoring organization for the Google Summer of Code every year since 2006, and have a deep team of mentors who are experienced at working with new contributors to Sahana software projects.

The Sahana Software Foundation was established in 2009 to govern Sahana free and open source disaster management software projects as a non-profit organization to serve the needs and requirements of a diverse group of customers: Government agencies and jurisdictions at the national, provincial or state, and local levels; UN Agencies, international and local charitable organizations (NGOs); communities & disaster victims; technology companies & software developers. The mission of the Sahana Software Foundation is to help alleviate human suffering by giving emergency managers, disaster response professionals and communities access to the information that they need to better prepare for and respond to disasters through the development and promotion of free and open source software and open standards.Our software projects are some of the few humanitarian free and open source software (FOSS) projects that are now revolutionizing information management for international disaster response operations. Sahana software was originally developed in Sri Lanka in the immediate aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami by members of the Sri Lankan IT community who wanted to find a way to apply their talents towards helping their country recover from that disaster. (Sahana means “relief” in Sinhalese, one of the national languages of Sri Lanka).

Since 2004, work on Sahana software has grown into a global effort with hundreds of volunteer contributors from dozens of countries working on multiple FOSS projects supported a non-profit organization. Sahana software has supported national and local authorities and relief agencies respond to numerous large scale sudden onset disasters, including, most recently, the Haiti earthquake, flooding in Pakistan, and the February 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The best way to reach our community and designated mentors for support and questions is through our main discussion e-mail list. We invite all students to please subscribe to discuss@lists.sahanafoundation.org. We use IRC as the main channel of live communication and support. Our main chat room is #sahana on freenode (irc.freenode.net). For those without a chat client, freenode has a web-based chat page. You can visit the Sahana Community IRC page for more information. Please send any questions you may have and please identify yourself as a GCI particpant and you will be warmly received.

Our wiki will contain all updated information about the Sahana Software Foundation's GSOC program here on our main Sahana 2011 Google Summer of Code page, as well as general information about Sahana and our work. All announcements will be made on the wiki, through our discussion list, and/or on the Sahana Software Foundation website.

For more information: Contact Sahana's Google Summer of Code Program Administrators at gsoc at sahanafoundation dot org

Sahana Software Foundation GSOC 2011 Ideas Page

Thoughts:

• Keep the scope of the projects small, but ensure that they are done thoroughly

• Prior GSOC Students with the Sahana Software Foundation will be considered as applicants this year.
• Students must submit a bug fix for the project first. (Please engage with proposed mentors to identify an appropriate bug that will demonstrate your skills and capabilities).
• Students should get involved with projects now
• Our priorities and project ideas are likely to be weighted more favorably.

Visit SSF 2011 GSOC Student Guidelines for a full list of student guidelines, including the required application template.

Interested in mentoring? We are recruiting experienced Sahana contributors - both developers and domain experts, to serve as mentors again this year. Former Sahana GSOC students are strongly encouraged to help mentor Sahana GSOC projects. We will assign two mentors to every project - a primary technical mentor (an experienced Sahana developer) and a backup who may be a domain expert or another technical resource - which helps balance the time commitment required to be able to effectively contribute. Please sign up as a mentor on our mentor sign up form (tba).

• Mentors are responsible for reviewing & merging student code & maintianing it after the end of GSOC.

See SSF GSOC Mentor Responsibilities for more information.