[Project-ideas] GSoC Student proposal submission deadline over. Thank you for the ~50 submissions for the organization !

[Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay]

Hi,

To all those who have taken the time and effort to put their proposals
in the system - thank you ! It is somewhat overwhelming that there are
currently ~50 proposals on the dashboard for the organization. Some of
these are really nicely done - crisp, technically sound and,
demonstrate an honest effort from the candidate. A few of these are,
what a first review demonstrates to be a bit vague or, lacking content
on specific areas of the proposal. But, all said and done, the hard
work is now on the mentors - because they will be reviewing the
proposals, scoring them and, expressing their confidence in these.

The mentors are expected to look up the conversations around the
proposal which are present on this mailing list, the conversations on
IRC and, the initial comments during the submission window while
firming up their opinion on the proposals. We are a first time
organization and, a larger cross section of the interested candidates
have no prior association or, affiliation with us. This is an
opportunity for us - to be able to identify those who would be
interested and willing to stick around and contribute to the various
interesting and hard problems of language technology.

The next event (as read from
<http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2012>) is

Interim Period: Mentoring organizations review and rank student
proposals; where necessary, mentoring organizations may request
further proposal detail from the student applicant.

I keep repeating this - the downside of a first time organization is
that the number of slots offered are very few. Which means that we
will be compelled to take some harsh decisions. I'd like to state this
emphatically and upfront - the decisions are not a reflection of your
competencies as a developer - they are simply a part of the game. We
do have plans to participate in other similar programs and also
solicit grants for projects. So, not making the cut for a GSoC is not
the end of the world.

So, thank you once again. We are at the initial stages of a journey
or, perhaps it is better termed as an adventure. In the earlier
segment you put your head down and wrote up the proposal, now it is
our turn to reciprocate. Stay tuned for further updates.

/sankarshan

-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<http://sankarshan.randomink.org/blog/>