Submit a Google Summer of Code Project Idea
Those of you who are kicking ideas around, self-organize around one or more that you are enthusiastic about. See if you can write up your idea as a project proposal. What does a proposal need? Take a look at the project ideas for 2018. You'll need a summary, a sketch of the "implementation" needed, a list of the skills a student would want to have to work on the project, a list of one or more mentors willing to work on the project, and a concrete "aim" or outcome to the project.
The application period for organizations began on January 15 and applications are due on February 6. Cris will include in our project application any projects that have solid proposals with listed mentors by Feb. 1. That gives Cris the weekend before the due date to get the projects formatted for listing.
As Paul noted, the awarding of slots is determined by the number of projects we list and the available pool of mentors, so the more projects and mentors we have, the more slots we may be awarded. Ideally every project should have three members for the mentoring team. One is the "project owner" who plays the role of stakeholder and reviews work in progress in light of the overall goals of the project. The other two are the primary and backup mentors. We used this organization last year and it was quite successful.
You do NOT need to list three mentors when you send in your idea. We will try to help drum up mentors later.