Joomla! invited to join Google Highly Open Participation Contest

[brad]

Would you like a chance to win a trip to the Googleplex, the California headquarters of Google in the heart of the world-famous Silicon Valley, and help Joomla! at the same time?

Well, following on from the success of the Google Summer of Code program, Google has today launched a contest for pre-university students (high school and secondary school students) aimed at encouraging young people to participate in open source projects.  Joomla! is proud to have been invited to join with nine other open source organisations for this pilot program which will run until early February 2008.

The Google Highly Open Participation Contest, or GHOP for short, is intended to offer an opportunity to students who may want to get into open source but don't know where to start.  By working through a number of pre-defined tasks, contestants will be able to engage with the open source community and get involved at a far earlier time than they might otherwise think they could.  At the same time, Joomla! gets the benefit of additional contributions to the project.

For the past two months, a crack team has been working in secret to build a list of tasks that we need help with.  Tasks are not limited to coding; there are 102 tasks to choose from, divided into categories: code, documentation, outreach, quality assurance, research, training, translation and user interface.  Tasks are generally either two or four weeks in duration and have been designed so that students can complete them in their spare time without affecting their studies.  You can see full details of the tasks by visiting the Joomla! GHOP site.  There is a wide range of tasks, including many that require only minimal prior knowledge of Joomla! and each contestant will have access to a task-specific mentor who can offer guidance where needed.  It's a great way to get started on contributing to an open source project and we hope that contestants will have a lot of fun in the process.

As this is a contest it has prizes!  At the conclusion of the contest, each contestant will receive a T-shirt and certificate for successfully completing at least one task and 100 US Dollars for every three tasks successfully completed.  In addition, the Joomla! GHOP judges will evaluate each entry on the basis of creativity, thoroughness, quality of work and community involvement and select one contestant to receive the Grand Prize of a trip to Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California, USA for an award ceremony for the contestant and one parent or guardian.



If you would like to take advantage of this great opportunity then hop on over to the Joomla! GHOP site: http://code.google.com/p/google-highly- ... on-joomla/


More details in the full announcement here: http://www.joomla.org/content/view/4238/1/

All the best to the participants!



Discuss this announcement here: http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,237829.0.html

[brad]

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