Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Python and the Google Highly Open Participation Contest

We are happy to announce that the Python Software Foundation is part of a new Google Open Source program, the Highly Open Participation Contest. This contest is an effort by Google to engage pre-college students in open source programming: Google is offering prizes and awards for completing a variety of tasks for several organizations.

You can read about the overall Google Highly Open Participation Contest, and see Python's GHOP project page.

Pythonistas interested in helping can both suggest more tasks and help mentor participants. Instructions for doing both are available on the project Wiki under NewTaskGuidelines and MentorPage.

A large cast was involved in coming up with the tasks, including Brett Cannon, Collin Winter, Michal Kwiatkowski, Grig Gheorghiu, Greg Wilson, Terry Peppers, Shannon Behrens, Michael Carter, Phil Hassey, and Michael Mol. We would especially like to thank Georg Brandl, Titus Brown, Will Guaraldi, Doug Hellmann, and Andre Roberge for writing up the tasks and creating the project wiki.

Leslie Hawthorn at Google is the contact for this program, and we would like to thank her and Google for inviting the PSF to take part!