As promised, we’re back with another OSS Project Spotlight, where we present the projects taking part in this year’s RGSoC! If you want to check the other projects, part 1 is here. Without further ado, here are the OSS Projects of our second instalment:
A few weeks ago we launched a small poll on twitter to see if you were interested in knowing more about Open Source projects, diversity-and-inclusion-related initiatives and best practices on how to contribute to Open Source. The response was overwhelmingly positive and today we are marking the beginning of a new series of content dedicated to OSS projects. And what better way to start this than to celebrate the projects that are participating in RGSoC 2018?
We would like to introduce you to the OSS Project Spotlight: a short summary of the projects to give you a glimpse of what each project is about. We hope you enjoy it and find this information useful!
And that’s a wrap! The crowdfunding campaign is officially closed — this means that any money we receive from now on will be used to sponsor next year’s teams — and we are now ready to announce the all of the teams that will be part of RGSoC 2018!
Before we dive into any details regarding this year’s teams, we want to give a heartfelt thank you to all the individual donors (some of you even donated more than once!) and the new sponsors that joined us in the past few weeks.
As you know, we have already announced a cool batch of teams some time ago and last week we revealed that we were able to add Team Popcorn as well. The great news is that during the past few days we raised enough funds to sponsor another 3 teams: GirlsCode MK, DV Team and Sectumsempra. This means that RGSoC 2018 will sponsor 13 teams (7 full-time and 6 part-time) from 9 locations.
Thank you again for all your support. Now let’s start the countdown for the Summer of Code!
Location: New Delhi, India
Project: Servo
Location: New Delhi, India
Project: Probot
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Project: EBWiki
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Project: Exercism
Location: Milton Keynes, UK
Project: Bahmi
Location: New Delhi, India
Project: Chapel
Location: Bangalore, India
Project: ifme.org
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Project: PublicLab
Location: New Delhi, India
Project: Tessel
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Project: LivingStyleGuide
Location: Berlin, Germany
Project: Nextcloud
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Project: Stretchly
Location: Seoul, South Korea
Project: Babel
You Are Accepted To RGSoC 2018! from Rails Girls Summer of Code on Vimeo.
Every year, as we send the acceptance emails to the teams who get into the program, we try to imagine how the applicants reacted when they read the news. For RGSoC 2018 we decided to do things differently: instead of sending an email, we scheduled a call with them and told them ourselves!
At the beginning, we felt as nervous as our applicants, but after the initial nervousness had faded, we had a blast “playing Oprah”. We just knew we had to share this joy with you, so here is a video of their reactions.
Location: New Delhi, India
Project: Servo
Location: New Delhi, India
Project: Probot
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Project: EBWiki
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Project: Exercism
Location: Bangalore, India
Project: ifme.org
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
Project: PublicLab
Location: New Delhi, India
Project: Tessel
Location: Amsterdam, Netherlands
Project: Stretchly
Location: Seoul, South Korea
Project: Babel
By taking on board these 9 teams, we have officially passed the 200 RGSoC scholars mark! However, after receiving 195 applications in 2018 and training 20 teams each edition for the past 3 years, we couldn’t close the crowdfunding campaign just yet. We want to change more lives!
This means we will be extending our campaign until the 15th of May, and the spots will be given to a batch of teams we have on a waiting list. As we raise more money, we will secure those teams one by one and share this publicly. We really hope to sponsor all of the teams on the waiting list — what can we say? We are believers!
How can you help us make the dreams of these candidates come true by participating at RGSoC? Besides donating to our crowdfunding campaign (if you can, of course), it would be great if you helped us with the following:
First and foremost, thank you for applying to RGSoC. We wish we could have everyone on board but unfortunately it is not possible. We are honoured that you believe in us and in our program, but please do not give up; your journey in tech and Open Source has just begun!
Yes, all of our incredible donors too!
Back in 2013, when we received 18 applicants for the first Rails Girls Summer of Code, we couldn’t imagine that these 18 people would turn into 188 a few editions later. What makes these numbers even more thrilling is the fact that 90% of them are still working in tech, 55% are still contributing to Open Source Software (OSS) and 8% have founded their own company — as per a survey we did with our students in 2015.
Side by side with these impressive stats, from the number of coaches to the OSS Projects we have worked on, are the inspiring stories of our participants, coaches, mentors, supervisors and organisers. RGSoC is made of all of our stories together and the impact each of us has in our communities — you can read some of these stories on our #ThankfulForRGSoC series here.
Edition after edition, together we have been changing the world, slowly but surely, creating new communities — some of them in remote places — and encouraging these role models who, just by being themselves and pursuing their career in tech, have been inspiring even more people from underrepresented minorities to follow their dreams in this field.
The selection process is currently underway and we hope to send the acceptance letters on the 17th of April. This means that in the next few weeks we need to know how much funding we have in order to select the teams. Considering that we have raised 43255 USD, we have enough money to sponsor 4,5 teams. We don’t want to diminish this accomplishment by any means, as we are profoundly grateful for all the support we have received so far, but as you might have noticed, we are 7,5 teams from our initial goal of sponsoring 12 teams. This means that we are far from the funding goals of previous years at this time of the year.
We still have time! We are 1,5 teams away from beating the 200 scholars mark and 7,5 teams away from sponsoring the 12 teams that we usually do, so let’s roll up our sleeves and push our campaign! So how can you help?
If your company or a company you know might be interested to support our program, please feel free to send us an email to contact@rgsoc.org. We will happily follow up on any leads or intros. Additionally, if you need any resources or info about RGSoC you can check our sponsor deck and sponsor packages.
Another way to help is to talk with your friends in-person and share our crowdfunding campaign posts or any other information that you find important on social media. A little can go a long way, so let’s do our best to fund as many teams as possible for 2018!
Thank you — you’re awesome!