A community talk is about 45 minutes. A presenter or two would talk about their GSoC and open source journey with a 10-15 minute pre-recorded talk during each session. Meetup attendees are then able to engage through live Q&A.  After the live session, we post the recording on the Google Open Source YouTube channel, for potential contributors and anyone interested in the program to view. In previous presentations, Nikita talked about how she became a contributor, then a mentor, and how she got further involved with open source, while the Zulip organization teamed up and talked about how to have a great GSoC as an org and as a contributor.

Through the program's evaluations, the summits, interactions at events, and the kind words sent to us, we’re told that GSoC is much more than a summer coding program.  What we hear, time and again, are the wonderful stories of contributors and mentors inspiring and learning from each other, of students becoming mentors and long-term committers to their projects, and how GSoC has helped introduce folks from around the world to the open source community.

If you were a past contributor and/or a past or present mentor/OA and have a GSoC journey that you think will help inspire someone, then please take a moment to fill out this form.  We’d love to hear from you and help share your story!