The 2008 Google Summer of Code projects have been announced. We appreciate Google's continued support of free software and for funding 15 outstanding projects for Joomla!. This year, we are proud to announce that CiviCRM is part of the Joomla! GSoC experience.

Congratulations to the Joomla! GSoC students! Your proposals were selected from a very competitive pool of nearly 100 applications. For those interested in following along, each GSoC Project team will be blogging this summer on the developer.joomla.org site. Use the links, below, to join these conversations, provide your feedback, and encourage this work.

Advanced Media Manager, Nakul Ganesh S, Mysore, India
CiviCRM: Aesthetics and Usability, Jon Volkman, Seattle, Washington
CiviCRM: Multi-language Support, Piotr Szotkowski, Warsaw, Poland
Contact Directory, Chantal Bisson, Quebec City, Canada
Content Type Management, Ercan Özkaya, Konya, Turkey

Custom Content Layouts, Jaap Woltjes, the Netherlands
Forms, Mostafa Muhammad, Cairo, Egypt
Multi-DB Support, Alex de Azevedo, Brazil
Multimedia Portal, Marcelo Eden, Recife, Brazil
OpenSocial, Shannon Quinn, Atlanta, Georgia

Research Management, Luis Galárraga, Guayaquil, Guayas Ecuador
Semantic Web, Danh Le Phuoc, Vietnam, studying in Ireland
Tags, Jacek Zielinski, Poznan, Poland
Unit Testing, Scot Inscore, Whitewater, Wisconsin
Version Control, Flavio Kubota, Campinas, Brazil.

Congratulations on being accepted as a Google Summer of Code student for 2008 with the Joomla! project! We are very excited to have you on board with us and are eager to work with you. It is our hope that this will be a great experience for all involved. We hope that you be challenged and will be able to learn and develop your skills as a software developer and open source contributor. We hope that you will gain valuable experience that will be helpful for you in the future. We hope that you will have fun contributing to an open source project and producing something that will be appreciated by many.

My name is Ian MacLennan. Myself and Wilco Jansen are the SoC administrators for the Joomla! project. If you have any questions or concerns at any point during the project that your mentor is unable to answer, please feel free to contact us. We are here to make sure that everything goes smoothly both for you, your mentor, and the Joomla! project.

Wilco Jansen is from the Netherlands and has served as a Joomla! Core Team member and Development Working Group Coordinator since May 2006. His passion is helping others connect to the project and contribute, given their interests and skills. He works to keep "widening the circle" by involving more talent in the Joomla! Bug Squad, the Developer Teams, Bug Squashing Weekends, and other opportunities where he sees ways people can help. Wilco also enjoys visiting local communities for their Joomla! Day events and hearing how people put Joomla! to good service.

This is Wilco's third year leading the Google Summer of Code Program for Joomla! and he welcomes Ian MacLennan as his co-lead. This year, a partner like Ian will be very helpful since Joomla! will be welcoming 15 talented students each with interesting and challenging projects. Wilco indicated there were nearly 100 proposals this year and the topics are getting more sophisticated. The mentor and student activity is also increasing and Wilco expects this combined momentum will bring good results.

This year, Ian MacLennan joins Wilco as co-lead of the Joomla! Google Summer of Code Program. Ian has a long history with the community and serves as the lead of the Joomla! Development Documentation Team. In addition, Ian is key to the success of the Joomla! Bug Squad and one many have learned is an excellent teacher and guide. Ian is excited to help Joomla!'s 15 project teams get the resources, help and encouragement they need to be successful.

Wilco and Ian welcome each of Joomla!'s Google Summer of Code students and mentors and wish for each project team success, learning, good code, and lots of fun! For more information and to get started, visit the welcome post in the forum.