We are delighted to announce the grand prize winners of Google Code-in 2011, a contest designed to introduce pre-university students (age 13-17) to the world of open source software development. Congratulations to all 542 students from 56 countries who completed an impressive 3,054 tasks in the contest. All students who participated will receive a t-shirt and a certificate for their participation in the contest. Those students who successfully completed 3 or more tasks will be receiving a small monetary prize as well.

And the 10 grand prize winners are... (in alphabetical order by first name)

Aaron S. - United States
Abhishek A. - India
Aneesh D. - India
Cheng S. - United Kingdom
Edward W. - Canada
Gaurav N. - India
Gautam G. - India
Laurentiu I. - Romania
Oana S. - Romania
Shitiz G. - India

These 10 pre-university students completed an impressive 449 tasks during the eight week contest period. The grand prize winners will be flown to Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California in early June along with a parent or legal guardian for a four night trip. During the trip they will have an awards ceremony, an opportunity to meet with Google engineers, and enjoy a fun day exploring San Francisco.

Thank you to all of the students, mentors, organization administrators and the many IT teachers who encouraged their students to learn more about the world of open source.

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Google Code-in 2011 Grand Prize Winners... the envelope please!

For Google Code-in 2011 we had 542 pre-university students (ages 13-17) from 56 countries complete an astounding 3,054 tasks for 18 open source organizations during the eight week contest period.  59.8% of the students completed 3 or more tasks in the contest.

The graph below illustrates the 10 countries with the highest number of students participating in Google Code-in 2011.

The five schools with the largest number of students participating in Google Code-in 2011 are listed below:
- Technical School Electronic Systems associated with Technical University - Sofia in Bulgaria had an impressive 49 students participating.
- XIV Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Stanisława Staszica w Warszawie in Poland
- Roman-Vodă National College in Romania
- Ankara Polis Koleji in Turkey
- "Tiberiu Popoviciu" I.T. High School from Cluj-Napoca in Romania

We had 307 dedicated mentors and organization administrators from 51 countries helping the students throughout the contest. Mentors hailed from all corners of the globe from places such as New Zealand, Uzbekistan, Peru, Bangladesh, Germany, South Africa and all parts in between.

Thank you to all of the students, mentors and organization administrators who helped make Google Code-in 2011 a success.

Stay tuned to this blog as we will announce the 10 grand prize winners for Google Code-in 2011 on February 14.

If you are a university student at least 18 years of age and would like to work on open source projects this summer (or winter for our southern hemisphere friends) then please look into our Google Summer of Code 2012 program that we recently announced.

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Google Code-in 2011 Stats to Ponder

For the second year, the Sahana Software Foundation participated in Google Code-in (GCI), a program which gives pre-university students the chance to get involved in open source projects. I was Sahana’s Administrator for this program and am incredibly happy with how well the program went for us. Out of the 208 tasks that we posted for students, 193 were completed – which is an amazing effort!

After last year, we knew that Google Code-in wasn’t for the faint of heart as it would require responding to students, answering their questions and reviewing work around the clock, so we reached out to our volunteer community and gathered a team of 11 mentors together. We put together a roster with 3-4 mentors covering each week to ensure that there was always someone on duty, while also ensuring that mentors would be able to have some time off. A big thank you goes out to all our mentors: Dominc König, Fran Boon, Graeme Foster, Nuwan Waidyanatha, Pat Tressel, four former Google Summer of Code students: Praneeth Bodduluri (‘09), Pratyush Nigam (‘11), Robert O’Connor (‘10), Shikhar Kohli (‘10) and Tony Young (a Google Code-in student last year). Sahana’s participation in Google Code-in couldn’t have happened without all of you!

But the biggest thank you goes out to all the students who have completed tasks – unfortunately/fortunately there are too many of you to name! We had many students review chapters in the Sahana Eden Essential Guide to make sure that the instructions were clear enough for them to follow. I was really pleased to see that the book was easy for students to use plus we also got some great feedback on how to improve it. Once again the translation tasks were very popular and we have complete translations of Sahana Eden in Romanian, Bulgarian and Hindi. Abhishek Arora and Leizel Puzon completed one of the more interesting tasks; taking minutes during our community calls – which gave them insight into how our community works. For me the highlight was the task completed by Daniel Klischies (Nostraa) to design a theme for the Sahana Eden wiki to align with the Sahana Software Foundation’s branding. Daniel’s work transformed our wiki into a very professional looking site which I get  great pleasure using and sharing with others. I’m also glad to see that for some students, their involvement with Sahana doesn’t end with the end of this year’s Google Code-in, such as Sriram Raghu who is giving a talk on Sahana Eden to other students at his school.

I would like to pass on a big thanks to everyone behind the scenes who made this happen: Sverre Rabbelier, Daniel Hans, Madhusudan. C.S and the rest of the Melange team who were under extreme pressure from students and mentors alike to ensure that Melange was running smoothly throughout Google Code-in. And, of course, the Google Open Source team whose continued support of open source projects is what makes great programs like this possible!

By Michael Howden, Sahana Software Foundation Google Code-in Organization Administrator

Sahana and Students: Saving the world one task at a time

Over eight busy weeks, 545 high school (pre-university) students competed in the Google Code-in contest completing tasks for 18 open source projects. The Google Code-in contest is designed to introduce high school students to the world of open source software development by having them complete ‘bite sized’ tasks while gaining knowledge and earning prizes along the way.

Stay tuned to this blog as we will be announcing the 10 grand prize winners on February 14. The grand prize winners will win a trip for themselves and a parent or legal guardian to Google’s Mountain View, California campus in June.

Congratulations to all of the students who completed tasks during this year’s contest. We hope you all learned more about open source and will continue to work with the organizations you built relationships with during the contest and with other open source projects in the future.

And a hearty thank you to all of the mentors and organization administrators who helped the students these past couple of months. We couldn’t do this contest without all of your incredible work!

For more information on the Google Code-in contest check out our site. We will post more statistics from this year’s Google Code-in in the coming weeks, stay tuned.

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Google Code-in 2011-2012 Concludes

We are almost halfway through the Google Code-in contest and we are excited to announce that over 480 pre-university students from 55 countries have completed a total of 1615 tasks in just under four weeks. The students are working with 18 different open source organizations on a variety of tasks such as quality assurance issues, writing pieces of code, developing materials for outreach efforts, translating documents, and other tasks all related to open source development.

With students from 55 countries this truly is a global program. This year the following 16 countries have their first student participating in the Google Code-in: Algeria, Argentina, Bahrain, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Colombia, Croatia, Honduras, Ireland, Macedonia, Malaysia, Nepal, Puerto Rico, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela.

The Google Code-in contest ends on January 16, 2012 so there is still plenty of time to get involved and spread the word to the pre-university students (ages 13-17) in your life.  Please visit the program site for more information regarding eligibility requirements and the program timeline. You can read our Frequently Asked Questions and join the discussion list for any additional questions about the program.

There are plenty of tasks for students to choose from, in fact, today the organizations released a large group of new tasks for students to work on. Register and claim a task today!

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

Only Halfway to the Finish Line for Google Code-in

And we’re off! Starting today, 13-17 year old students enrolled in a pre-university program (high school, etc.) as of November 21, 2011 can begin working on tasks for Google Code-in. The contest introduces students to the world of open source software development by having students claim tasks involving things like translating documents, writing pieces of code, developing materials for outreach efforts, working on quality assurance issues and user interface projects among many other types of tasks. 18 open source organizations will provide mentors for the students as they work through tasks over the next two months.

Students will learn more about the many different activities involved in open source software development while also earning fun prizes during the contest. For successfully completing one task students will receive a certificate of participation and a tee shirt. For completing three tasks students will receive the tee shirt, certificate and 100 USD. Students can receive up to 500 USD when they complete 15 tasks. Each task is assigned a point value and students will receive the prize money, tee shirts and certificates based on the number of tasks they complete, regardless of the point values. Point values will be used to select the grand prize winners. The 10 students with the most points at the end of the contest period will win a grand prize trip to Google’s Mountain View, California campus for themselves and a parent or legal guardian late next spring.

For more information please visit our program site and read the contest rules and our Frequently Asked Questions. Join our discussion list to ask any additional questions. If you meet the eligibility requirements you can create your account and start claiming tasks today!

The contest will end on January 16, 2012 so get busy claiming those tasks and have fun!

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

And we’re off! Google Code-in contest opens for students today

Correction: Students will not be able to start registering for accounts until the contest opens on November 21st at 12:00 am (midnight) PST. The blog below has been corrected. We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.

Every time you send a text, check a webpage or post a status update, you are using open source software. The Internet is made of open source. But have you ever created any yourself? If you’re a pre-university student between 13 and 17 years old, now you can—and win prizes along the way. Our Google Code-in contest starts this coming Monday, November 21. During the contest, which lasts for 57 days, participants can work on cool online tasks for 18 different open source organizations. Possible challenges include document translations, marketing outreach, software coding, user experience research and a variety of other tasks related to open source software development.

Participants earn points for each task they successfully complete and can earn prizes like t-shirts, cash and certificates of completion. The ten participants with the highest points earned by the end of the competition receive a grand prize trip to Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. next spring for themselves and a parent or legal guardian. They’ll spend the day getting a tour of campus, meeting Google engineers and enjoying other fun surprises.

Last year’s Google Code-in had 361 students from 48 countries completing 2,167 tasks over the course of the the eight week contest. We hope to have even more students participate this year. Help us spread the word by telling your friends, classmates, children, colleagues, teachers—everyone!

If you’d like to sign up, please review our Frequently Asked Questions and the contest rules on our program site. You can also join our discussion list for any other questions. For details on important dates for the contest, see the timeline. You can register for your account on the program site when the contest opens on Monday, November 21st at 12:00am (midnight) PST.

We hope you’ll spend your winter (or summer, for our friends in the southern hemisphere) learning about the ins and outs of open source development through hands-on experience. On your marks...

By Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

- Cross posted from the Official Google Blog

Explore open source with the Google Code-in contest