Open source software is critical to developers. In website development, you can make an entire career out of an open source platform. Just look at Drupal, WordPress and Joombla development for example. One hue supporter of the development of open source software is Google Code-in 2012, a contest that gives pre-university students (13-17 years old) the opportunity to learn and create open source software that people all over the world can use—and win cool prizes along the way.
According to Google, “Starting Monday, November 26 and for the following 50 days, contest participants will work on fun online tasks for 10 different open source organizations. Possible challenges include documentation, marketing outreach, software coding, user experience research and more.”
Those who participate in these activates earn points for each task. While there are smaller prizes like T-shirts and certificated of completion, there are also 20 grand prize winners who will receive a trip to Google headquarters. This will give them the chance to spend the day with engineers and traveling the GooglePlex.
“Last year, 542 students from 56 countries and 360 schools completed 3,054 tasks during the eight-week contest (at Google Code-in 2012).” Google said.
This year Google hopes to have record numbers of students participate. If you would like to sign up for the Google Code contest Google recommends following this process.
“Please review our Frequently Asked Questions and the contest rules on our program site. You can also watch our screencast, check out some sample tasks from last year’s contest and 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 26 at 9:00am PST. “
Google Code-in 2012 is a great program put on by Google. Ignite Visibility encourages youths in San Diego to take a look at this program and get involved.
Related articles on Google Code in 2012
- Fedora joins Google Code-In 2012 (iquaid.org)
- Discover the world of open source with Google Code-in 2012 (googleblog.blogspot.com)
- Google Code-in Contest for High School Students Starts this November (google-opensource.blogspot.com)