Public Lab Google Summer of Code (GSOC) 2013 Application page http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/google/gsoc2013/public_lab

Are you a student? See the application page FAQ: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2013/faqs#mentoring_apply

Timeline: http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2013

Advice for Mentors: http://code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code/wiki/AdviceforMentors and via Gnome project: http://people.gnome.org/~federico/docs/summer-of-code-mentoring-howto/

Project ideas: See our GSoC ideas page! http://publiclab.org/wiki/gsoc-ideas Want to expand this list? See example project ideas list: http://community.kde.org/GSoC/2013/Ideas

Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2013? GSOC is a great initiative towards engaging young developers with the Public Lab open source community, a goal of Public Lab. Additionally, Summer of Code will build on our existing relationship with Google, in which Google ingests Public Lab open source mapping data--the platform of which we hope to improve through this opportunity.

What do you hope to gain by participating? The proposed Public Lab GSOC activities will directly contribute to improving the Public Lab open source platforms.

What is the URL for your Ideas list? GSoC ideas

What is the main development mailing list for your organization? web@googlegroups.com

What is the main IRC channel for your organization? http://publiclaboratory.org/chat

What criteria did you use to select your mentors for this year's program? Please be as specific as possible. Our mentors are part of the Public Laboratory core web team and are active contributors to the projects listed on the ideas page. Some have specific formal training in remote sensing image processing, data collection, or georectification. Others represent user groups who help to strategically plan new features and directions for the software. Mentors volunteer for their positions and will be approved by consensus of the developers in the respective software projects.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing students? We have weekly phone meetings on Fridays which we will be asking the students to attend, and we require students to post updates by blog, tweet, or email (list). We also have workspace in some cities for those interested in working in the same space as other Public Lab contributors. We find that most students have trouble if they're not sure what to do next -- therefore we will have brainstorming support sessions weekly to help students identify, understand, and innovate solutions to their challenges. Students will also be able to use the GitHub issue tracker to stay focused on project milestones within that system. GitHub will syndicate updates to the project students, and facilitate discussion on each project issue.

What is your plan for dealing with disappearing mentors? Several mentors are staff members in the nonprofit arm of Public Lab, and check in twice per week. Others will be asked to participate in weekly calls. We also have backup mentors available for most projects and will have periodic mentor round-table discussions by email.

What steps will you take to encourage students to interact with your project's community before and during the program? We are reaching out primarily through our existing networks to recruit students, and in the past have required students working with the project to post either to the mailing list or on our website with weekly updates. We also have in-person events where contributors mix and discuss their work; this helps to build a strong developer community and we will encourage students to take part. Often encouraging students to present their work to the community or to the public (in talks, blog posts, or videos) encourages them to take ownership of their work and to take pride in it, building longer-term commitment to projects.

What will you do to encourage that your accepted students stick with the project after Google Summer of Code concludes? Public Lab is particularly adept to facilitating collaborative research and development. The international Public Lab community stays connected through the Public Lab website which is content user driven. Students will receive collaborative support through other users on the site and Google Groups. Are you a new organization who has a Googler or other organization to vouch for you? If so, please list their name(s) here. No, but if you would like to please see Christiaan Adams.

Describe your organization. The Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science (PLOTS) is a community which develops and applies open-source tools to environmental exploration and investigation. By democratizing inexpensive and accessible Do-It-Yourself techniques, Public Laboratory creates a collaborative network of practitioners who actively re-imagine the human relationship with the environment. The core PLOTS program is focused on civic science, in which we research open source hardware and software tools and methods to generate knowledge and share data about community environmental health. Our goal is to increase the ability of underserved communities to identify, redress, remediate, and create awareness and accountability around environmental concerns. PLOTS achieves this by providing online and offline training, education and support, and by focusing on locally-relevant outcomes that emphasize human capacity and understanding.

Why is your organization applying to participate in Google Summer of Code 2012? What do you hope to gain by participating? We have several active and new open source software projects and an active community, and GSOC would be a great way to bring some of these tools closer to maturity, and a great way to reach out to new coders and strengthen our contributor community.

What Open Source Initiative approved license(s) does your project use? MapKnitter, Clashifier, and Spectral Workbench are GPLv3. Infrared-visible-video-kit is MIT licensed.

Does your organization have an application template you would like to see students use? If so, please provide it now. http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/gsoc-application-template

Organization Profile Name. Complete, formal name of the group. Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science

Home page url publiclab.org

Public mailing list Mailing list email address, URL to sign-up page, etc. http://publiclab.org/join https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/publiclaboratory

Ideas list The URL to the ideas list of your organization. http://publiclab.org/wiki/gsoc-ideas

Application template This template can be used by contributors, such as students and other non-member participants, when they apply to contribute to the organization. http://publiclab.org/wiki/gsoc-application-template

Google+ url URL to the Google+ page of your organization https://plus.google.com/u/0/100235547529776394828/ gplus.to/PublicLab

Blog url URL of the Blog of your Organization http://publiclab.org/tag/newsletter

Facebook url URL of the Facebook page of your Organization http://www.facebook.com/PublicLab

Twitter url URL of the Twitter profile of your Organization https://twitter.com/publiclab

Feed url The URL should be a valid ATOM or RSS feed. Feed entries are shown on the home page. We are creating a feed of all items tagged with "gsoc"

PUBLIC INFO Short name used for sidebar menu Public Lab

Email Enter an email address to be used by would-be members seeking additional information. This can be an individual's email address or a mailing list address; use whichever will work best for you. web@publiclaboratory.org

Public irc channel (and network) http://publiclaboratory.org/chat

Development mailing list Mailing list email address, URL to sign-up page, etc. https://groups.google.com/group/grassrootsmapping https://groups.google.com/group/plots-spectrometry https://groups.google.com/group/plots-infrared

Tags geo, gis, open-source, environment, infrared, spectroscopy, map, maps, ruby-on-rails, java, canvass element, android, ruby, javascript, imagemagick, rmagick,