[GSoC] OBF application for GSoC 2014

[Eric Talevich]

Folks,

On Friday, OBF applied to be a mentoring organization for Google Summer of
Code 2014. To make the ideas list more digestible for Google's reviewers,
we consolidated all of the Bio* projects' ideas into a single page on the
OBF wiki:
http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code_2014_Ideas

This page is the one we listed in our application. It is separate from the
OBF wiki page for general GSoC information:
http://www.open-bio.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code

If OBF is accepted for GSoC 2014, it would make sense to point each Bio*
project's GSoC wiki page to this one, instead of duplicating the content.

Key features of the Ideas list this year:

- BioPerl contributed the greatest number of ideas; most other Bio*
projects had only 1 idea, but all of the Bio* projects (except BioSQL and
EMBOSS) are represented.
- I contacted most of the potential mentors from 2013 individually to
confirm involvement for 2014. In our application to Google we had a total
of 12 confirmed potential mentors for GSoC 2014.
- BioJava's core developers wanted to highlight their involvement in a Java
implementation of the Structural Biology Markup Language called JSBML. The
JSBML project created their own list of GSoC ideas, hosted on their own
website. We found that we could fit these ideas under the OBF umbrella by
their association with BioJava, and potentially to other Bio* projects as
well through JVM support in other languages.
- We created a separate category for cross-language project ideas, i.e.
those involving two or more programming languages or Bio* project
communities.

As another way to interact with potential students, we've created a Google
Plus page for OBF:
https://plus.google.com/115564754756543103019/posts

And a G+ community for OBF's GSoC activities:
https://plus.google.com/communities/103096212020630764091

But for now we have a lull, until Feb. 24 when Google announces the
accepted mentoring organizations.

Thanks to everyone who helped us pull together this application in two
short weeks. We're eager to hear your thoughts on how this process went and
how we can adapt for future years.

Best regards,
Eric & Raoul
OBF GSoC 2014 org admins