Big news! The annual Google Code-In contest kicked off Monday, November 18th. The contest's purpose for pre-university students (ages 13 - 17) is learning how to contribute to open-source software projects and offers them a chance to win a once in a life time grand prize of an all expense paid trip to Google HQ in California. The bigger news...Drupal was chosen as one of the ten participating organizations to create tasks for the students to complete during the 2013 contest! This is a huge honor for Drupal and gives us an amazing opportunity to grow our community. Details @ https://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2013

Drupal Community, we're about 48 hours into the 2013 Code-In contest, students have already finished several tasks, and we need YOUR help. In this busy day and age, finding mentors can prove challenging and after months of "cat herding", we realized a simple solution for participation: "Just 1 Task". Even if you submit one task and mentor that task, everyone wins. We currently have 14 mentors in Google's system with tasks, but there is no limit on mentors or number of tasks we can accomplish. Ironically, after mentors add one task, they usually add a few more tasks. With Drupal 8 on the horizon, we have plenty of easy tasks that anyone at any age can accomplish, and it is the perfect opportunity to find new long time contributors. This is your chance to be a part of the global phenomenon that is open-source software! Join us in #drupal-gci or see information below on becoming a mentor.

After being selected to participate in the 2013 Code-In contest, our goal is to keep this momentum moving forward and plan to have a solid application with an elevated level of participation in Summer of Code 2014. Plus, Google has big plans in 2014 for Summer of Code's 10 year anniversary ( http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2013/10/google-code-in-2013-and-go... ).

Thank You!

A big thank you to our core team of mentors that organized tasks, worked on the application, and set up everything for student participation (Janez Urevc in Slovenia, Varun Baker in Jamaica, and Matthew Lechleider in USA). Plus, we can't forget all the current mentors who jumped at the chance to contribute (Aaron Dudehofer, Abdul Qadir, Andrew Shemo, Ben Carlson, Patrick Elward, Cody Carlson, Doug Vann, Jason Daniels, Kevin Reynen, Martin Martinov, Matt V).

How to Become a Mentor

*Login with Google account @ https://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2013

*Click "Register to be a Mentor"

*Connect with Drupal

*(wait for approval)

**Contact slurpee on d.o if issues

How to Add Tasks

*Login @ https://www.google-melange.com/gci/homepage/google/gci2013

*Click "My Dashboard"

*Click "Create Tasks..."

**https://www.google-melange.com/gci/task/create/google/gci2013/drupal

How to be a Mentor

*Add at least one task @ https://www.google-melange.com/gci/task/create/google/gci2013/drupal

*Notification of task will be sent to Drupal admins for approval

*Approval of task by admin publishes tasks publicly to students

*Request to be assigned task by student notifies mentor

*Mentor logs into Melange to click "Assign Task"

*Notification that task has started is sent to Student/Mentor/Admins

*Hangout in #drupal-irc on freenode to answer questions in real time if needed

*Comment task in Melange for feedback and help with student on task

*Review students work when completed

*Complete task to finish process

Questions? Contact Drupal's GCI 2013 Admin (Matthew Lechleider) @ https://drupal.org/user/91767