Google Summer of Code is coming up again, and we will again be participating. Arc Riley will setup infrastructure later today, and we need to start thinking about possible projects. Traditionally, people (students and other projects) have been willing to give the Python Core the highest attention in SoC, as improvements to Python will help the whole community. Also traditionally, there has been a shortage of project ideas and mentors for Python Core. My guess is that the project shortage stems from the assumption that many of the projects are so tricky that you can't give them to a newcomer. I found this view both confirmed and rebutted in the past - it all depends on which students we can attract. The shortage of mentors is probably more inherent, and reflects the shortage of volunteers for other tasks. As a long-time mentor, I'd like to encourage all of you to consider mentoring this year. GSoC/PSF will have a strict rule "one student per mentor", co-mentorship is encouraged. Feel free to discuss Python-Core-GSoC here or on the GSoC mailing list(s) (soon to appear). One last cautioning: recently, people started proposing that admin tasks be done in GSoC. While that indeed may help python-dev most, they called it summer of *code* deliberately - so the project idea should be about programming (the hope being, of course, that the students stay in the project, or at least in open source, when the summer is over. some do, some don't.). Regards, Martin