[Biopython] Google's Summer of Code 2010 - David Kilgore

[Brad Chapman]

Kizzo;

> > Have you still been involved with that community after the work? Did
> > they decide not to do GSoC this year?
> 
> Oh yes, I'm still a regular on their IRC channel and mailing lists.
> OpenCog is closer to my passion, and I already had 2 proposals for
> OpenCog this summer ready, but unfortunately the project didn't get
> accepted for GSoC this year.  I plan to work more with OpenCog as a
> potential PhD project, so am still am involved with OpenCog.

That's great to hear. One of the most important parts of GSoC for
myself and many mentors is the chance to get additional folks
involved in open source.

Reviews of the applications have started, and the main aspect which
would improve your proposal is to develop a specific project plan 
with detailed descriptions of week to week goals. For each week you 
should have:

- Description of the specific weekly goal. 
- Details on the PyCogent and Biopython code you expect to be working with
- Possible issues or areas of expansion you expect might impact the
  timeline
- Expected work on documentation and testing. You want to have this
  integrated throughout the proposal.

See the examples in the NESCent application documentation to get an
idea of the level of detail in accepted projects from previous years:

https://www.nescent.org/wg_phyloinformatics/Phyloinformatics_Summer_of_Code_2010#When_you_apply
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=puFMq1smOMEo20j0h5Dg9fA&single=true&gid=0&output=html

The content we'd like to see in the proposal is interconversion of
core object (Sequence, Alignment, Phylogeny) in the first half of
the summer, and applications of this interconversion to developing
biological workflows in the second half of the summer. Feel free to
be creative and pick work that is of interest to your studies.

Since you can't edit the proposal currently, please prepare this in
a publicly accessible Google Doc and provide a link from the public
comments so other mentors can view it.

Thanks,
Brad