gsoc-student-app-template (Plan 9 Foundation wiki)

# 2021 Plan 9 & Google Summer of Code Student Application Template

Please use this template as a guide for information you send in any project application. Unless specifically stated otherwise, all information we request is required. Ensuring that your application is properly and fully filled saves us all time, so please be thorough and accurate!

## Personal Information

### Contact Information

Name and Email: Your full name and a valid email address. This will serve as our initial primary method of communication, so please make sure it is correct!

Chat and Instant Messaging: Real-time chat is a great way to stay in touch with mentors and others throughout the course of the summer. Please provide at least one of these. You're also strongly encouraged participation in our IRC channel, #plan9-gsoc on irc.freenode.net. If your proposal is selected, you'll talk with your mentor about how, specifically, you'll communicate. For example: "anth on IRC (freenode), john.doe@example.com on iMessage".

Phone number: We'll only use this after exhausting all other means of contact (and once before accepting students, to verify it). Please enter a full international phone number (e.g. +1 973 555 1234).

### Educational Information

Institution: What educational institution are you attending?

Location: Where will you be working from? Some of our mentors prefer to work with students in nearby time zones.

### Biographical information

A brief bio (you're welcome to use a resumé, or C.V if you like). Help us get to know you better. Tell us about your skills, experience, and interest.

Code Samples: We'd like to see some pointers to code you've written, either from your own projects or projects you've contributed to. We're especially interested in things which help us see why you're a good match for the particular project you're applying for. This doesn't have to be for Plan 9 or whatever you're submitting a proposal for.

Interest in Plan 9: Plan 9 has lots of great ideas, but they're different from what you find in other environments. What is it about Plan 9 (or related technologies) that you find intriguing; have you used them before? Which ones (Plan 9, Inferno, v9fs, etc)? Have you read the papers?

### Environment Demostration

Working in Plan 9, Inferno, or related systems often involves a different set of tools than people are used to. Please get at least a basic version of your target environment working, and provide some demonstration of that. A good way demonstrate that might be to follow the Acme wiki instructions to edit the sandbox, then provide a pointer to the edit you've made. You might also consider submitting any small code or documentation fix Putting together a toy 9P server would be super.

## Project Information

### Project Overview

This is probably the most important section of the application!

Tell us about the specific project you'd like to work on. If you've picked something from our ideas page, please make the title match what's on that page. Regardless, you should be able to describe the project in your own words (even if it's just to show us you understand what an existing idea is looking for). Especially if your proposal is your own idea, be sure to include enough detail so that we understand your idea.

Do *not* copy / paste an idea from the ideas page verbatim.

### Schedule / Timeline

Part of effective engineering is being able to break a project down into component parts and evaluate those. Do so: tell us what the component parts of your project are and build a schedule for them. Given the revised/reduced time commitment this year, it's especially important to make sure projects will fit well into the program timeline.

Ideally, we'd like you to break down your project into weekly milestones, although this can be harder with some projects than others. This will allow you to get a great feel for the work required for your project, and will give everyone involved a schedule to help guide project planning along the way. It will also help us evaluate the scope and complexity of your project, as well as how well-formed your idea is.

### Availability

Given the reduced hours, please tell us how you plan to distribute your work over the summer. Are you doing a little each week, or doing as much as possible up front? This is important both so that we can make sure you've got the time set aside, but also to pair you up with a mentor who can match your commitment.

In prticular, please call out any vacation, late start or other such issues explicitly here.

### Mentor communication

Communication with your mentor is key for Summer of Code What frequency of communication would you expect? Are you prepared to provide progress updates at least a few times a week? How are you most comfortable communicating (email, blog, IRC, so on)? While our mentors are making a commitment to give you time and attention over the summer, "stuff happens"; what would you do if your mentor disappeared for a week during the summer?

### Optional: Suggested Mentor

If you've spoken to someone in our community about this project, and they've agreed to mentor you for the summer, list them here. This is optional, but is particularly valuable if you're proposing a project not on our list. If it is on our ideas list, we can mostly figure this out.