The Python Software Foundation has 36 Google Summer of Code students starting next week!

If you'd like to learn more about any of the student projects as they were proposed, you can also see the list and descriptions on the GSoC Website. But here's a list, grouped by project:


Core Python
Phil Webster, IDLE Improvements
Jayakrishnan Rajagopalasarma, IDLE Improvements




ASCEND
Ksenija Bestuzheva, ASCEND: dynamic modelling improvements
Pallav Tinna, Porting to gtk3 and GUI improvements




Astropy
Madhura Parikh, Astropy: Develop the Astroquery toolkit into a coherent package
Axel Donath, AstroPy: Extending the functionality of the photutils package.



GNU Mailman
Manish Gill, Mailman: Authenticated REST-API in Postorius/Django.
Abhilash Raj, GNU Mailman - Integration of OpenPGP




Kivy
Abhinav, Kivy: Kivy Designer
Ivan Pusic, PyOBJus



MNE-Python
Mainak Jas, Real-time Machine Learning for MEG in MNE-Python
Roman Goj, MNE-Python: Implement time-frequency beamformers




OpenHatch
David Lu, Data Driven Mentorship App
Tarashish Mishra, OpenHatch: Rewrite training missions using oppia (Training missions, version 2)



PyDy
Tarun Gaba, PyDy: Visualization of the simulated motion of multibody systems
Tyler Wade, wxPython Bindings for PyPy using CFFI




PyPy
Manuel Jacob, Implementing Python 3.3 features for PyPy




Pyramid
Andraž Brodnik, Better Debug tools
Domen Kožar, Substance D improvements




PySoy
Juhani Åhman, PySoy: Improve Android and HTML5 Soy clients




Scikit-Image
Chintak Sheth, scikit-image: Image Inpainting for Restoration
Marc de Klerk, scikit-image: Segmentation Algorithms as a basis for an OpenCL feasible study
Ankit Agrawal, scikit-image : Implementation of STAR and Binary Feature Detectors and Descriptors



Scikit-learn
Kemal Eren, scikit-learn: Biclustering algorithms, scoring, and data generation
Nicolas Trésegnie, Scikit-learn : online low rank matrix completion


SciPy
Surya Kasturi, SciPy: Improving functionality and Maintainability of SciPy Central
Arink Verma, SciPy/NumPy : Performance parity between numpy arrays and Python scalars
Blake Griffith, Improvements to the sparse package of Scipy: support for bool dtype and better interaction with NumPy




SfePy
Ankit Mahato, SfePy: Enhancing the solver to simulate solid-liquid phase change phenomenon in convective-diffusive situations


Statsmodels
Ana Martínez Pardo, Statsmodels: Discrete choice models
Chad Fulton, Statsmodels: Time Series Analysis Extensions (esp. regime-switching models)


SunPy
Michael J. Malocha, SunPy - Interfacing with Heliocphysics Databases
Simon Liedtke, SunPy: Database of local data



Tahoe-LAFS
Mark Berger, Upload Strategy of Happiness in Tahoe-LAFS


Twisted
Shiyao Ma,Twisted: Switching to Formal Parsers
Kai Zhang,Twisted: Deferred Cancellation

We had a great number of talented applicants and I only wish we'd been able to take more of them. Congratulations to those accepted and to the rest of you, I hope you'll apply again next year!

I should write up a proper trip report with pictures and stuff, but as it's nearly midnight and I don't want my sleeping patterns to stay on California time, you get some short highlights:

1. The conference itself was awesome. Recall: I attended the sprints last year but not the main conference, so while I had high hopes I didn't know that the content would be so good. I attended a lot of great talks and no doubt missed quite a few as well. I'll be making heavy use of the conference recordings over the next little while, I expect.

2. I am really excited about my free raspberry pi. While I know lots of folk who frequently get given cool toys and told to go hack them, this is the first time someone has gifted me with such an item/mission, and it feels great. I haven't figured out what I'm going to do yet, but there was this great talk about hooking one up to a $300 CNC machine, and another great one about home automation that could be useful...

3. The sprints were super-productive! You can see our todo/completed/waiting list here if you want the nitty gritty. I'd been joking earlier to anyone who asked that we were totally going to release by Friday, and while we didn't do that, we *are* very close and you should all expect a beta release of postorius + Mailman 3 very soon. I can't wait to show it off!

4. Perhaps later I'll do up the stats on exactly what I was doing to our repository, but I should tell you that not only did I make plenty of my own code commits, but I also got to merge code from new contributors. This was totally my favourite part, seeing new folk get their code accepted and in the main tree. And it wasn't just the people who were physically at the sprints with us: I also merged code from people contributing remotely, most of whom are prospective GSoC students. Way to impress me, students!

5. I got to talk to a bunch of people about GSoC. I do this all the time by email, but it was especially fun to talk to folk in person about what's involved, why it's awesome, how to be good at it, and why they should sign up.

6. And post-con, I got a few days to catch up with friends in the area and visit the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park, which I've wanted to do ever since I read Seanan Mcguire's October Daye books. As I processed a few photos for this week's assignment, you get one here:



And with that, midnight has rung and it's bedtime. I have a long week of catch-up ahead of me at work, but expect some more pycon / mailman / gsoc posts out of me over the next little while as I internalize all the things I've been thinking about this past week.

Ada Lovelace Day aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths by encouraging people around the world to talk about the women whose work they admire. This international day of celebration helps people learn about the achievements of women in STEM, inspiring others and creating new role models for young and old alike.

When I first met Robin Jeffries, I had no idea how important she was. My friend Jen said, "hey, you need to talk to Robin about this" and the three of us sat down and chatted about technical stuff for an hour or so in the middle of a busy conference. It didn't hit me until much later that I'd just spent a time geeking it up with a woman who half the women at GHC would have loved to shake hands with, let alone get a whole lunch with.

Robin has just retired as Her Systers Keeper, a role she took over from Anita Borg when Anita's health was failing. She's not wrong in calling managing a community like this a job of cat herding, but with her guidance Systers has long been a list with an unusually high signal to noise ratio, and one that many technical women turn to when they need advice, want to share a story, or want to rant about the latest news piece about women in computing. I started realizing how much of a role model Robin herself has been to so many when I'd mention her and people would go, "wait, you know Robin Jeffries? I've always wanted to meet her in person!" These were women who were inspired by the stories she shares and her ability to get to the heart of the matter when it comes to the experience of technical women.

I've been fortunate enough to work with Robin doing Google Summer of Code mentoring for Systers, where we've been doing modifications on an open source project dear to my heart, GNU Mailman. She's got an uncanny ability to find good chunks of technical work that our students can manage, a knack for inspiring the people she works with, a good system for managing us all and keeping us to our deadlines, and every time we sit down to talk about how to fix a problem she impresses me with her insights into better architectures and designs. I've rarely had the chance to work with someone of Robin's experience in human computer interaction (read her bio, but in short, she's crazy accomplished and I probably would have been way intimidated if I'd known how much so when I first met her). I'm constantly in awe of how easily she not only applies that experience, but how good she is at conveying it to others and how willing she is to share her skills.

We're probably all benefiting from her knowledge as she applies it to her job at Google, but it's the more direct personal experiences that really get me. For example, despite being in great demand with the Systers 25th anniversary celebrations at GHC12 this year, she came out to help me run Open Source Day activities for women interested in hacking with Systers and Mailman, quickly adopting a whole table of prospective volunteers and walking them through the first stages of evaluating and contributing to an open source project. She regularly makes me wish I'd spent more time studying HCI myself, and forces me to re-evaluate how I design software. We've got one big feature we want to see in Mailman and I'm really looking forwards to working with her on making it happen.

I admire Robin for her amazing technical expertise, for her support of women in computing, and for her ability to balance the two as part of her own busy life for so many years. It has most definitely been my privilege to work with such an amazingly talented woman, and I hope that some day I can approach her level of professional and personal accomplishment.

Getting over jet lag might be a bit easier if it weren't for the fact that my GSoC team meeting was at midnight my time. Such is the peril of having students and mentors scattered across the globe!

Still very excited about everything, but also very sleepy. ;)

In the past week:

Wednesday:

Interviewed by the CBC, which aired at 6:15ish on Thursday. Very positive interview. It felt a bit fluffy to me, given the sort of issues I get tossed through the Geek Feminism crew, but a nice positive interview is exactly what we needed to kick off the Celebration. John apparently recorded it, so I may have an mp3 of the interview shortly.

Thursday:

The Celebration of Women in Science and Engineering at Carleton was a total success. We've got some really excellent researchers who are also excellent speakers: I was actually fully engaged for all but the last presentation, and didn't find my mind wandering at all. Pretty impressive, given that I was exhausted and had a lot of thesis related stuff on my mind otherwise! I'll probably write about the individual talks later.

Friday:

I defended my thesis proposal.

Note that this wasn't the final thesis defense for my PhD -- that will be harder. The proposal is the negotiation of the roadmap I need to finish, and is actually pretty friendly as far as defenses go. Basically, I propose 12+ things, they say how about these four, and we agree on what I need to do to finish. In my case, I've got a user study that I'm super excited about running, and a lot of tying up of loose ends for publication-worthy results. It went from a nearly insurmountable seeming pile of things to something I can actually finish this fall.

Later on Friday:

GSoC proposals closed, and we've got really excellent students applying to work with us. Ranking them is going to be incredibly hard!

Later still on Friday:

Rock band party, giant chocolate soccer ball, and... okay, the broccoli rum was a bad idea. ;) But it was nice to kick back and celebrate for the evening! I then took the weekend off and more or less did whatever I felt like: gaming with friends, a long photo walk, pleasant yardwork to get out in the sun, and some of the tidying that gets put off while I'm working hard.

Sunday very late (or Monday early morning...)

My latest paper got accepted! I'll be heading down to California (the bay area) at the end of May to present, and the plan is to stay a few weeks 'till the beginning of June. This is a web security paper with some observations that motivated my thesis work and hopefully will motivate others. I'll probably have digital copies up shortly.

The plan for this week is similarly awesome, but much less busy in that some of this can overflow to next week if need be:

• Today, I go to see Jane Goodall speak as part of the writer's festival.
  
• I'm working on another paper that's due Friday.
  
• There's a cool symposium going on over at uOttawa on Biology in the Media - Fascinating Science on the Front Page, but I'm not sure I'll manage to get out for that.
  
• There's an interesting security talk on Thursday that I should really RSVP for and go to see.
  
• I get to read and make initial evaluations of my potential GSoC students.
  
• Need to set up my own GSoC dev environment -- I scraped together some hardware so I can have a dedicated machine, and I'm absurdly excited about getting it running.
  
• Photos photos photos: I've got several hundred event photos that I need to cut down to a manageable number and put online.
  
• Need to register for the conference and plan my trip!
  
• And probably a bunch of stuff I've forgotten, since in my head this week is mostly about the first two items on the list.
  

I was really thrilled to see both Máirín Duffy and Luis Villa talking about mailing lists this week.

Before I talk about their posts, though, I want to tell you two awesome things related to Mailman:

1. The Mailman logo contest is now closed and the steering committee (including me!) is deciding how to narrow down the field before we put it to a vote. Check out all the awesome entries here!

2. Systers has been accepted as a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code. And I'm going to be part of their totally awesome team of mentors! They're hoping to get a whole lot of improvements for their mailing list, and a lot of these are the same sort of improvements we generally want for Mailman, so I'm really hoping we'll be able to use some of that code in Mailman 3. Check out our proposed list of projects: I'm most excited about the archives one, but there's lots of awesome in that list. (Student looking for a summer project? Apply!)

Okay, now that I've talked about my announcements, let's talk about those posts I mentioned, and how they're connected to my upcoming work with Mailman.

( In which I talk about the awesomeness of dynamic sub-lists and improvements to the archives )

I'm really excited to see other people thinking about the problems of mailing lists... and I'm even more excited to say that thanks to Systers, Google and a team of SoC students, we may be seeing the mailing lists of The Future sooner rather than later!

Expect me to be talking about this stuff a lot over the coming months, and if you've got suggestions regarding Mailman, now's an even better time than usual to tell me about it. Don't be shy!