Summer of Code: Choosing an interesting project idea

(Introduction and table of contents)

First of all you have to choose an organization you want to work to with. I don't have much to say here. I guess you just have to go to the list of organizations and pick the one you like the most.

After that you have to choose a project idea to work on. For that, it's best to start early: you will have to do a lot of iterative communication, and the more iterations you will complete, the better your application will be.

Now what to look for in idea itself? First and foremost, ambitious ideas are good, especially if they are not in the proposed project list. Tell it to the project and it may even end up on that list [3]. That's a strong case for your application, and you haven't even started writing it yet. Second, original ideas, outside the current "hot" thing, show that you are an independent thinker. Furthermore, your idea should be not merely "nice", but something that the project genuinely needs.

At the same it's a good idea to start reading development docs and some code for the project. This will help to see if the idea is feasible - especially if it's not in the list of the suggested projects - and to get general feel about the project. Even more important is to contact project developers: ask for feedback for your project idea, find yourself a mentor, file a bug, submit a simple patch - get involved!

Finally, learn about organization specific things: see if there are particular requirements for applications in you organization. And do not be afraid to ask how one or another option would be evaluated and which route you should pursue. Organization might have a sound reason to prefer one perfectly good approach over another perfectly good one, so don't get burned just because both approaches seemed good to you.

Next: planning to write the application.