Dear all,
Google Summer of Code 2017 has ended with another successful summer of
student coding with probably the highest calibre year we've ever seen.
After four years as lead admin for Boost Summer of Code, my time has
come to an end. I'll be making way for David Bellot, long time mentor at
Boost GSoC and maintainer of Boost.uBLAS. Please join me in welcoming
David as new lead admin. I'll be staying on as backup admin next summer
to help David settle in.
My time as Boost Summer of Code admin has certainly been eventful with
lots of surprises, ups and downs. The fact these surprises did not turn
into crises is due in large part to a few people in particular who went
far beyond the call of duty:
* Jon Kalb, who went to bat for the students repeatedly in multiple
venues and finding tens of thousands of dollars when it was needed.
* Boris Schäling, whom I replaced as lead admin and who acted as backup
admin for some years, who also managed to arrange tens of thousands of
dollars of sponsorship when it was needed most.
* Bryce Adelstein Lelbach, for acting as backup admin these past few years.
* Andrew Sutton, the lead GSoC admin before Boris, who gave such
detailed and useful early advice and materials on how to best navigate
the treacherous waters of Google Summer of Code!
And finally to all the mentors who so generously volunteered their time,
and to the students every single one of whom successfully finished their
projects in my time as admin despite problems with sickness, deaths in
close family etc. Some of those students have gone on to become
mainstays of the C++ conference circuit, famous names in their own
right. I'm sure they would have been so without Google Summer of Code,
but I'd like to think that it helped bring them to Boost rather than
them getting into C++ via elsewhere. Thank you students!
Regards,
Niall
