I think one area where we are failing is to get them really finished - and reviewed. This is partly because it is difficult (nay impossible) to stop people biting off more than they can chew in the really very limited time available. It might be better to use GSoC to finished existing projects, especially those that have been reviewed and accepted but need final polishing, testing and documenting?
These make reliable projects, but I think it's the opposite of what we should be doing. We should encourage new development, let students be ambitious, and we should encourage them to write in C++11. Our goal should be to recruit and retrain (emphasis on retain) new library authors and contributors. I don't think we do that by featuring work on existing projects. Besides, the C++ committee has a mandate for more libraries. We should embrace that and extend the opportunity for students to participate in a non-trivial way.
We also failed to get thinking seriously about projects soon enough. We need to start planning *now* for next year.
Indeed.