The GSoC 2011 Challange!!

The timeline for Google Summer of Code 2011 is out and students from all over the world are rearing to get ready for the challenge.
What attracts students is the opportunity to associate themselves from the community of Google and open source along with monetory benefits. Not to mention the funky Google T-Shirt remains the center of attraction.

Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

The official GSoC 2011 website is GSoC 2011.

The GSoC timeline is as follows for 2011.. 

January 24:	Program announced.
February 28: 19:00 UTC	Mentoring organizations can begin submitting applications to Google.
March 11: 23:00 UTC	Mentoring organization application deadline.
March 14-17:	Google program administrators review organization applications.
March 18: 19:00 UTC	List of accepted mentoring organizations published on the Google Summer of Code 2011 site.
March 18-27:	Would-be student participants discuss application ideas with mentoring organizations.
March 28: 19:00 UTC	Student application period opens.
April 8: 19:00 UTC	Student application deadline.
Interim Period:	Mentoring organizations review and rank student proposals; where necessary, mentoring organizations may request further proposal detail from the student applicant.
April 22:	All mentors must be signed up and all student proposals matched with a mentor - 07:00 UTC Student ranking/scoring deadline. Please do not add private comments with a nonzero score or mark students as ineligible (unless doing so as part of resolving duplicate accepted students) after this deadline - 17:00 UTC IRC meeting to resolve any outstanding duplicate accepted students - 19:00 UTC #gsoc
April 25: 19:00 UTC	Accepted student proposals announced on the Google Summer of Code 2011 site.
Community Bonding Period:	Students get to know mentors, read documentation, get up to speed to begin working on their projects.
May 23:	Students begin coding for their GSoC projects; Google begins issuing initial student payments provided tax forms are on file and students are in good standing with their communities.
Interim Period:	Mentors give students a helping hand and guidance on their projects.
July 11: 19:00 UTC	Mentors and students can begin submitting mid-term evaluations.
July 15: 19:00 UTC	Mid-term evaluations deadline; Google begins issuing mid-term student payments provided passing student survey is on file.
Interim Period:	Mentors give students a helping hand and guidance on their projects.
August 15:	Suggested 'pencils down' date. Take a week to scrub code, write tests, improve documentation, etc.
August 22: 19:00 UTC	Firm 'pencils down' date. Mentors, students and organization administrators can begin submitting final evaluations to Google.
August 26: 19:00 UTC	Final evaluation deadline Google begins issuing student and mentoring organization payments provided forms and evaluations are on file.
August 29:	Final results of GSoC 2011 announced
August 30:	Students can begin submitting required code samples to Google
October 22 & 23:	Mentor Summit at Google: Representatives from each successfully participating organization are invited to Google to greet, collaborate and code. Our mission for the weekend: make the program even better, have fun and make new friends.