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Introducing Season of NuPIC
Unfortunately, NuPIC was unable to participate in Google’s Summer of Code this year, but some of our community members suggested that we go ahead and host our own GSoC-like event, much like the KDE community does with their Season of KDE. And here it is!
Here’s how it works.
Our community comes up with an idea list of projects that potential SoN students might work on. Each idea must have a mentor assigned to it before it is approved, but unapproved issues are still kept around so students may base their proposals on them as well. Student proposals based on approved ideas with pre-assigned mentors have a better chance of being accepted.
Once the idea list is ready, student registration is opened up so interested parties can submit their proposals. They may be based on the ideas in the official idea list, or students may come up with their own ideas for proposals.
After the student registration is over, the SoN team reviews the applications and assigns approved proposals to mentors within the NuPIC community. Approved proposals and students are announced, and a “community bonding” period begins before any code is written. During this period, we welcome new students into the NuPIC community and encourage them to introduce themselves and talk about their proposals on our mailing list and IRC.
The coding period is roughly three months, which includes a mid-term report submitted by the student-mentor team to the SoN Staff. This is a way for us to gauge student progress and provide additional resources if necessary.
Once the coding period is complete, each student will submit a final report of the progress he/she made on the proposal, and the mentor will weigh in with his/her feedback on how the student did on the project. We will publish a final report of the progress made during the Season, including each student report and a summary of all the code submissions that made it back into NuPIC projects.
After the Season is over, successful students will receive an official certificate of participation from Numenta, as well as a Season of NuPIC 2014 t-shirt. Not to mention the camaraderie and satisfaction of participating in an open source project on the bleeding edge of machine learning and cortical simulation.
I’m looking forward to meeting new people and introducing them to our great community of collaborators, scientists, and dreamers. If you are interested in participating in NuPIC, but you don’t know where to start, please take a look through the Season of NuPIC 2014 Idea List and submit your proposal today!
Student registration ends April 1!
Back to BlogMatt Taylor
Open Source Community Flag-Bearer
Numenta, Inc.