Six students, six projects, a lot of codes. Google Summer of Code 2016 has crossed its midterm line. Our students running Joomla! projects are working hard with the support of their mentors and admins*. Will they finish in time? Will their projects bring good results for the Joomla! Project and for the Joomla! users?

*All mentors and admins are volunteers from Joomla! Community.

We will only find the answer of these questions in August 30th, when all the students who pass the program will be announced. The good news is that the six students selected by Joomla! have passed the midterm evaluation. Congratulations, students and mentors!

But as we still have some things to improve to reach the success of our GSoC 2016 projects, students may pay attention to their mentor feedbacks and work hard to get better. The time is passing and we can't lose any minute of work!  

Let's talk now about the first step of the program: the community bonding. It happened from April 22 to May 22, when students spent a month learning more about the organization’s community.

All the data bellow came from an anonymous form applied to the students. That is why you will read the reports without the authors mentioned. We mixed all the answers to avoid any kind of recognition.  

What did our students do during the Community Bonding Period??   

• Discuss project milestone with my mentors
• Learned about Joomla! as a community
• Got well equated with my mentor
• Got through the documentation of Joomla
• Interacted with my mentors and admins
• Published my first article for Joomla Magzine
• Interacted with other Joomla members
• In community bonding period, I was very familiar with Joomla! Development on Github and Joomla! Coding standard.
• Setup the workstation to follow joomla coding standard and developing successfully with using it and send PR on weblinks extention  
• Learned coding in depth
• I have joined Automated Testing Working Group
• Getting to know about my mentors,other new members and knowing the Joomla framework really helped me a lot to get acquanited for the coding period

100% of the students totally agree with:

• I felt welcome by Joomla GSoC team when I joined.
• Joomla GSoC team is providing all the information that they need about the Program.
• Admins are accessible and really care about me.
• My mentors give me clear and appropriated feedbacks.

When we asked if they feel that their mentors are dedicated to help them to be successful, five students answered that all the mentors are and one answered that some of them are. It means that all our students are feeling supported by [at least some of] the mentors.   

"Is there something that admins can do for you that they are not already doing? If yes, tell us how we could help you more."
All the answers for these questions were no, nothing to add.

"Admins are perfect in every sense", one of them answered.

Finally, when we asked them about how they are feeling and their feedbacks/suggestions to the Joomla! GSoC Team, they said:

• Everything seems to be going nice and smooth. Compared to the previous GSoC experience I had I fell like Joomla is doing a superb job. I really don't feel a distance between the mentors and the admins since they are always reachable and very much available. Everybody seems to be doing an awesome job and that makes the GSoC experience as a student also to be awesome! :)
• Bugged :| , solving bugs and git issues
• Everything in the coding period is going perfect. Weekly meeting helps a lot.
• You are doing great guys.
• Gsoc team is really good working. My Mentors is very polite and always ready to help.

Karam, João, Nikita, Prital, Ruchiranga and Shubham will share more details about their projects progress in the next edition of Joomla Community Magazine.

Thank you, Helvecio and Saurabh Shah for the images.