What is Summer of Content

The Summer of Content (SoCon) program offers budding creators mentorship and stipends to develop open content and run free culture events throughout the world. Inspired by Google's Summer of Code program, our goal is to support a self-sustaining ecosystem of open content by catalyzing the growth of contributor communities where they're most needed.

There are two Summer sessions a year, each lasting approximately 10 weeks: a Northern Summer running between May and August and a Southern Summer running between December and February. (The current Northern Summer 2007 is a pilot run and takes place between August and September 2007.)

For each summer, applicants (with the help of mentor organizations) write proposals describing the open content projects they want to work on. SoCon then acts as a matchmaker and helps mentor organizations choose which projects they want to support. SoCon also coordinates funding and communications between the network of mentors and interns. Once mentors and interns have been matched up, project work begins! The Summer ends with a series of local Jams around the world to showcase and gather feedback on the new creations... and the cycle begins again. (>>more...)