Summer of Content organizations
About · FAQ · Calendar · Contact Projects · Organizations · Mentors · Interns · Volunteers
If you are new to wikis, check out Wikieducator's excellent tutorials for an introduction.
- Apply as an organization by filling out the Summer of Content organization application and emailing your answers to
. Also join the mailing list to get updates and announcements. - Create an organization profile by editing this page manually (click the "edit" tab at the top) or clicking the "Create an organization profile" button here:
<inputbox> type=comment default=Summer of Content organizations buttonlabel=Create an organization profile bgcolor=#fffcf9 preload=Summer of Content organization profile template break=no </inputbox>
- Find mentors for your organization and encourage them to apply on the Summer of Content mentors page.
- Check out the projects on the projects page; add your ideas, comment on existing ones, and add your names to the projects you're interested in.
What do mentor/sponsor organizations do?
- Mentor organizations...
- Provide a dedicated SoCon contact person to coordinate mentors within that organization (~30 minutes per week)
- Make sure that mentors keep in touch with their assigned interns
- Help their mentors and interns contact and work with members of the organization's community to develop their projects
- Help publicize the work their mentors and interns are doing
- Sponsor organizations...
- Arrange for providing stipends to interns ($500USD per intern, paid in 3 installments throughout the summer contingent on satisfactory intern performance reports by mentors)
- Receive regular reports and updates from the projects they are funding, plus a final report or presentation package at the end
Nearly all organizations serve as both mentor and sponsor organizations, but it is possible to apply for one or the other.
Participating organizations
Organization Name
Organization website: your-organization-url.com
Country:
Main contact name:
Main contact email: address (at) domain (dot) com
Organization description: 1-2 paragraphs on what your organization does.
Interests: Describe the types of projects you are interested in.
Special notes: Describe any special notes that people interested in working with your organization should know. (For instance, if you only work with people in a certain region, or can provide office space to interns near your location.)
Centro Open Source
Organization website: http://www.cos-la.org
Country: Lima-Peru
Main contact name: Alfonso de la Guarda Reyes
Main contact email: olpc@cos-la.org
Organization description: The COS is an international center of research and development for FLOSS solutions located in Lima-Perú. Their activities starts on April 2007 with many projects in a brief called "Caja Mágica FLOSS" (Magic Box FLOSS). The director of COS is: Alfonso de la Guarda Reyes, old peruvian hacker since 1982 who starts in the "scene" with Commodore 64 with experience and knowledge in development, communications, electronics, etc., Alfonso is also "Research and Development Manager" of ICTEC SAC (A peruvian company of Perú for FLOSS solutions).
Interests: The COS currently has started 5 projects of their BOX:
- EduKT (Easy Multimedia Content Builder) - Currently on Beta
- AmiGO (Low Cost Robots) - Currently on Alfa
- ITv (Server/Client Solution por Interactive Television) - Currently on Alfa
- ScienTO (Scientific Cartoon-like simulator) - Planning
- Kidtz (Simple Electronics Kits for children with software included) - Planning
Special notes: All the projects are social and the license must be GPL and Creative Commons. Also the programming language used is Python and C++ for some cases. The mentoring will be in Spanish and some English.
One Laptop Per Child
Organization website: http://www.laptop.org
Country: primarily the United States
Main contact name: Mel Chua
Main contact email: 
Organization description: One Laptop per Child (OLPC) is a non-profit organization created to design, manufacture, and distribute laptops that are sufficiently inexpensive to provide every child in the world access to knowledge and modern forms of education. We also encourage and facilitate the development of multilingual open content educational materials for use with the laptop, the formation of local community groups to work on the same, and ultimately the ability of children to develop their own open content educational materials for use with their laptops.
Interests: We are interested in the development of open content for educating children ages 6-16, the curation and packaging of existing open content collections for our library collection, running training and content creation events for local communities in developing nations, projects that actively encourage young children to create open content, volunteer coordination and recruitment, translation and internationalization, and the creation of non-verbal technical and nontechnical documentation, although we are open to suggestions for projects on other topics. Check our mentors on the Summer of Content mentors page for individual mentor interests.
Special notes: The main OLPC office is located in Cambridge, MA, USA. However, we have local groups and volunteers all over the world.
Commonwealth of Learning
Organization website: http://www.col.org
Country: All countries in the Commonwealth of Nations, main office in Vancouver, BC (Canada).
Main contact name: Wayne Mackintosh
Main contact email: Click here for Wayne's email. SJ Klein or Patricia Schlicht can be contacted when Wayne is traveling or difficult to reach.
Organization description: The Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to encourage the development and sharing of open learning/distance education knowledge, resources and technologies. COL is helping developing nations improve access to quality education and training. In particular, they are the group behind Wikieducator.
Interests: We are interested in projects that will improve education and access to education in the countries of the Commonwealth. Some possible topics are the creation of open content curricula, vocational training, teacher training, wiki training, gender equity in education, the creation of wiki templates and software that facilitates the creation of free content, and more. We are open to suggestions. Also see individual COL mentor interests on the Summer of Content mentors page.
Special notes: COL will sponsor stipends for five successful project submissions for SoCon 2007. Applicants must be Commonwealth citizens or residents. You can work remotely or in the Vancouver office if you live in the area, subject to available physical space at our offices. We would especially love to have interns from developing nations.
Developing Curriculum, Inc.
Organization website: needs website
Main contact name: Kevin Driscoll
Main contact email: driscollkevin (at) gmail
Organization description: Developing Curriculum, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to encouraging the development of high-quality learning materials.
Interests:
- Developing high quality free learning materials
- Encouraging teachers to "free" their existing curriculum
- Creating partnerships between master teachers and newer teachers (or ed students)
Special notes:
- 2007-2009, Presence in both Boston/Cambridge and Bay Area
FLOSS manuals
Organization website: http://www.flossmanuals.net
Country: needs country
Main contact name: Adam Hyde
Main contact email: <adam@flossmanuals.net>
Organization description: FLOSS Manuals is an open platform (wiki) for developing quality free manuals about free software. There are a lot of people that know a lot about software. There are also a lot of people that need to know about software. FLOSS Manuals aims to connect the two by making writing and reading about software easy.
Interests: Free manuals about free software.
Special notes: None.
Name.com
Organization website: name.com
Country: USA
Main contact name: Clarissa Caldwell
Main contact email: clarissa@name.com
Organization description:Name.com is young, funky and friendly Internet company specializing in domain names. Our emerging fourth sector, name.org, will provide non-profits with domains and web hosting, as well as encourage corporations to wake up to the non-profit world. Hello! Social responsibility... We value technology, education and possibility. (Note: name.org is still just an embryo, growing to be, looking for input.)
Interests: Interested in establishing a system of maps. Working on uploading content and lesson plans. We have an Astronomy teacher in the office which would be a good place to begin, but we're open to projects related to literature, social studies, math, history, culture...
Special notes: Taking 2 interns for this round; can provide office space in Denver for accepted interns. Ping-pong table. Flexible company. Best for inspired and self-motivated individuals.
Rising Voices
Organization website: http://wiki.rising.globalvoicesonline.org
Country: Global
Main contact name: David Sasaki
Main contact email: outreach (at) globalvoicesonline (dot) org
Organization description: Rising Voices is an outreach initiative of Global Voices, a website and community which aggregates, curates, and amplifies the global conversation online. Rising Voices aims to help bring new voices from new communities and speaking new languages to the conversational web, by providing resources and funding to local groups reaching out to underrepresented communities.
Interests: Citizen media projects (blogging, podcasting, video) from areas that are not well-represented on the conversational web.
Special notes: Multilingualism and translation skills are a definite plus.
read.fm
Organization website: read.fm
Country: unincorporated
Main contact name: Duke Crawford
Main contact email: firstname (at) read (dot) fm
Organization description: read.fm develops tools for language learners and literacy
Interests: enhanced text, games.. meaningful input for motivated language learners
Special notes: can pay a hacker to mix twext w/ scratch: StoryAsking
Appropedia
Organization website: http://appropedia.org
Country: Web-based, international
Main contact name: Chris Watkins
Main contact email: chriswaterguy (at) appropedia (dot) org
Organization description: We at Appropedia passionately believe in the ability to easily share and find information so that each of us can focus our time and energy where it will have the most impact. Appropedia takes on the administration of collaboratively organizing information, project examples, best practices, how tos and authors, allowing Sustainability, Appropriate Technology, and International Development organizations and individuals to focus on what they do best. See Appropedia for more details.
Interests: Describe the types of projects you are interested in.
Special notes: Describe any special notes that people interested in working with your organization should know. (For instance, if you only work with people in a certain region, or can provide office space to interns near your location.)
Open Knowledge Foundation
Organization website: http://www.okfn.org
Country: UK
Main contact name: Jonathan Gray
Main contact email: [firstname] (dot) [lastname] (at) okfn (dot) org
Organization description:
The Open Knowledge Foundation was founded in 2004 and exists to promote open knowledge in all ways possible. Central to this is being an open and participatory community and our allied role as a hub and partner for existing open knowledge networks. Beyond this we work specifically to:
- Promote the idea of open knowledge, both what it is, and why is it a good idea.
- Campaign at the national and international level on open knowledge issues.
- Run 'Open Knowledge' events, for example forums and OKCON.
- Develop tools that help us and help others develop open knowledge, such as KForge and the Comprehensive Knowledge Archive Network (CKAN)
- Provide infrastructure, and potentially a home, for open knowledge projects, communities and resources. See, for example, the KnowledgeForge service.
Running through all of our activities is a strong emphasis on decentralized collaboration. In particular, our primary aim is to help others develop open knowledge rather than doing it ourselves. Of course, that doesn't mean we don't develop specific projects but we believe that the future lies in collaboration between a multitude of different groups and that no one group or organisation can, or should try to, "do it all".
Interests:
We are keen to promote and facilitate the production of open knowledge 'packages'. We are also interested in projects that seek to list existing open material or to promote open licensing. Below are some new and existing projects that we are keen to develop:
Content:
- Open Shakespeare - the complete works of shakespeare, along with textual apparatus (introduction, notes) and tools (concordance, search etc) all in an open form. See also the SoCon project proposal page
- Open Economics - open economic data storage and visualization along with associated web services and assorted modelling code
- Open textbooks
Meta-projects:
- CKAN - registry of open knowledge packages
- Open Text Book - a listing of open textbooks
- Any projects informing creators of existing online content about open licensing
See OKF projects page for a full project list.
Special notes: Open Knowledge Foundation members are primarily based in London and Cambridge.