What is Summer of Content
Summer of Content is an initiative inspired by the structure of Google's Summer of Code Program, but reconfigured for free and open content. A brief "Northern Summer" pilot session is underway with projects running from August - September 2007, with a full run in the southern summer (December through February) focusing on interns in the southern hemisphere, and a mid-2008 session roughly parallel to the Summer of Code schedule.
Existing open-content groups sign up with the Summer of Content (SoCon) program to become mentoring organizations, posting their contact information on the SoCon website. Simultaneously, the program invites interns who meet their eligibility criteria to post applications that detail the open-content project(s) they wish to complete within the given timeframe, approximately 2.5 months. (It's important to note that unlike the Summer of Code program, interns do not apply directly to individual mentoring organizations, but instead post the projects they'd like to work on - however, interns and mentoring organizations can work together to discuss and refine the project proposals before the application deadline.)
We will try to develop a self-supporting networked ecosystem of projects. In other words, in addition to more traditional content-production projects (write a book, curate an encyclopedia, compose a piece of music, etc) there will be meta-content accessibility and documentation projects with interns whose jobs will be to publicize, disseminate, and make other SoCon projects more accessible to various populations, as well as event/testing projects with interns whose jobs will be to run Test Jams and other local free culture conferences/events to get feedback to other SoCon creators about the work they're producing. Other types of projects will also be encouraged, but the important point to note is that SoCon is not just about the creation of open content, but instead about making that content useful and accessible, and therefore used for Awesome purposes by the rest of the world.
After the application deadline passes, mentoring organizations then go through and look at all the applications and project proposals from all the potential interns, choosing the projects they'd like to sponsor and mentor. SoCon acts as a mediator and matchmaker during this process. Once the matchmaking is complete, interns and their mentors are notified, and project work begins. Applicants and projects that are not matched with organizations are directed towards a separate Open Content Bounty program (this may not be fully operational for the SoCon 2007 pilot; it will be active for the Southern Summer 2007 run and beyond).
Participating interns and their mentors are then free to complete the project in whatever way they deem best (arrangements to be made between individual interns, mentors, and mentoring organizations). SoCon centralizes donation input and the distribution of stipends to both interns and mentoring organizations contingent on satisfactory progress as determined by midterm and final progress reports filled out by project mentors. (Note: For the pilot Northern Summer 2007 run, mentoring organizations are responsible for finding and distributing stipends to their own interns.) Upon completion of the program term, SoCon supports Test Jam interns in running their events to publicize and gather feedback and development communities around the newly-created content.