TurboGears is undergoing a monumental effort to participate in GSoC.  Ok, maybe not monumental, but at least 5 of the developers have been hard at working putting together an application even Google wouldn’t turn down. Even if we are not accepted, we are planning on participating by way of PSF, as we have done in previous Google Highly Open Participation contests.  We have developed a number of ideas which students can choose from, or students are welcome to come up with their own TurboGears ideas, and I am sure that one of our mentors will be able to match up with you.      

My own ideas revolve around DBSprockets and TwTools, which is not surprising since I am the owner of said projects.  The largest project and the one which I have the most desire to see put into action is that of a TurboGears CMS.  There had been some work done last year by the guys at Pagoda which produced a brilliant screencast, but the project seems stalled out and it would be nice to see it revived.  Furthermore, the solution I proposed is intended to be much more modular, so you could pick apart portions of the CMS and put them in your existing applications.  I think this would be the most flexible solution, and also one which would employ much that DBSprockets, TwTools, and Toscawidgets have to offer.  If you are a student who is interested in working on this project, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line.  You can also track me down at Pycon for the remainder of the week, and at the TurboGears sprint next week.  If you are a student who is eager to get started feel free to participate in our sprint, remotely or in person.   

One of the great things I see coming from this mini-project is that we now have a very nice set of concrete ideas about how to make TurboGears better.  Whether or not students participate in the development we still get a huge benefit from the creation of ideas, and it gives the development team and possibly new developers a target to make TurboGears the best it can be.  My hope is that these ideas will not only bring a students to our project, but also bring some developers out of the woodwork who may have started similar projects and would like to contribute.  The bottom line is, if you aren’t a contributor, and want to be, here is a great place to start.