[development] Call to action: Brace for incoming torrent of SoC students :)

[Angela Byron]

Google Summer of Code applications open tomorrow and last until March 
31. That's a very short period of time for students to come to Drupal, 
figure out what they want to do, get feedback on their ideas, and submit 
their applications to Google.

So! We need an army of friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable Drupal folks 
at the ready in #drupal and http://groups.drupal.org/soc-2008 to help 
answer student questions, review student proposals/project ideas, point 
students toward resources (either documentation-wise or people-wise), 
cross-post proposals to relevant groups to get further input/feedback, 
and generally just be there to guide folks on their initial steps into 
the community.

Some of the ideas that made it to our ideas list @ 
http://drupal.org/google-summer-of-code/2008/ideas-list include 
integration with numerous 3rd party APIs such as YouTube, Last.fm, and 
CiteProc, improvements to modules such as Date, Calendar, Organic 
Groups, and Views, and several architectural pieces such as a Validation 
API and performance profiling system. In addition, several students have 
suggested awesome ideas of their own in the Summer of Code 2008 group. 
It looks like it's going to be a rockin' summer!!

So please, if you could hang out in #drupal and comment on posts in 
http://groups.drupal.org/soc-2008 when you have a chance this week, it 
would be *greatly* appreciated. Let's show these students what a great 
community Drupal is to work with. :)

-Angie