Get Stoked - End Poverty. One Line of Code at a Time.

2014 Google Summer of Code - Get to Know Mifos

After participating in Google Summer of Code in four different summers, we look forward to the opportunity to work with pre-university students through Google Code-In. As both a 501(c)3 non-profit and an open source project, our global community has a diverse range of tasks (both technical and non-tecnhnical) that will be a valuable experience for the students. Students will gain exposure to an active open source project, a widespread global community, and expand upon a wide range of discipline as they use technology to help alleviate global poverty.

• How is the Mifos software used?
• What is Mifos X?
• When is the GSoC?
• Watch how Mifos technology is helping end world poverty
• What do GSoC students work on for Mifos?
• What is it like being a GSoC intern for Mifos?

Get Stoked!

Watch the following videos to learn about our gigantic mission and the game-changing platform we've built to achieve it. 

http://youtu.be/co5cK2cYVU0

Guidelines

• Getting started Read about setting up the code and understand the basic concepts around MifosX.

Expectations

Students working on Mifos X will be expected to:

• Use the mifos-developer mailing list
• provide patches
• follow the Mifos coding standards
• document their work
• have access to reasonable bandwidth, ie: have a fast, reliable Internet connection
• track and report on progress daily

Prerequisite Skills

Basics

• Quick learner
• Troubleshooting Wizard
• Passion for writing beautiful code
• Excellent communication skills
• Knowledge of developer tools
  • such as: a text editor, source control, how to build software
  • experience with specific tools will also help, such as: Eclipse IDE, Git

Mifos includes wide variety of technologies, we do not expect a student to be expert on all of these. But it will be helpful if you have some experience in some of these. Helpful skills (specific technology requirements vary with project chosen):

• MySQL,Jersey, Hibernate, Spring,
• HTML, CSS,  JavaScript (JQuery), AngularJS
• JUnit, REST-assured

Hints

• When you need help, ask for help! Do some searches before asking, please. We are very excited for you to join us, but we need to know that you're willing to put in the time and effort required to do your part. When you do ask, ask well.
• Not sure if you are qualified? Download and build the code, then run the Platform and the reference user interface. Instructions for doing so are available at Getting started - Contributing to MifosX.
• Email the mifos-developer mailing list with your questions and project ideas.
• Install Skype for (generally infrequent) video calls. You'll need a headset for Skype, too.

Mentoring

Mifos folks are constantly working remotely (mainly using Skype), especially in supporting remote contributors. We often do video calls and desktop sharing If possible, we'd love to meet you in person! Specific mentors for each project will be listed below.

Mentor	Category	Location	Time Zone
	Coding & Quality Assurance	Switzerland	CET (GMT +1:00)
	Coding & Quality Assurance	India	IST (GMT +5:30)
	Coding & User Interface	Indian	IST (GMT +5:30)
	Outreach/Research & Documentation/Training	USA	PST (GMT -8:00)
	Coding & Quality Assurance	India	IST (GMT +5:30)
	Documentation/Training	Belize	CST(GMT -6:00)
	Coding & Quality Assurance	Germany	CET (GMT+1:00)

Project Tasks

GCI students will have the opportunity to work on the following types of tasks:

1. Code: we have a range of introductory coding tasks across our Java platform, AngularJS community app, and Android mobile field operations app. 
2. Documentation/Training: Most of the end users of our software aren't super-technica. Documentation is critical - we have a number of short how-to guides as well as training slides to work on. 
3. Outreach/Research: As a global non-profit with a rich social mission to bring financial services to the poor, we have an enormous amount of non-coding work to get done in our community - on the marketing front this involves product positioning and collateral, donor and volunteer outreach, social media management, CRM & contact management, digital media design, as well as analysis and research of our competitors and new financial inclusion products and services. 
4. Quality Assurance: Mifos X is enterprise-grade, mission-critical software to run a bank - quality, security, and performance couldn't be more important - as our software continues to grow, we have a range of manual and automate testing tasks.
5. User Interface: Since many end users of our software aren't that technically literate, an optimal user experience is ever more valuable, various areas of our app could use some mockups and wireframes.

Coding

Task:  Insert 2-3 line description of task and optionally link to issue in JIRA or additional background detail. The description will also list languages or skills that may be required to complete the task (Tags).

Documentation/Training

Task:  Insert 2-3 line description of task and optionally link to issue in JIRA or additional background detail. The description will also list languages or skills that may be required to complete the task (Tags).

Outreach/Research

Task:  Insert 2-3 line description of task and optionally link to issue in JIRA or additional background detail.The description will also list languages or skills that may be required to complete the task (Tags).

Quality Assurance

Task:  Insert 2-3 line description of task and optionally link to issue in JIRA or additional background detail. The description will also list languages or skills that may be required to complete the task (Tags).

User Interface

Task:  Insert 2-3 line description of task and optionally link to issue in JIRA or additional background detail. The description will also list languages or skills that may be required to complete the task (Tags).

Timeline

Official GCI Timeline

See also

• GCI FAQ
• Application Template