Since 2006, I've probably tried every possible role as a Google Summer of Code participant: accepted student, rejected student, submitter of a rejected organization application, mentor of successful students, mentor of a failing student, co-administrator, and now administrator. Here's my story:

  • In 2006, I had the pleasure of being selected to participate as a student for the Mozilla organization. The work I did on the Page Info dialog eventually shipped as part of Firefox 3.0.
  • In 2007 I applied as a student again, to a different organization, but unfortunately wasn't selected. However, I received an email from someone from the organization who told me the application was good and they would have liked to take me as a student if they had received more slots. He offered to mentor me if I decided to move forward with the project anyway, which I did! I completed the project and in October 2007, Instantbird 0.1 was released. Instantbird is a cross platform, easy to use, instant messaging client based on Mozilla technologies.
  • In 2007, I was selected by Mozilla for an internship in the Firefox team, and spent the end of the year in their headquarters in Mountain View, California. I think this was in large part because people were happy about the work I did in 2006 as a Summer of Code student.
  • In 2008, 2009 and 2010, I focused on Instantbird, which had a growing community of volunteers improving it every day. I sent Summer of Code organization applications on behalf of the Instantbird community, but they weren't accepted. When I asked for feedback, I was told that we should try to work with Mozilla.
  • And this is what we did in 2011! Gerv agreed to let us add Instantbird project ideas to the Mozilla idea list. In 2011 I mentored a student, who completed successfully his work on implementing XMPP in JavaScript for Instantbird. In October I attended the mentor summit in Mountain View.
  • In 2012, I mentored another student, who did some excellent work on improving the user experience for new users during the first run of Instantbird.
  • In 2013, Gerv, who had been handling Summer of Code for Mozilla since the beginning in 2005, asked me if I would be interested in eventually replacing him as an Administrator. After some discussion, I accepted the offer, and we agreed to have a transition period. In 2013, I was backup administrator. I also mentored for the third year in a row. Unfortunately I had to fail my student. This was frustrating, but also a learning experience.
  • In 2014, I submitted the Summer of Code organization application on behalf of Mozilla, it was accepted and we are looking forward to another great summer of code!
  • On a more personal note, after being a Mozilla volunteer for years (since 2004), working on the Thunderbird team (from 2011 to 2012), and then on WebRTC apps (since October 2012), I'm starting in March 2014 as a full time engineer in the Firefox team. Which is the team for which I was a Summer of Code student, 8 years ago.