SilverStripe.com Blog
Google Highly Open Participation Awards Ceremony held at the Googleplex
Late last year, Google launched a global software contest for highschool students called the Google Highly Open Participation (GHOP) contest. The contest boasted some impressive statistics: nearly 400 students around the world contributed a total of about 1000 tasks for ten software projects over a very busy two-month period.
SilverStripe was one of the ten projects in the contest, with tasks by students ranging from translating SilverStripe to other languages, building themes and widgets, testing, and doing presentations to spread the awareness of our software. Much of this work is in use by thousands of SilverStripe sites.
0 Comments Tags: ghop07, award, community, open source
Screencast Tutorials Contributed
One of the tasks offered to high school students earlier this year was to produce screencast tutorials on some of the major things you do with SilverStripe; such as:
Although these tutorials are little more than following our existing text instructions or following common sense, by being a movie, you can sit back and relax to appreciate how easy it is to perform these tasks with SilverStripe. Thanks to Gadulix, David Mestel and Simon Welsh for producing these tutorials.
1 Comments Tags: documentation, tutorials, ghop
Claiming your Google contest prizes
If you participated in the Google Highly Open Participation Contest over the past few months and successfully completed one of more tasks, you must complete a parental consent form and submit your address details if you want your prizes sent to you! Only two thirds of the contestants have completed this thus far, and the deadline is the end of the month, February 29th.
0 Comments Tags: ghop
Google Highschool Contest Winners
Since late November, hundreds of highschool students have been working around the world on about one thousand predetermined challenges set by ten open source software packages as part of Google's inaugral Highly Open Participation contest. Today we're excited to name the individuals who distinguished themselves while working with SilverStripe.
It was easy for us to determine our top three students, but much harder for us to rank them. All three completed a staggering quantity of professional work which was often creatively solved. Importantly, because student interest meant SilverStripe recieved 173 pieces of submitted work (up threefold from our expectation of 60!), we were delighted to see these three students earnestly helping other contestants through our forums and IRC (chat channel), otherwise we'd have not been able to cope with the unanticipated success of the contest.
9 Comments Tags: ghop
Apple iTheme
Joao, another one of our prolific theme builders from the Google highschool contest, recently published a stunning new theme that is free to download, based on the current Apple asthetic.
7 Comments Tags: ghop, apple
Google Highly Open Participation contest ends
After a spectacular two months, the contest to engage highschool students with our project has ended. Back in November we came up 60 initial challenges, and we weren't sure they would all get completed. In fact, we've ended up with three times that!
We've had a tonne of themes, widgets, translations and other work contributed, and we now have the hard task of choosing a supreme contestant who shall be awarded a trip to Google's headquarters.
3 Comments Tags: ghop
Wojtek updates themes
Wojtek recently finished updating many of his 15 themes with the sorts of changes that a perfectionist always goes back to do. Read the details and head over to the themes download area!
Having now built over a dozen themes, Wojtek has been working on a program to help automate the process of adapting existing HTML templates to the SilverStripe conventions. You can see his work in progress and give feedback!
2 Comments Tags: ghop, theme
23 new SilverStripe themes!
Thanks to a super-human effort by Google Highly Open Participation Contest participants Wojtek, Jeff, and Joao, we have more than doubled the number of SilverStripe themes. We were careful to come up with a diversity of design aesthetics, so check them out and get a SilverStripe website looking the way you want it!
5 Comments Tags: ghop, theme
Interview with Jeff, GHOP student in the Silicon Valley
Completing my interviews with the top three GHOP students in terms of quantity of tasks, is Jeff from San Jose, considered the capital of the Silicon Valley. His work in the contest so far includes website themes, a website, widgets, and translating SilverStripe's interface into Taiwan's dialect of Chinese.
Jeff, tell us about yourself and where you've grown up...
Born in Taiwan, I consider myself a Taiwanese. I currently live in San Jose, California where I attend Evergreen Valley High School. Life as a high school student is quite busy for me. Not only do I have to worry about my rigorous academics, I also have to balance enough time to pursue my hobbies, like web development and robotics. One of the best things about living in the Silicon Valley is that you are motivated by the great innovations that happen around you.
1 Comments Tags: ghop, interview
12 hours left to be a part of Google's highschool contest!
The first phase of Google's highly open participation contest draws to a close at 12:00AM US Pacific Time (08:00 UTC) (21:00 NZST) on January 22, 2008, which is about 12 hours away (See official contest timeline).
The top students engaged in the contest have an insatiable appetite for our tasks, which is why you're seeing a blossoming of new themes right now, but if you'd like to enter history as a highschool student in Google's first global open source contest (and get a Google T-Shirt to boot), then read the contest rules and choose an open task to work on pronto!
4 Comments Tags: ghop
How do humans win?
Webstock is here! We've been in heads-down mode for a while, working on sites for councils, Air New Zealand, and American clients too. So now is the time to celebrate the local scene and be proud of Webstock!
SilverStripe Ltd Level 5, Symes de Silva House, 97–99 Courtenay Place, Wellington, New Zealand. Phone us: +64 4 978 7330. Paid Support available: +64 4 978 7333.
Looking for our Open Source Software? Then head to SilverStripe.org.
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