[Soc-coordination] GSoC student, interested in a project from 2014

[ekrell]

Greetings all!

Only very recently did I learn about Google Summer of Code, or at least, 
know of it in any meaningful sense. I vaguely remember hearing word of 
it previously, but it didn't really register until about a week ago when 
a fellow student explained to me what it actually is. That evening, I 
was scanning that various organization's ideas pages, seeing what 
projects seemed like a good fit. "That sounds cool, if only I had yet 
taken linear algebra", I would think as I perused the requirements of 
some science-related project, or "wow, that would awesome to work on if 
I had a stronger background regarding MIPS". Eventually I found myself 
hanging out on in wget IRC and playing around with their code. There 
were a few other interested students who seemed to know what they were 
doing and were properly engaged within the community. I thought it best 
to branch out.

As a long-time Debian fan, I was once again browsing the Debian ideas 
page. I was flipping through the projects when one caught my attention 
that I hadn't noticed before. "This project is me!", I thought, reading 
the specifications and immediately imagining the cool ways in which such 
a thing could be implemented. I eagerly got in contact with the mentors, 
describing my interest and relevant background.

However, I was kindly informed that I had made a mistake. You see, 
somewhere along the lines I ended up in the 2014 ideas page. I was 
informed by last year's mentor that he was already engaged with this 
year's project, but encouraged me not to cast my ambition aside. Thus, 
here I am, hoping that someone may be available who would help out a 
poor student who wishes dearly to contribute to Debian and the open 
source community by way of working on the "Debian Metrics Portal" as 
described at 
https://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2014/Projects/DebianMetricsPortal

I am a huge data nerd, and very interested in exploring data 
visualization. I have experience with various graphic libraries, 
matplotlib, etc, and have done some university projects in this area. 
I'm willing to provide more details regarding my background as needed, 
if anyone is interested in mentoring this project. Of course, I 
completely understand that most of you are likely tied up with projects 
and students of your own, but if you have something available, or any 
advice how I might pursue this project, please contact me.

Consider the following: I get chosen for a GSoC project and am able to 
tell my mother, "see, I can make money in open source!". On the other 
hand, without such an opportunity I may find myself coding inputs for 
some secret machine whose purposes I'll never even know. Dissatisfied, I 
quit the industry to pursue the life of a writing vagabond, eventually 
publishing a great American novel. However, I can't take the fame and 
leave society, only to find myself trapped in the opium dens of a far 
off land. Advanced in years, and blanketed by the haze of the 
smoke-filled room, I look back upon what it would have been if I hadn't 
accidentally clicked on the page for GSoC 2014.