New Zealand High Schoolers: Put Google on your CV this Summer!

29 November 2007

New Zealand high-schoolers are being given a once in lifetime opportunity to work with Google over December and January in a computing contest with the lure of money, Google T-Shirts, and travel.

Wellington-based software company SilverStripe is one of 10 organisations invited by Google to be at the core of the global “Google Highly Open Participation Contest”.

Students choose to work on small tasks which get contributed back into high profile global software
projects. Participants get a Google T-Shirt and USD100 for every three tasks completed. The top ten
students get an all-expenses-paid trip to an awards ceremony at the Googleplex in Silicon Valley.

Tasks vary from programming, testing, design, and translating, to marketing. The contest aims to
teach appreciation for the progressive software ideals that Google, and other open source
companies like SilverStripe, are founded upon. Says SilverStripe co-founder Sigurd Magnusson:

"In today’s daily commentary about global warming and people's wariness of the greed held
by large music, oil, banking, and software giants, companies like Google are boldly
demonstrating how to make money and still operate for the human good. With Google
Earth, for example, Google purchased millions of dollars of satellite photography to then
release the world's best mapping tool. By making it free, Google genuinely improved the
world we live in. Through this contest, Google hopes to teach the next generation to
appreciate the importance of collaboration, open standards, and freedom of information--
and encourage them to live by the same ideals.

SilverStripe was invited into this contest because we’ve shown through our earlier
collaboration with Google that we share the same philosophy; like Google, we're showing the
world how to run a profitable, world-leading company that takes a more human approach;
giving massively useful software to the world."

Students must complete their work by 4th February 2008 to allow grand prize winners to be judged.

SilverStripe makes a world-leading web development platform that is both cutting edge and easy to
use. SilverStripe uses an open source development model to continuously expand the platform.
Since the platform’s launch in February, generous support has been received from Google, Sun, the
NZ Government, and in the form of hundreds of volunteers worldwide contributing new code, ideas,
translations, and testing. SilverStripe is financed by working with progressive Government and
private organizations who want sophisticated web applications built on top of the platform.

Resources:
•  Overview
•  Task list
•  Contest rules
•  Contest Logo
•  TVNZ Close Up, May 2007, discussing SilverStripe