For the last several years, Angie Byron (aka webchick) has done an outstanding job coordinating Drupal's participation in the Google Summer of Code program. This year, however, Angie has the additional responsibility of being a core maintainer for Drupal 7.

Earlier this year, Angie put out a post asking for help in the Summer of Code 2009. Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg responded, and has been working with other members of the community to prepare for SoC 2009.

So this year, Alex will be Drupal's "organization administrator," or point person within the community for the SoC. In this role, Alex will have a number of duties, and will need your help!

In his role as organization administrator, Alex will be the go-to person for:

• Turning in our mentoring organization application so that we can participate in Summer of Code
• Wrangling the community to come up with mentors, project ideas, application voting, etc.
• Handling any "official" communications with Google
• Tracking student and mentor progress over the course of the program
• General cat-herding :)

Alex will be supported by members within the Drupal Association, including Robert Douglass (main point of contact), Bill Fitzgerald, and Angela Byron.

But with that said: the SoC has been successful within the Drupal community because of community involvement, aka you! To participate in this year's SoC, join the SoC 2009 group. If you work within a Drupal shop, consider mentoring a proposal. If you are active within your local Drupal User's Group, talk the program up at your next meeting. If you have an idea for the Next Great Killer Module (tm), write up the spec and submit it as a proposal. And if you are a student and want to get involved, come on in!

And who knows? Maybe this year's SoC will bring us the next webchick...