This is the ideas page for Public Lab's [Rails Girls Summer of Code](https://railsgirlssummerofcode.org/) and [Google Summer of Code program](/gsoc), programs for student fellows to work on free and open source projects. **Important** -- if you're new to Public Lab software contributing, see our **[Welcome page](https://publiclab.github.io/community-toolbox/#r=all)** and our [Contributing page](/wiki/contributing-to-public-lab-software) ### Get in touch We love to hear from new contributors! Reach out on **[the developer mailing list](https://groups.google.com/group/plots-dev)** - or in [our chat room](/chat). We've embedded a small chatroom right here: ### Contribution guidelines Our [Contributing to Public Lab Software](/wiki/contributing-to-public-lab-software) page has our preferred guidelines for submitting changes. Please read it over! We also love it when students show that they can work well with us by trying a `first-timers-only` issue, and even **submitting a pull request**. This gives us confidence that you've read our contribution guidelines and would be ready to jump into a project. To get started, see our welcome page: > Welcome page: https://publiclab.github.io/community-toolbox/#r=all **** ### How to post a proposal (for students) Please first leave a comment on the post below, and tell us what you're interested in and a bit about your experience. It's also great to hear if you've forked [one of our codebases](/wiki/developers)) and installed it on your computer [or a test environment](). Done with that? How about running tests? Tell us how far you've gotten, and ask us for help -- we're happy to help you get started! Read the call for proposals, ask questions, and post your ideas: > (2017 program link -- 2018 coming soon!) [Post a proposal here](/notes/warren/02-28-2017/call-for-proposals) -- and view proposals posted so far **** ## Ideas We're currently collecting ideas on this page: https://publiclab.org/talk/gsoc-ideas