Web developers: Fund world-class students to build Web Payments and Linked Data publishing tools for the next generation Web.
We are bringing together some of the brightest minds that build the technology for the Web, with some of the best students from around the globe, to build publishing tools for Web developers and content creators.
Each student will get a stipend of approximately $5,000 for the summer. They will be guided by a mentor that is actively participating in standardization and technology creation work at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the people that build core Web architecture. There are specific projects (listed below) that the mentors have identified as being big payoff projects. The students have already submitted detailed project proposals that have been approved by the W3C mentors. We have a minimum funding goal of $5,500 (1 student), but are trying to raise enough money for 4 more paid internships ($22,000). For every $5,500 raised, we can add one new student to the initiative.
How it started
So, here's the deal. Google runs a project called the Google Summer of Code that brings together top students from around the globe to create free software for the world. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the people that create the architecture for the Web, participated in the program this year and were flooded with exceptional students who wanted to work on W3C projects. The only problem is that there are far more students that applied to the W3C than Google can afford to pay through their Summer of Code program.
So, rather than turn these world-class students away, some of the mentors assigned to the W3C got together and decided to try and raise the rest of the funding necessary to pay these students to spend a summer building core technology for the Web. They're going to be building software that will touch the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the globe.
If you are a Web developer, or create content for the Web, these students are going to build tools that will make creating Linked Data and Web Payments content a snap. If you use the Web, everything from making Google, Facebook, and other search engines faster and more accurate, to sending and receiving funds over the Web will be improved by the tools created during this project.
What will be created?
The students have already gone through a grueling selection process where the mentors at the W3C have already picked the top students and projects from the 40 project proposal submissions.
The selected projects focus on active Linked Data and Web Payments initiatives at the W3C. The Linked Data technologies are being used by Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and a number of other large companies to build out services like Google's Knowledge Graph and Facebook's Open Graph. This technology is used on Google's front page to display detailed search results. If you create pages that you want to have prominently displayed on Google or Facebook, these students are going to create the tools to help you do that.
The Web Payments initiative is just getting started and aims to make raising funds on the Web as easy as it is to send an email today. The work also deals with sophisticated technology like Bitcoin, cryptographic identity, public key infrastructure, and a variety of other advanced concepts that will help the students become well-versed in the way of the Web. We're working with Mozilla, the organization that makes the Firefox web browser, to standardize some of this technology. If you are a web developer that wants to make money from making stuff for the Web, the students are going to create tools to help you do that.
However, none of this can happen without you. If you want these sorts of advanced features and open source publishing tools added to the Web, fund this project, and make it happen!
Who are the Mentors?
Gregg Kellogg - World Expert in RDF technologies, core maintainer of Ruby RDF libraries, and core designer of RDFa, and JSON-LD technologies, Invited Expert to W3C.
Dave Longley - CTO of Digital Bazaar, core designer and implementer of JavaScript, PHP, and Python JSON-LD processors, and PaySwarm Web Payment standards and core implementations.
Markus Lanthaler - Lead Editor and core designer of JSON-LD Algorithms and API, implementor of PHP JSON-LD processor, Invited Expert to W3C.
Stephane Corlosquet - World Expert in Drupal and RDF technologies, core maintainer of Linked Data tools in Drupal, Invited Expert to W3C.
Niklas Lindstrom - Linked Data expert for the Swedish National Library, core developer for multiple Linked Data projects, Invited Expert to W3C.
Shane McCarron - Founder Applied Testing and Technology, core member and implementer of RDFa and XHTML initiatives at W3C.
Dave Lehn - Director of Research - Digital Bazaar, core designer and implementer of PaySwarm Web Payment standards.
Manu Sporny - CEO of Digital Bazaar, Chairman of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Payments, PaySwarm, RDFa, and JSON-LD standardization groups.
There are also over 150 participants between the JSON-LD, RDFa, and Web Payments communities that will also be providing the students with feedback and support throughout their internships.
Who are the Students?
While the W3C and the mentors know who the students are, we cannot announce their names because the ones we pick are highly dependent on how much funding this project raises. In other words, we don't want to give some of the students false hope. For example, if this project only raises enough funding to hire one student, instead of having two to three students on the Web Payments project, we might have to reduce it to one.
That said, we chose the top 8 students based on a number of factors:
- Did the student sound passionate about their project proposal?
- Does the student have the proper technical background to complete the proposed project?
- Did the student engage the community early and continue engagement throughout the application process. Did they seek out feedback or were they receptive to feedback? Did they incorporate the feedback correctly?
- Does the student have a github account or previous projects that the mentors were impressed with?
- Did the student show initiative and start writing code without prompting from the mentors? Did the student state that they would like to become a long-term contributor to the communities for which they're writing source code?
- Did the references that the students included speak highly of the student? Did they identify them as among the best students they've worked with?
- Was the student's project proposal well thought out? Were they realistic in their timeline? Did they understand the importance of the work that they were doing?
In general, if a mentor was not able to answer in the affirmative for the vast majority of the questions asked above, the student was not considered for an internship position. The bar was set quite high, and only the top rated students were selected. There were a few students that were above average; none of them made the cut.
The Linked Data Projects
These projects revolve around extending the http://rdfa.info/ and http://json-ld.org/ websites to provide better Linked Data publishing and development tools.
JSON-LD / HTML5+RDFa editor for Schema.org:
Create an advanced Web-based tool to generate valid HTML5+RDFa and JSON-LD for People, Places, and Events, expanding the tool to enable a variety of other markup for schema.org.
LinkedIn page to HTML5+RDFa / JSON-LD converter:
Create a tool to read a LinkedIn profile page and spit out valid HTML5+RDFa 1.1 and JSON-LD for people that want to post their resume on their website or keep it synced with their LinkedIn profile.
Add to HTML5+RDFa / JSON-LD examples for schema.org:
Add 25-40 JSON-LD and RDFa examples from schema.org including examples for events, places, people, companies, stores, hotels, etc. Create an example submission module that allows Web developers to submit examples to the site.
Short Link Service
Create a short link / URL shortener service to make it easier to link to the examples and code in both the the RDFa and JSON-LD Playgrounds.
Template Mode for HTML5+RDFa and JSON-LD Generator
Add a "template-mode" to the playgrounds where developers can pick from a template like a Person, Place, or Event, fill in fields for the object and have the HTML or JSON-LD auto-generated for them.
Advanced Linked Data Graph Visualization
Improve the graph rendering tools provided in http://rdfa.info/play/ and http://json-ld.org/playground/ to have smoother transitions when data is added/removed from the graph. Improve the animations and display modes of the tool by allowing not just tree-based views, but full graph-based views of the data.
Extension to Google Chrome to debug RDFa / JSON-LD
Create an extension to Google Chrome that integrates with the developer tools to debug RDFa and JSON-LD that is embedded in the Web page.
The Web Payments Projects
These projects revolve around creating tools and implementations of the PaySwarm universal payment standard specifications being developed in the Web Payments group at W3C: http://payswarm.com/.
Python PaySwarm Client
Create an implementation of a PaySwarm client written in the Python programming language. The client will be capable of registering a Web Key, publishing a product for sale on the Web, and purchasing the product using the PaySwarm open standard.
Django PaySwarm Module
Create an implementation of a PaySwarm client and integrate it into the Django Web server framework for Python.
Decentralized Web App Store
Create a developer example website based on PaySwarm that is capable of selling access to Web Apps. It would have to be fully documented, and offer all the steps involved with communicating with the PaySwarm API from registration to the actual establishment of a payment session and a purchase. This will provide a fully functional open source example of how to do decentralized web app marketplaces.
HTTP Signatures Debugger
Create an online tool that developers can use to debug HTTP Signatures, which are a new way of authorizing HTTP requests in a stateless way (as an alternative to OAuth and OAuth2).
JSON-LD Signature Debugger
Build an online tool that developers can use to debug the JSON-LD signature process, which is used to send secure messages in LinkedData aware financial protocols.
Drupal PaySwarm Module
Enable Drupal to sell digital content using the PaySwarm standard by creating a Drupal module in PHP.
Joomla PaySwarm Module
Create a PaySwarm plugin for the Joomla website framework. This module would allow website administrators to create articles and pages for sale, do fundraising, and donations.
Risks and Challenges
The biggest risk/challenge is that one or more of the students do not produce what they have outlined in their project proposals. In the very worst case, it will be a waste of $5,500 if the student produces nothing. That said, many of the students have already produced some pretty amazing project proposals and have started producing source code. The students who have shown the most promise and produced the most code before the project starts will be picked first.
There is also the possibility that a mentor will get sick or not be able to participate as much as they would have wanted. We have at least 3 mentors per student, so the likelihood that all three mentors will not be available at all times is fairly slim.
There is a possibility that we will only raise enough to hire one student. If we do not raise enough funding, one or more of all of the projects listed above will not be attempted. Even in the event of a successful campaign, the students may not be able to complete all of the projects listed above due to underestimating the difficulty of the project by the students or the mentors.
There is a possibility that we will raise far more than $22,000. If we only raise a few thousand dollars over $22,000, the money will be disbursed to the students as bonuses if they successfully complete their projects. If we raise more than $30,000, we will put the money aside and start looking for students that can do additional work, either over the summer or after the summer session is over.
The final risk is that the students will produce lackluster software or software that is not very useful to the global Web. We must remember that these are students, and this is a learning experience for them. If the software that they produce ends up being bad, it will probably still be a useful experience to the student. That being said, many of the students come with glowing recommendations from their previous employer or Google Summer of Code mentor, so this risk has been mostly mitigated by the students by demonstrating the quality of the software that they have already developed.
Project Administration
Digital Bazaar, Inc. will be the administrator of the funds raised for this campaign. Digital Bazaar will process stipend payments raised through this IndieGoGo project. The W3C and Google will administer payments for four of the students that are assigned to the Google Summer of Code project. The students will be classified and paid as temporary contractors.
For the avoidance of doubt, the W3C organization is not responsible in any way for the management of this IndieGoGo project. Digital Bazaar assumes sole responsibility for the management of this IndieGoGo project as well as the students that will be hired as a result of a successful fundraising effort.
"Students Programming" photo by http://www.flickr.com/photos/hackny/
