News

As mentioned in our previous article on the Summer of Code, we're hoping to publish an interview with each of our SoC students for this year. This is the second in the series, with John Pritchard, who will be undertaking the categories project.

1. Please tell us a little about yourself: your name, where you come from, what you study and where you attend university. Perhaps you run a website or have an interesting hobby?

My name is John Pritchard and I'm currently in my second year of a Maths and Computer Science BSc at Bristol University in the UK. I'm originally from Newport in South Wales (only about 30 mins away from my university but far enough from home so that my parents don't constantly visit me :P). At the moment, the only website I run is the Bristol Real Ale Society website (http://www.bristolrealale.co.uk/) but the society is suffering a bit at the moment because a lot of people only signed up for the cheap booze rather than for social events (though I can't say I blame them lol).

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2. What attracted you to the Google Summer of Code as a programme, and PostNuke as a project?

I was attracted to GSoC because I enjoy coding and I thought that I could do with some experience before I actually get a job and I can also help out the community while I'm at it . I chose PostNuke in particular because PHP is the language I have the most experience with, I made countless websites through my teenage years and I also spent a lot of time modifying PHP-Nuke to suit my needs (although the code I used is probably buried somewhere now), so I thought it'd be the project that would benefit the most from me and it'd be the one I'd be most comfortable doing.

3. Tell us about your project, and how you hope it can benefit PostNuke?

I'm going to be doing an overhaul of the categories system in PostNuke. I hope it will benefit PostNuke by increasing the usability and efficiency of the categories system.

4. What do you personally hope to gain from participating in the Summer of Code with PostNuke?

1. Experience and something to put on my CV
2. The satisfaction of doing something productive in the community.
3. Money - I'm a broke student, so it has to be said :P.

5. Can you see yourself contributing your talents to Open Source projects following the SoC? Will you continue to work with PostNuke in some capacity after the programme has ended?

Depends on time constraints really, I'd definately consider it if I had quite a bit of free time but at the moment I'm pretty swamped with work, I have a few projects of my own that I've had to put on the backburner =\.

7. Is there anything else you’d like to say now, as the programme begins?

I wish everyone good luck with their respective projects and I hope to speak to you all soon ...Oh and "hey mum, I'm on the internet!" :P.

Lastly, thanks for your time – we in the PostNuke team are excited about the Summer of Code, so thank you for taking part and choosing PostNuke!

I'm excited too, thanks for choosing me!