[jallmann]

I did GSoC last year with FFmpeg, working on the RTP/RTSP layer. It was a lot of fun working on a code base like that -- multimedia seemed so arcane before starting out.

One of the things I appreciated the most were the code reviews. I had awesome mentors, and my skills have improved significantly thanks to the feedback I got.

I haven't contributed much since then (although I am working sporadically on NEONifying the swscale library), but I still monitor the mailing lists, hang around in the IRC channel, and collab with one of my mentors every day on a paying multimedia project. Multimedia hackers are some of the smartest people I know, so I hang around them in the hopes of picking up a few things by osmosis.

The only downside to GSoC was the pay, which is quite low, but I got to do things on my own time, like bicycle around and spend half the day at the beach. It was the first really relaxed summer I've had in a long time, coming off 6 years of college -- didn't feel like getting a real job just then. GSoC fit the bill perfectly for me.