Hello,
My name is Gabriel Silk, and I'm an undergraduate computer science student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C.
I first heard about Gephi when I looked at the list of participating organizations on the gsoc website. I was instantly enthralled by the Gephi demo video. I downloaded Gephi and played around with it; then I checked out the source, and now I'm hacking on the code.
I'm a huge fan of open source software, and I'm looking for an a project to work on for the summer -- but one that I could see myself becoming a full comitter on in the future. I think Gephi is
very cool . After I graduate in April, I'm going to have a lot more time to work on non-school projects, and I could see myself making substantial contributions to Gephi.
The reason I want to work on Gephi is that it represents a completely new way of looking at information. It could be useful in almost any setting. For example, if a developer joins a project that already has a large code-base -- she could use Gephi to visualize the entire hierarchy of code, instantly seeing which source files reference each other, what's calling what, which portions of the code are "dead", etc. Combined with a versioning system, she could step forwards and backwards in the repository's history. She could start at the very beginning and step forward, seeing exactly which code was added at which stage, and by whom, in a graphical format. That's just one example, and the possibilities are endless.
I have experience with a number of languages and toolsets, including Java and OpenGL. Recently I wrote an on-line multiplayer game called
Squabble as a personal side-project, consisting of a multi-threaded server written in Java, and a client written in Flash. Last term I wrote a world-modeller in c++ using Ogre. This term, I'm working on a multi-touch, collaborative, UML diagram creation tool for the SMART Table as a course project. I'm also working on a web-based CMS for the BC Cancer Agency. Both of these projects will be finished by the end of April.
I've worked for Electronic Arts (primarily graphics-related with some toolset work), and Merck Frosst (writing tools for Confluence, their wiki system).
It's nice to meet you all, and I'll be keeping in touch. Cheers,
Gabriel Silk
http://gabrielsilk.wordpress.com