Add blog post to announce GSoC project (#208)

* Add blog post to announce GSoC project
* Add cover image

Co-authored-by: Carol Willing <[email protected]>

Author: Mariatta

README.md

@@ -2,10 +2,13 @@
 
 This repository contains the content for the main PyLadiesCon website
 that serve as an index for the many resources that the conference has;
-including the blog, the documentation, and each year website version
+including the blog, the documentation, and static website for each year.
 
 ## Development
 
+First install [pnpm](https://pnpm.io/installation) if you don't have it already.
+
+Then install the dependencies and start the development server:
 ```
 pnpm install
 pnpm dev

public/images/posts/gsoc_announcement.png

@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+---
+title: "Announcing PyLadiesCon's Participation in GSoC 2025!"
+meta_title: "PyLadiesCon is participating in GSoC 2025!"
+description: "We're thrilled to announce that PyLadiesCon is participating in Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2025! 🎉"
+date: 2025-06-02T05:00:00Z
+categories: ["Blog Post",]
+image: "/images/posts/gsoc_announcement.png"
+authors: ["Mariatta"]
+tags: ["python", "open source", "gsoc", "pyladies"]
+draft: false
+---
+
+We're thrilled to announce that PyLadiesCon is participating in [Google Summer of Code (GSoC)](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/) 2025! 🎉
+
+✨ [PyLadiesCon](https://conference.pyladies.com) is an online conference for the global PyLadies community.
+Started in 2023, PyLadiesCon hosts 24 hours of online engagement, talks, keynotes, panels, and workshops for our
+community members. We strive for inclusion and accessibility, providing talks in multiple-languages,
+and we take extra care in subtitling and translating our talks.
+
+This year, we're developing our very own conference web portal, an open source solution for managing the organizational
+aspect of our conference. The [Portal](https://portal.pyladies.com) is built with Python and Django,
+and is designed to reduce the administrative burden and streamline the process of organizing our conference. We believe
+that by building this portal, not only we will be able to manage our conference more efficiently, but we will also be
+providing open source contribution opportunities from our community members, and therefore furthering the [PyLadies](https://pyladies.com)
+mission of helping more women become active participants and leaders in the Python open-source community.
+
+This is the first year that our team is participating in GSoC. We have been participating under the Python GSoC umbrella,
+and we are excited to welcome our first GSoC student, [Lucille Idokogi](https://github.com/lidokogi) who will be working
+on developing the Sponsorship Portal for PyLadiesCon. Using the Sponsorship portal, we will be able to manage
+and track our sponsorships, as well as automating the process of sponsorship outreach, invoicing, and reporting. All of
+this will improve our efficiency when it comes to sponsorship and fundraising.
+
+Here's what [Lucille](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucille-idokogi-216774304/) has to say about her project:
+
+> Hey everyone! I’m Lucille Idokogi, a Computer Science and Data Science Undergraduate Student at Western University in Canada.
+This summer, I’m super excited to be contributing to PyLadiesCon through Google Summer of Code. I’ve always been passionate about diversity and inclusion in tech, so getting to support a project that uplifts underrepresented voices really means a lot to me.
+> I’m looking forward to growing as a developer, learning more about open source, and building something meaningful alongside this awesome community.
+> Looking forward to a great summer! :)
+
+Congratulations Lucille! We are excited to have you on board, and we look forward to seeing the impact of your work on our community.
+
+Lucille will be working closely with our team, and mentored by [Mariatta](https://mariatta.ca) and [Cristián Maureira-Fredes](https://maureira.xyz/).
+
+Thank you to the [Python GSoC](https://python-gsoc.org/) team for accepting our project and for their support throughout the process.
+
+If you're interested in contributing to our project, please check out the [GitHub repository](https://github.com/pyladies/pyladiescon-portal)
+and [documentation](https://pyladiescon-portal-docs.netlify.app/).