Judging by the comments, quite a few people in Europe seem to be interested in a summer internship. But we face a shortage of suitable startups in the area.
What do you think of creating our own workplace? Imagine five to ten hackers coming together for a few months. We'd rent a flat, hack together, perhaps do some consulting work to be Ramen sustainable. (No communism implied. We'd go Dutch on the costs.)
After getting to know each other and feeling comfortable, people could split into small teams (three members or so) and create startup-projects, if they want to.
Any thoughts? Please drop me a line at matthias.goergens@gmail.com
In my university they also require an internship. However in reality, all they require is a company stamp and a signature on a piece of paper that says that you did an internship, plus a few pages from you talking about what you did in your internship. There's nothing barring you from incorporating with a bunch of friends, and intern at your own company.
Of course you should do something worthwhile during that internship.
Here are a couple of companies which are currently on the front page. Since you're looking in Germany or the UK I'm not sure how helpful this will be, but it may be helpful to others who find their way into this thread.
We already have a handful of interns coming on board this summer. We're looking for a few more.
These are volunteer positions unless you are student eligible for work-study via your school. (bilumi has been approved by MIT and Tufts for work-study, and we'd be happy to go through that process with your school, too. One student is leading a grant application to fund investigative journalism in Brazil.)
You can check out the range of internships on this flyer:
bilumi.org/interns.pdf
Development-wise, I'd be happy to talk about our modules in detail with anyone who is interested. Work areas include but are not limited to: python, javascript, browser plugins, web design, data manipulation and analysis, mobile and social network apps.
Some interns work remotely, some here in Cambridge, MA. We do a work retreat weekend on the Cape that brings everyone together at least once.
We'd love your help. Debatewise.com is a non-profit debating site built in Ruby on Rails. Our goal is to create a Wikipedia of debate, a resource full of user-generated pro and con debates on a wide variety of different issues that people can turn to when they want to make up their mind.
I can be contacted via the site if you're interested and want to know more. We're based in London.
I've been in contact with a YC startup since Jan 18th trying to sort out an internship for this summer, however their incompetence has forced me to just give up with them. Hopefully you'll have better luck than me. I'm still looking for a UK internship but have decided local companies are easier to deal with than most startups.
Pleased to say this company has got back in touch with me. They've had a busy few months so radio silence was understandable. (I just wasn't aware of how busy they are!)
I'm based in Sheffield UK, I mostly use Python where possible but write Java/Haskell where it makes sense. I have some code up on http://www.davbo.org/trac if you're interested.
I can't offer you an internship but would be interested in talking about yours projects, I am based in France and in the UK. Email: lwcarab at gmail dot com
Similar situation - I'd be happy to talk to you about some of the projects I'm working on, and see if you'd like to go 50/50 on any of them. http://www.dedasys.com has a few of them, but there are others. I'm located in Italy, but am from the US.
What do you think of creating our own workplace? Imagine five to ten hackers coming together for a few months. We'd rent a flat, hack together, perhaps do some consulting work to be Ramen sustainable. (No communism implied. We'd go Dutch on the costs.)
After getting to know each other and feeling comfortable, people could split into small teams (three members or so) and create startup-projects, if they want to.
Any thoughts? Please drop me a line at matthias.goergens@gmail.com