Things you can do if you want to help:

 - Rename all files and functions name to use the empathy namespace. Bug #444490.
 - Porting gossip-account-widget-*.{c,h} from gossip project (Guillaume is already working on IRC widget).
 - Porting various UI widgets from gossip to libempathy-gtk for contact info, adding contact, personal info, etc.
 - GtkWidget-ify gossip widgets imported in libempathy-gtk. Actually most window/dialog do not inherit from GtkWindow/GtkDialog. Need to create a glade catalog.
 - Filter channels before dispatching them. For example we need a GtkStatusIcon that blink when an event arrives (text/voip/ft channel) and tells the MC to dispatch the channel only when the user clicked the icon. Like in gossip. For that we need a filter DBus API in MC, not yet written, a draft spec is proposed on the telepathy ML.
 - Make use of NetworkManager to set the presence
 - Remove Quit option everywhere, empathy is a session service and shouldn't be leaved.
 - Add sound events
 - Add register capability in GossipAccountsDialog if the profile says it's supported.
 - Testing and Bugfixing.

SoC projects:
 - Adding VoIP support based on the patch proposed for gossip.
 - Adding FileTransfer support.
 
If you want to contribute you can ask for information at
 - #telepathy on freenode
 - Telepathy's mailing list: telepathy@lists.freedesktop.org