[advocacy-discuss] Proposal for OpenSolaris Mentoring Program

[elw at stderr.org]

>> Project Description: To pair Senior developers and sysadmins with 
>> junior developers and sysadmins to learn various aspects of OS 
>> development and adminsistration. We would do outreach to university 
>> compsci programs. (this doesn't exclude non-students as mentees)
>
> It seems like the real success of this is being able to pair up people 
> who have the expertise to be able to talk through and guide the mentee - 
> how do you intend to achieve this?


Social engineering.  :-)  [I joke, but am not entirely kidding...]

More seriously - this is one of the most difficult things about any 
mentoring program: you have to have people who have a strong drive to 
help, and you have to come up with ways to leave opportunities for folks 
"just learning" to actively contribute to ongoing work.  Some of this is 
just planning - some of it is purposefully requesting that guru-level 
developers go do "hard stuff" instead of getting bottled up with fiddly 
bits that other folks can use for learning - and some of it has to be 
fortuitous action.

Good mentors are wise, nigh-omniscient, egoless, and smart.  :-)  There 
are not many good mentors, I believe - just mentors that want to help 
other people.

I benefited tremendously from an undergraduate mentor who had formalized 
her activities with students to a large degree - having built a "recipe" 
for turning out mentees who were usefully able to serve local needs 
(professional and personal) later in life.  This kind of stuff is really, 
really transformative for folks if handled properly.


>> From the Google Summer of Code perspective, I found it pretty hard 
>> trying to motivate people to sign up as a mentor as there's very little 
>> incentive from their side to get involved.


Yes, absolutely.

We should probably try to recognize folks who carry out community service 
in this context;  this is thankless works, and a shirt or something isn't 
much of a reward for an active mentor, given the importance of what 
they're doing -- but every little bit of symbolic thank-you is meaningful 
on some level.


fave related quote:

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, "Thank You", that 
would suffice." --Meister Eckhart (c. 1260 - 1327)


--elijah