[advocacy-discuss] Proposal for OpenSolaris Mentoring Program

[Jim Grisanzio]

Glynn Foster wrote:

>>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.

Yah, I had the same experience the year before on SoC. And, quite 
frankly, it's been challenging in other parts of OpenSolaris to get 
people involved as well. I had very little response to writing articles 
and other non-technical activities, for instance. And it's been 
challenging to grow new user groups, too, since we have no resources to 
offer (shirts, kits, etc). So, I'm not sure what I can offer to motivate 
people. All I have are projects and lists. :)

I'm not discouraged, though. There are about 135 non-Sun contributors 
now, and a large percentage of them are via the request-sponsor program 
-- which is mostly much code obviously.

So, I guess my point is that a mentoring project has some models to 
learn from on OpenSolaris (which is good), I think it should start small 
so we don't get discouraged because there will not be an overwhelming 
response, and I think the very best place to focus on is university 
students. We have to think of what a natural incentive would be, though, 
without necessarily forcing the issue on people. I must admit I'm not 
very good at that. :)

Jim
-- 
http://blogs.sun.com/jimgris