[advocacy-discuss] OpenSolaris mentoring program...

[elw at stderr.org]

> Subject: [advocacy-discuss] OpenSolaris mentoring program...
> 
> I wanted to bounce an idea off of you guys.
>
> What do you think of a mentoring program. Senior developers would be 
> paired with junior developers to learn various aspects of OS 
> development. We would do outreach to university compsci programs. (this 
> doesn't exclude non-students as mentees)

I think that this is a fantastic idea, and one well worth some discussion 
(and pursuit of).

Some thoughts:

1) How to build a pool of experienced people?  Just ask for volunteers?

2) Development of early stage spin-up educational materials (e.g.,
    tutorials) for folks just coming to the table.  Some of the assumptions
    that experienced admin users have (of how an installation works, etc.)
    are fairly foreign to new developers.

3) Advocating participation to junior developers, people acquiring new
    tools, etc: how do you make a mentorship program maximally attractive
    to folks who may be coming from a wide range of backgrounds and prior
    experiences?  [This is, I think, something that we should be conscious
    of paralleling the linux-to-solaris conversion process that Project
    Indiana seeks to cultivate...]

4) Practical exercises / tasks for people new to the table.  It would be
    great to have a few more people triaging out bugs that are
    "newbie-friendly" and just require legwork or simple fixes/updates by
    someone who's interested in learning the tools - this requires a little
    more resource committment from the community, by dedicating a couple
    people's time to task identification / fix-wrangling, but would
    significantly enhance the ease with which new contributors can come to
    the table.  Better documentation / workflow description, here, would
    sure be helpful.

5) other?

--elijah