[Mageia-dev] "Job offer" : mentoring program coordinator

[andre999]

Samuel Verschelde a écrit :
>
> Le lundi 13 juin 2011 00:52:18, andre999 a écrit :
>> Samuel Verschelde a écrit :
>>> Hello to everyone,
>>>
>>> I'm sure there's someone among you who wants to help Mageia but hasn't
>>> found yet the good way to do it. Today is your lucky day, because
>>> there's a job that's available and can be really useful and interesting:
>>> coordinating the packagers mentoring program.
>>>
>>> You know that one key point of success for Mageia is in the ability to
>>> welcome new packagers. The better we will be at it, the better the
>>> distro will be. The packagers mentoring program has been created for
>>> that reason and several packagers have been or are being mentored. But
>>> we have some difficulty knowing who is being mentored by who and who
>>> hasn't found a mentor. And we need also to find more mentors and more
>>> apprentices.
>>>
>>> During a packagers weekly meeting, misc invited us to read the following
>>> article about mentoring programs in open-source projects:
>>> http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2011/05/31/effective-mentoring-programs/
>>
>> Very interesting, especially many of the comments.
>>
>>> I invite those who haven't read it yet, to read it. I'll quote one of the
>>> mentoring best practices that were given: "In bigger projects, keeping
>>> track of who is a mentor, and who is mentoring who, and inviting new
>>> mentors, and ensuring that no-one falls through the cracks when a mentor
>>> gets too busy, is a job of itself."
>>>
>>> I'm looking for someone who could fill that "job".
>>>
>>> Description of the job:
>>>
>>> - keep track of:
>>> -- who's being mentored by who, how well it's going
>>> -- who needs a mentor and hasn't found one yet (this is one of the most
>>> important parts: no volunteer must be forgotten, volunteers are too
>>> precious !)
>>> -- who can mentor more apprentices (and sometimes convince packagers to
>>> become mentors or accept one more apprentice)
>>>
>>> - be available for questions from apprentices or mentors, by mail, and if
>>> possible, to be present on the IRC channel #mageia-mentoring on freenode
>>>
>>> - help mentors with gathering "junior tasks" (bugzilla is a never empty
>>> reserve that can be used for that. Maybe ask the bug triage team to help
>>> identify such tasks. Maybe a "junior task" keyword in bugzilla would do
>>> the trick)
>>> -- small bugs to fix
>>> -- new small packages to import in the distribution
>>> -- backports
>>>
>>> - promote mentoring (empower users into contributers. Working with the
>>> marketing team would be great I think):
>>> -- make the mentoring program known (MLs, forums, web, etc.)
>>> -- look for new apprentices
>>> -- look for new mentors
>>>
>>> Some useful skills:
>>> - be autonomous (ie no need to check that you're doing the work)
>>> - good written english (communication is very important in this job)
>>> - knowledge about packaging is a plus but not mandatory (the key aspects
>>> can be taught to you)
>>> - being or having been a mentor, or having been mentored would be a plus,
>>> but not mandatory
>>>
>>> More information about the job:
>>> - does not require a big amount of work, but real committment to the task
>>> and regularity
>>> - remember that you have a coordination role, not an authoritative role.
>>> The difference in that is that you're not here to give orders but to
>>> facilitate the mentoring program.
>>> - you don't have to be alone to do this job if it's too much for one
>>> person: you can find other helpful people wanting to help you if needed
>>> and rely on the other teams (but finding them *is* part of your job ;)
>>> ).
>>> -  this "job offer" concerns everything that revolves around the
>>> mentoring of new packagers, but if it's successful maybe other teams can
>>> follow the same approach (i18n, QA, etc... ).
>>> -  depending on your level of confidence, experience and will, you could
>>> be helped in your work. Maybe someone from the council can supervise and
>>> help you at least at the beginning; or, if no one steps up, I can help
>>> you bootstrap and organize your new "job".
>>>
>>> So, who's in?
>>>
>>> Samuel Verschelde
>>
>> That is an excellent idea, a mentoring program coordinator.
>> I've had some thoughts along those lines for some time.
>> I'd be glad to contribute, especially via email and editing the wiki, where
>> I could almost always respond the same day.
>> But my time zone availability (generally after 22h utc) puts me at a
>> disadvantage for irc communications and meetings.
>> (But as part of a coordinating team, that should work well.)
>>
>> Maintaining the mentor/apprentice database, as Kharec suggested, is to me a
>> key part of the role. Information such as mentors available, and their
>> strengths/focus, usual time zones available, communication modes
>> preferred, languages spoken, and current apprentices, Would-be apprentices
>> should have similar information listed.
>> Not much different from the information currently in variously wiki pages,
>> but maintained by the coordinator in one location.
>>
>> <aside>
>> One thing that occurred to me is that there is no imperative that mentoring
>> process happens only in English.  If an apprentice is more comfortable in
>> another language, and they find a mentor speaking that language, why not ?
>>   Sure, it is useful to have basic English knowledge, but it is evident
>> that many (if not most) contributors speak English as a second language.
>> </aside>
>>
>> Experience packaging, either as a mentor or apprentice is highly
>> recommended in my view, at least for the key person.  (My experience is as
>> a apprentice with Shikamaru -- an excellent mentor, btw -- and my time
>> zone availability is probably why I haven't officially completed the
>> process.) Also some programming experience could be useful.  (I imagine
>> that most candidates would have that.)
>>
>> But also mentoring can apply to other things than packaging.  So maybe we
>> should give a broader scope to the mentoring coordinator job ?
>> Including bugteam, QA, as well as packaging.
>> That would make it more useful, as well as more interesting.
>> (I would be very interested in contributing to something like that.)
>>
>> So what does everyone think ?
>
> Thanks for the input, but there's one point that's still unclear to me : do
> you candidate for the job ? :p
>
> (the timezone question can be a problem, but not necessarily a blocking one)
>
> Samuel

Yes :)
It's an important task, and I think I would do it well.
With my (albeit somewhat limited) packaging experience and getting to better know the community, I 
have a much better understanding of the whole Mageia development process than I did even a few 
months ago.  And how this fits in.

-- 
André