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

Sun Jun 12 15:27:59 CEST 2011

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/
+
+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
+
+