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

Mon Jun 13 00:52:18 CEST 2011

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 ?
+
+-- 
+André
+