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

Mon Jun 13 15:14:35 CEST 2011

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
+