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

[andre999]

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