Having a sort of "speed dating" setup might help make better fits between
mentors and mentees, as well.
+1, not only to satisfy the 'room full of nerds' case, but also the fact
that people spend their free time @ code4libcon in a variety of ways,
and not everyone might want to, e.g., wind up in the hospitality suite.
On 11/28/2012 09:45 AM, Ross Singer wrote:
On Nov 27, 2012, at 9:33 PM, Cynthia Ng <cynthia.s...@gmail.com> wrote:
Getting traction for mentoring online is always difficult, but what
about starting that mentorship at code4libcon?
+1 - being face-to-face might help ease the tension.
Having a sort of "speed dating" setup might help make better fits between
mentors and mentees, as well.
That is, a roomful of nerds deferring passively to one another might not get us
very far :) Something more structured about what people want to learn and what
mentors know and how they get along together would probably make for a more
productive outcome.
-Ross.
Maybe almost like a buddy system, so that the first meeting between a
mentor and mentee is at a code4libcon (national, regional, or
otherwise) if possible.
This might simply be a good idea for first timers who are not going
with colleagues too.
Just throwing out some ideas here...
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 7:49 PM, Nick Ruest <rue...@gmail.com> wrote:
Matt McCollow proposed something like this a while back. We have a page up
and everything! But, it never got much traction.
http://www.mail-archive.com/code4lib@listserv.nd.edu/msg14270.html
http://wiki.code4lib.org/index.php/Mentorship
-nruest
On 12-11-27 07:30 PM, Bess Sadler wrote:
+1 to this idea. I have benefited tremendously over the years from kind
people taking me under their wings. Many of us try to do this one-on-one,
but some kind of introduction service would be a huge benefit for the
community, I would think.
Mentorship is a great example of a robust solution - a solution that
addresses more than one problem at once. I suspect that this would not only
improve our diversity as a community, it might also solve some tech
leadership / succession planning problems and maybe expose some training
needs.
Bess
On Nov 27, 2012, at 4:20 PM, Nathan Tallman <ntall...@gmail.com> wrote:
This is a slightly different topic, but relates to Kelley's post: Does
code4lib have a mentor program where more inexperienced geeks can pair up
with someone to guide their development? I don't have anyone like that in
my network, but would really like to. I don't mean to discount the
existing
resources on code4lib or this list, which both have been very useful. I'm
sure I could just start by attending some of the conferences, but for
more
inexperienced people they can be a bit intimidating, albeit inspiring.
It would also be a way to directly engage minorities.
Just a thought.
Nathan
On Tue, Nov 27, 2012 at 6:20 PM, Kelley McGrath <kell...@uoregon.edu>
wrote:
I'll second the idea of approaching people individually and explicitly
asking them to participate. It worked on me. I never would have written
my
first article for the Code4Lib Journal or become a member of the
editorial
committee if someone hadn't encouraged me individually (Thanks
Jonathan!).
It would also be good to find a way to somehow target the pool of
lurkers
who maybe aren't already connected to someone and get them more
involved.
As far as anonymous proposals go, we recently had a very good workshop
on
implicit bias here. Someone brought up that found significant changes in
the gender proportions in symphony orchestras after candidates started
auditioning behind screens. There are also lots of studies about the
different responses to the same resume/application depending on whether
a
stereotypically male/female or white/black name was used. Probably it's
impossible to make proposals completely anonymous, but it would be an
interesting experiment to leave off the names.
Kelley
PS Interestingly, I wouldn't instinctively self-identify as a member of
the Code4Lib community, although my first thought is that that has more
to
do with not being a coder than with being a woman.
**************************
Kelley McGrath
Metadata Management Librarian
University of Oregon Libraries
1299 University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403
541-346-8232
kell...@uoregon.edu
--
-nruest
