Have you thought about open source programming? All of the essentials are available in this format. Find an open source project with a strong team. Work out how to communicate with the team, fix bugs, write tests, learn what their idea of good code is, write a feature yourself.
Also, programming teams for commercial work generally have implicit mentoring systems. A junior coder inevitably ends up being informed by a senior one. If you contracted for some time, combined with open source, you'd quickly identify which team and persons have something to say. Just an idea. Good luck. Cheers, Nicholas On Apr 22, 10:23 am, Gabe Hollombe <g...@avantbard.com> wrote: > At Railscamp 7, I stood up during our Sunday night town hall meeting and > shared about how I want to big up myself and find a mentor to help me grow > as a software craftsman. I asked the room for a show of hands for people > who would be willing to mentor others and/or would want to have a mentor for > themselves. There was a fair amount of hand raising, so I volunteered to > put some effort into trying to establish some sort of mentoring system for > our community. > > I'd like to start by asking you: > > - What might want out of a mentor? > - What do you think might be good for helping to foster mentor/mentee > relationships? > - What ideas do you have to help make this mentoring thing a reality? > > Let's keep this very open-ended right now and just share anything we think > might be relevant. I'll take all the feedback and try to digest it into an > alpha version of a mentoring program. > > Here are some of my (sometimes rambled) thoughts to start things off: > > I think mentors should: > > - Meet with a mentee on some sort of regular schedule that works for both > parties (in-person or virtually, but I really think that face to face is a > richer experience) > - Discuss what their mentee is working on and provide code reviews > - Share what they're working on with their mentee, to expand their > horizons > - Make themselves available for help outside of their normal meeting > schedule > > I don't think mentors should need to feel like an expert or an advanced > hacker of any kind; they just need to feel like they can help their mentees > somehow. And, mentors should remember that they'll grow and learn, perhaps > just as much, as part of the mentoring relationship. When you're teaching > someone something, you often learn a lot, too. > > I think the mentoring relationship should be viewed much more as a social, > friendly commitment to see how you'll work as a pair. Either a mentor or a > mentee should be completely comfortable swapping out and finding a different > mentor/mentee if things just aren't working or, or, even if they are, just > to change things up. I think that what I'm envisioning is something that > combines the comfortableness of a friendly partnering with the reassurance > that you've got at least one person who will be willing to field questions > for you and help you grow. > > A mentor doesn't need to have all the answers. Indeed, they rarely, if > ever, will. But, a mentor should try to help their mentee grow and be > willing to learn alongside them in the process. > > From the practical, 'how do we organize this?' angle, we'll obviously need > some way for willing mentors to list themselves as available, and for > mentees to find them. Something likewww.railsmentors.org/makes sense, > though I think we should encourage folks to pair up within their own city, > when possible, to make face-to-face meetups easier. And, of course, I don't > want to restrict us to rails only mentoring. We're clearly a diverse group > of web hackers, and we should keep the mentoring open to anything web > hackery related. > > Ok, thanks for reading this to the end. Now it's your turn to kick in some > thoughts. > > -g > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > To post to this group, send email to rails-ocea...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > rails-oceania+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group > athttp://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To post to this group, send email to rails-ocea...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rails-oceania+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
