Re: To all candidates: personal mentoring
Hi Serafeim, On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:15:45AM +0100, Serafeim Zanikolas wrote: Dear candidates, With respect to attracting new contributors, please ponder the idea of a formal one-on-one mentoring scheme (as opposed to one-off interactions via d-mentors). I tend to believe that what we have now, while not formally defined as 'one-on-one mentoring', in practice usually is that. As in: usually, people get sponsored by the same (small group of) developer(s); and usually, people in the NM queue get assigned an AM who then gets them through the whole process. Yes, there are exceptions; sometimes people run out of time, and cannot finish the NM process with a particular applicant, or cannot spend the time to check an upload before sponsoring it for an applicant. This is only normal; we're all people who, besides Debian, do a lot of other things (at least most of us do, *g*), and we cannot always finish what we started. But ignoring those exceptions, I think much of our mentoring is in fact already one-on-one. Having said that, Yes, usually it's a good idea if mentors and mentees are paired up in a semi-permanent fashion. There are several reasons for this: when you get to deal with the same person most of the time, that means this particular person will eventually know you and be able to mentor you more effectively; also, it means that you're building a relationship with that mentor, who may eventually feel comfortable advocating you for either the DM or NM process. But there's not much we can do beyond encouraging people to become AM (there are always AMs needed), and/or encouraging people to recurrently sponsor people whom they think are doing a good job, even if they're not ready to become Debian Developer yet. -- The biometric identification system at the gates of the CIA headquarters works because there's a guard with a large gun making sure no one is trying to fool the system. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/01/biometrics.html signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: To all candidates: personal mentoring
On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:15:45AM +0100, Serafeim Zanikolas wrote:
With respect to attracting new contributors, please ponder the idea of a
formal one-on-one mentoring scheme (as opposed to one-off interactions via
d-mentors).
I do realise that personal mentorship takes time; that's a reason to set
criteria [1] and thresholds on who gets to have a mentor [2], instead of not
considering the idea all together.
In my AM experience (still limited, about 6 months now), what has
surprised me most is the room that there is for mentoring the applicant,
instead of simply having him/her just going through the various steps of
NM which are supervised by the AM. This is probably something that all
AM have experienced, but I confess that it wasn't that clear to me and
it is probably similarly unclear for perspective applicants. That is to
say that we do already have some form of personal mentoring, during NM.
Still, in your question you're hinting at some earlier mentoring, and I
believe that should happen in teams. In a sane team-based working
distribution, which is de facto already the case for most areas of
Debian, new contributors approach a team because they want to contribute
there, and it is in the team that they start getting a feeling of the
project. That kind of team-mentoring already works quite well: if you
look at the -newmaint archives you will notice that most advocacy mails
for both NM and DM come from co-team members which have worked with the
new contributor (and most likely taught him/her things about the
project, ... and yes, they will notice if the contributor gets ran down
by a bus).
That is why I like the http://www.debian.org/Teams/ page. Ideally, that
can become the welcome place for new contributors which will first look
around what they like to do and then approach the corresponding team on
the suggested media.
In principle, we can additionally establish within team some form of
personal mentoring with the goal of bringing accompanying the newbie to
the advocacy mail. In practice I doubt it would change much the status
quo, but I agree it might be nice from the newbie POV (e.g. he/she will
have someone to mail when feeling unsure about some course of action).
Cheers.
--
Stefano Zacchiroli -o- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7
z...@{upsilon.cc,pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/
Dietro un grande uomo c'è ..| . |. Et ne m'en veux pas si je te tutoie
sempre uno zaino ...| ..: | Je dis tu à tous ceux que j'aime
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Re: To all candidates: personal mentoring
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:08:00 +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: Still, in your question you're hinting at some earlier mentoring, and I believe that should happen in teams. [..] That is why I like the http://www.debian.org/Teams/ page. Ideally, that can become the welcome place for new contributors which will first look around what they like to do and then approach the corresponding team on the suggested media. /me agrees twice. In principle, we can additionally establish within team some form of personal mentoring with the goal of bringing accompanying the newbie to the advocacy mail. In practice I doubt it would change much the status quo, but I agree it might be nice from the newbie POV (e.g. he/she will have someone to mail when feeling unsure about some course of action). JFTR: There was a BOF around these questions during the last DebConf; the summary and some resources are linked from http://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Resources Cheers, gregor -- .''`. http://info.comodo.priv.at/ -- GPG Key IDs: 0x8649AA06, 0x00F3CFE4 : :' : Debian GNU/Linux user, admin, developer - http://www.debian.org/ `. `' Member of VIBE!AT SPI, fellow of Free Software Foundation Europe `-NP: Tom Waits: Day After Tomorrow signature.asc Description: Digital signature
To all candidates: personal mentoring
Dear candidates, With respect to attracting new contributors, please ponder the idea of a formal one-on-one mentoring scheme (as opposed to one-off interactions via d-mentors). I do realise that personal mentorship takes time; that's a reason to set criteria [1] and thresholds on who gets to have a mentor [2], instead of not considering the idea all together. I'd think that, in addition to encouraging more contributors to commit, this would also improve Debian's perception as a welcoming place, and new contributors' feeling of belonging to the project (would anybody even notice if I were ran down by a bus?) Or maybe not. What do /you/ think? Cheers, Serafeim [0] related talk for inspiration: http://2009.r2.co.nz/20100118/50249.htm [1] say, only people that want to eventually become DDs [2] random idea: any outsider that's fixed X bugs -- debtags-organised WNPP bugs: http://members.hellug.gr/serzan/wnpp -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100324231544.ga3...@mobee
Re: To all candidates: personal mentoring
Hi! On Wed, Mar 24, 2010 at 8:15 PM, Serafeim Zanikolas ser...@hellug.gr wrote: With respect to attracting new contributors, please ponder the idea of a formal one-on-one mentoring scheme (as opposed to one-off interactions via d-mentors). There's been a mentoring program inside the Debian Women project since 2004. This program got a few people at the beginning, but very soon we were out of mentees. There was an attempt to revive it at some point, but the problem was the same, there weren't enough mentees. However, I do think that it's a good idea, and maybe the lack of interest was due to lack of enough marketing about the program. I agree that it could be a good thing to try out in order to get more people to help in Debian. This idea, as well as many other ideas that we are discussing during the campaign, doesn't actually require the DPL intervention. What's needed to put this into motion is a group of potential mentors, a point of contact for the potential mentees, and a webpage or the like to advertise the program. Anyone with enough motivation can start it. -- Besos, Marga -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e8bbf0361003241653y49dfb24dr7f28d1e6fe9fd...@mail.gmail.com
Re: To all candidates: personal mentoring
Le Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 12:15:45AM +0100, Serafeim Zanikolas a écrit : Dear candidates, I do realise that personal mentorship takes time; that's a reason to set criteria [1] and thresholds on who gets to have a mentor [2], instead of not considering the idea all together. I'd think that, in addition to encouraging more contributors to commit, this would also improve Debian's perception as a welcoming place, and new contributors' feeling of belonging to the project (would anybody even notice if I were ran down by a bus?) Dear Serafeim, I just proposed to simplify the procedures to become a member of the Debian project. But I have good memories of the interactions of my application manager when I was asking to become a Debian Developer. I think that the current NM (New Maintainer) process is a significant investment of time on possible new members. Even if the procedures for membership are changed, the concept could be kept as a mentoring system like the one you propose. Have a nice day, -- Charles Plessy, Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-vote-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100325002358.gd13...@kunpuu.plessy.org
