[Campus-uofa-staff] getting mentors for the event

[Shauna Gordon-McKeon]

I've been asking since last Wednesday for Shane to get in touch with me,
and still have not had any contact.  Here's why I'm worried:

I haven't had any discussions with anyone about the precise
curriculum/schedule you'll be running.  I haven't had any discussions about
who the mentors are or what skills/experiences they have.  I haven't had
any discussions about an ideal mentor:student ratio.

Most importantly, I haven't had any discussions about how to train the
staff to present the curriculum.  While it's nice to think we've documented
everything well enough that no one has any questions about how to set up
the Open Source Tools lecture or the Practicing Git activity, I don't think
our documentation is that good.  At our last event, we did several hours of
google hangout training with staff members to get them up to speed so they
could lead activities.  And our new Contributions Workshop structure
actually *requires* that staff get in touch with us, so we can match them
to an open source project that fits their needs.

Unfortunately I have an ongoing medical issue with my family where I cannot
predict my availability over the next week.  So I am unlikely to be able to
do last-minute trainings with mentors.  This means that we have two options:

1) Scaled-back event on Saturday:

I need Shane to get in touch with me ASAP with the list of mentors and
their skillsets so we can decide what parts of the curriculum are doable.
 There are substitutions we can make.  For instance, Practicing Git has
been really successful but requires a large number of mentors who are at
least somewhat familiar with Github.  We could substitute in our
self-guided Git training mission.  I think students would get a lot less
out of it, but it's an option.

We can either skip the Contributions Workshop or limit it to contributing
to OpenHatch itself where the involvement of remote mentors (myself and
Asheesh, potentially others) would make up for the lack of familiarity
among local mentors.  (If the local mentors Shane has found happen to be
maintainers of open source projects, of course they could help students
contribute to their projects as well.)  Again, this is not ideal, but it's
a reasonable option.

2) Postpone until later in the semester

We're open to postponing the event, so that we can be better prepared for
it.  This is really your call, as the negatives to doing this - having to
re-book the space, explain to sponsors, communicate with attendees, etc -
would fall on your shoulders.

Let me know what you think, as to the above two options.  It's difficult
for me to say which is better without having any idea of the # of mentors
you've found, their skills and experiences, and their willingness to
present parts of the curriculum.  My apologies for the pessimism of this
email, but having run a dozen of these events myself, I know communicating
with mentors and finding presenters/guides for the curriculum is a central
task which can strongly and negatively impact events when not done with
enough lead time.

Thanks,
Shauna




On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 2:09 PM, Shauna Gordon-McKeon <shaunagm at gmail.com>wrote:

> That's great to hear!  The complete lack of contact/information was
> getting me worried.
>
>
> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 1:59 PM, Kate Maroney <
> katemaroney at email.arizona.edu> wrote:
>
>> Shane's been taking care of this, he has mentors lined up. I'll have him
>> email you specifically with details, but it has been taken care of.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 11:58 AM, Shauna Gordon-McKeon <shaunagm at gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>
>>>  Hi folks,
>>>
>>> No one's been in touch with me about mentors or the curriculum for next
>>> weekend's event.  It's very important that someone take this role on!
>>>
>>> We need to:
>>> A) Identify 2-5 more mentors for the event.
>>> B) Figure out who knows what, so we can assign different people to lead
>>> different parts of the event.
>>> C) Make sure that mentors feel comfortable/trained to do what they've
>>> been assigned.
>>>
>>> We can help with A from afar, but using your social networks may be more
>>> effective in finding open source enthusiasts on campus.
>>>
>>> As far as B goes: all potential mentors (including you Kate, Shane,
>>> Zuoming!) should fill out this form:
>>> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1VD-eru91zNZLYrd-RCEyJmJR9s2HK4ORMvb-62XRspk/edit
>>>
>>> Once we know who'll be mentoring, I can help with C.  I'm happy to
>>> provide explanations/training/resources to as many people as need it, but
>>> we need to identify the need first.
>>>
>>> With only a week left, it's important we get to this quickly.
>>>
>>> best
>>> Shauna
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Campus-uofa-staff mailing list
>>> Campus-uofa-staff at lists.openhatch.org
>>> http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/campus-uofa-staff
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Kate Maroney
>> CSc 245 Section Leader
>> Co-President, WiCS
>> Microsoft Intern Ambassador
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>> Campus-uofa-staff at lists.openhatch.org
>> http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/campus-uofa-staff
>>
>>
>
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