[OSCTC-planning] mentorship and other ways to follow up with Open Source Comes to Campus attendees

Fri Aug 1 18:08:01 UTC 2014

On Fri, Aug 1, 2014 at 12:10 PM, Heidi Ellis <ellis at wne.edu> wrote:

>  Hi Shauna,
>
>
>
> I like this idea a lot!  The one thing that wasn’t clear until the end of
> the email is that the pairing is once for a specific amount of time, not a
> longer-term pairing.
>
>
>
> Google is having some of their female employees mentor high school
> students. They have a system where each employee has a picture, brief bio
> and list of skills. The high school (or other) students can contact them
> directly. Sort of a “gallery of experts”.  This might be a long-term goal
> as it would reduce your overhead in having to pair folks.
>

I agree that the system I proposed is probably not the most efficient for
me to coordinate.  That said, I do think that some people who would like to
pair would feel shy about asking directly, so I want a way to facilitate
them finding mentors.

(Just yesterday I convinced a friend that we should pair.  She was fairly
resistant but when we talked through her hesitation, it became clear that
she thought it would waste my time or be a burden for me.  I think we
should make clear in the language when folks sign up that the people
they're pairing with are just as excited and happy to pair as they are.
 Possibly with some quotes from people about how much they love mentoring
and teaching people things.)

>
>
> Just thinking off the top of my head…
>
> Heidi
>
>
>
> *From:* osctc-planning-bounces at lists.openhatch.org [mailto:
> osctc-planning-bounces at lists.openhatch.org] *On Behalf Of *Shauna
> Gordon-McKeon
> *Sent:* Thursday, July 31, 2014 6:01 PM
>
> *To:* Planning for Open Source Comes to Campus
> *Subject:* Re: [OSCTC-planning] mentorship and other ways to follow up
> with Open Source Comes to Campus attendees
>
>
>
> I've been continuing to think about this.
>
>
>
> Something I've really enjoyed doing lately is pairing.  I've paired with
> several different members of the OpenHatch community, both as a mentor and
> a mentee, and I've gotten a ton out of it.  I'd like to encourage more
> pairing in the community.
>
>
>
> There's a reason I'm saying "pairing" and not "pair programming".  While
> most of the pairing I've done has been technical, it doesn't have to be to
> be.  I'd like to promote "pair participating" which would be defined as two
> people working in real time together on a specific task - whether that is
> "fixing a bug" or "going through a tutorial" or "improving some
> documentation" or "picking a project and learning more about it" or
> "identifying a goal to work towards".  The pair doesn't have to have a
> mentor-mentee dynamic.  I think both kinds of pairing have a special and
> different value.
>
>
>
> Here's a new proposal:
>
>
>
> OpenHatch creates a new mailing list for pair participation.  Before
> joining the list, people fill out a form where they list skills or tasks
> they're interested in, and say whether they want to pair with someone who
> can mentor them on it, whether they want to be the mentor, or whether
> they'd like to work with someone who is also new on that skill.  (These
> three things are obviously not exclusive.)  I imagine on this form we'd
> list some common skills/tasks people ask about as well as providing free
> forms for skills.
>
>
>
> Folks could ask for people to pair with them directly to the list, or they
> could ask me to match them up with someone using the form data people
> submitted.  The latter I think would be especially useful for finding pairs
> for things like "Applying to Google Summer of Code" or "Finding a project I
> feel comfortable contributing to" or "Overcoming my impostor syndrome"
> which might require a more experienced and trusted mentor.
>
>
>
> Why I like this approach:
>
> - It promotes pairing.  Yay, pairing!
>
> - It's goal oriented.  There are concrete tasks that people are working
> on, even if the concrete task is abstract and interpersonal.  We know when
> we've succeeded.
>
> - It's low commitment for both mentors and mentees.  You commit to doing
> one pair session at a time.
>
> - It allows people to share skills as they gain them.  The focus is not on
> one type of person (a mentor) helping another type of person (a newcomer)
> but on someone who has a skill sharing that skill.  This allows newcomers
> to share their own skills right away, and to turn around and help others in
> the way they've been helped.
>
>
>
> What do folks think?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 2:25 PM, Shauna Gordon-McKeon <shaunagm at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> There's no particular need to rush on this.
>
>
> There could be a lot of value just in inviting people to take an open
> survey and publishing/discussing the results.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 22, 2014 at 2:20 PM, Heidi Ellis <ellis at wne.edu> wrote:
>
> +1
>
> But I’m working on a paper for the next few days….
>
>
>
> *From:* osctc-planning-bounces at lists.openhatch.org [mailto:
> osctc-planning-bounces at lists.openhatch.org] *On Behalf Of *Shauna
> Gordon-McKeon
> *Sent:* Tuesday, July 22, 2014 1:35 PM
>
>
> *To:* Planning for Open Source Comes to Campus
> *Subject:* Re: [OSCTC-planning] mentorship and other ways to follow up
> with Open Source Comes to Campus attendees
>
>
>
> Hmmm.  We could write a guide or blog post about this.  Perhaps invite
> contributions/suggestions from people who've done online mentoring about
> what to look for?  I imagine people who do OPW and GSoC would have a lot to
> say about this.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 11:33 AM, sheila miguez <shekay at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 10:19 AM, Shauna Gordon-McKeon <shaunagm at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> I think it probably depends on the mentee - there are certainly
> introverted people who'd prefer a calmer, quieter approach than I'd
> instinctively provide them - but yes, I think *generally* speaking the
> ability to be outgoing and actively engaged, is important.  Is it more
> important than other abilities, such as empathy, creativity, and the
> ability to explain things well?  I'm not sure.
>
>
>
> I also think you're right to differentiate online and in person mentoring
> on this dimension.  I think more quiet, passive mentors might be able to
> push themselves to interact and ask questions via online mediums in a way
> that's hard to in person.  One can also introduce easier-to-evaluate
> metrics that way, by asking a mentor, "How many email threads have you
> initiated?" "How many questions has your mentee asked you?" "What kinds of
> questions does your mentee tend to ask?" etc.  There's more opportunity for
> reflection because you have the record of communication.
>
>
>
> I'd definitely love to learn more about this. I find it much easier to
> talk to people online, and can help in that manner, but that is not to say
> that I don't want to get better at in-person interactions.
>
> If people know resources for building up that skill for people who may be
> shy or have confidence issues (like myself), please share.
>
> One thing I've been trying is watching how other people do this. I don't
> often get a chance to do this since I'll end up helping instead of
> watching. This means I am not sure how effective watching other mentors is.
>
>
>
> --
>
> shekay at pobox.com
>
>
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