Open Stack

On 04/14/2014 05:06 AM, Stefano Maffulli wrote:
> On 04/14/2014 06:58 AM, Michael Still wrote:
>> First off, thanks for electing me as the Nova PTL for Juno. 
> 
> Congratulations Michael.
> 
>> * I promised to look at mentoring newcomers. The first step there is
>> working out how to identify what newcomers to mentor, and who mentors
>> them.
I agree that identifying which newcomers to mentor is key. I have found
that I don't always get it right, and am disappointed when I spend time
and energy on someone who then disappears but for the most part the
first thing I look for is consistency, do they show up everyday in a
given week? If yes, they get more of my time.

Then I look for quality of questions and willingness to take
suggestions. Mostly I work on a gut feeling here, if I am mentoring
someone I need to feel like my time is well spent. I find it hard to
articulate but I do know when I have found someone worthy of mentoring.

Then I look at failure communication, we all feel dumb. Does this person
stop communicating when they hit an obstacle? Do they use tools like
paste and etherpad to show me what they are seeing? The better the
person communicates, or is willing to be taught to communicate, the
better I can help them.

Then I look at personal characteristics, like trust, honesty and
integrity. If this person disagrees with me or has a different
perspective, will they tell me? If something comes up for them in their
personal life or if management has thrown them a curve, will they tell
me? Life happens to all of us, what is this person's ability to share
what I need to know to make the best use of my time?

These are just some thoughts off the top of my head. I hope they are
useful to you. I support this direction.

Oh and congrats on the PTLship,
Anita.

> 
> I'm very interested in the mentoring topic, too. As many may know, the
> Foundation will host an Upstream Training session in Atlanta. This is
> first attempt at formalizing the process to become a *good* contributor
> to OpenStack. Mentorship is a crucial part of that training, which is
> made of in-person classes and online mentorship (before and after the
> in-person training).
> 
> OpenStack project has also two other programs where mentorship is
> crucial: Outreach Program for Women (it's been running for almost 2
> years now) and we added also Google Summer of Code. Mentoring is now
> becoming "a thing we do" among the other things we do.
> 
> I think the easy "targets" to mentor are Upstream students, OPW and GSoC
> candidates.  I'd be happy to have a session at the summit about this.
> 
> /stef
>