Hey everyone, Ell has been blogging about her learning experiences for Linux Academy. These posts are really great, a good place to start is: https://linuxacademy.com/blog/docker/its-okay-to-be-new/ It got me thinking, mentoring means lots of different things to different people. For me, I didn't actually have any mentors early on in my career, it was a very solitary and often frustrating learning process. Those kinds of relationships came along much later and it was striking how much I got out of them and how much they would have helped if I had access to that kind of support and encouragement much earlier. It's made the mentoring relationships I have now that much more appreciated and important. So I got involved in mentoring initially through my local Linux Users Group, and now through the OpenStack community, because I'd like to help make it so that no one else has to be alone like that in their journey. It can be really hard to make that first connection, and to reach out and say "hey I could use some help". Luckily we have a really excellent community with a lot of different experiences and skills and backgrounds here in the OpenStack world, and you've all already taken that first step in saying "I want to be a part of mentoring!". So whether you're a mentor, a mentee, or both, I'd like to ask: What does mentoring mean to you? What do you hope to get out of a mentoring relationship? Cheers, Jill