As a mentor: It means helping others weather the rough bits of becoming
contributors, just as you say, so they don't have to suffer the same
pains I did.

As a mentee: It means whatever I need it to mean. At various points in
my career, mentoring relationships with regularly-scheduled meetings and
prescribed agendas have been encouraged to the point of almost being a
requirement; and that's silly. For me personally, I reach out to an
appropriate mentor on a case-by-case and issue-by-issue basis as and
when I need mentoring, and not otherwise. But that's me. Some folks may
benefit from more rigid structure. Some may want career mentoring but
have the technical side wired. Some just need links to a handful of docs
and they're off to the races. Some need their hand held for every step.

So in the context of OpenStack mentoring, IMO it is our job as mentors
to be a resource that's available to mentees, to be sensitive to the
needs and desires of each mentee individually, and to recognize our
strengths and weaknesses as mentors and find a better matchup if that's
what's appropriate for a given situation.

-efried_2c

On 08/20/2018 01:24 PM, Jill Rouleau wrote:
> 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
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> openstack-mentoring mailing list
> openstack-mentoring@lists.openstack.org
> http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-mentoring
>

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