Mentorship programs. Growing new team and community leaders

Mentorship and outreach programs are often considered as side projects. Although they are a nice way to spend time and have fun, one may say they rarely add new long-term contributors to your company project or community. Is it true? Is it even the main goal? Or is it about team bonding and growing new maintainers and community leaders?

Let’s talk about organizing mentorship programs to help grow your current community and contributors. How do we involve a contributor in wider community efforts? How do we help them grow and take on new roles? Let’s talk about various program types: wide outreach programs like GSoC or Hacktoberfest, newcomer assistance, focused maintainer mentoring programs, and individual leadership training like shadow officers.

The talk is based on my experience in the [Jenkins](https://www.jenkins.io/), [FOSSi](https://www.fossi-foundation.org/), the [Continuous Delivery Foundation](https://cd.foundation/) and other communities. I organized or helped to organize a number of mentorship and outreach programs: contributor/maintainer onboarding, GSoC/GSoD, Outreachy, CommunityBridge, various hackathons, and board member training.

Transcript

1. Mentorship programs Growing new team and community leaders Oleg Nenashev, Gradle
2. 2 > whoami Oleg Nenashev “I am a beaver who builds and maintains the communities”
3. > whoami @oleg_nenashev oleg-nenashev Dr. Nenashev / Mr. Jenkins Community builder Developer Tools Hacker Gradle + Freelance consultant #RussiansAgainstPutin #StandWithUkraine
4. My Open [and not so] Communities Time * Once a contributor, [almost] always a contributor Neuchâtel 4
5. * Saw (2004) Yes, this elephant in the room
6. Disclaimer 6 Gradle == Gradle Build Tool in this talk It’s not a “Gradle vs Maven” talk. It is not a Gradle one I use both Maven and Gradle IMO: There is no place for “vs” in open source
7. 7 And we mean it Valentine Day’s post
8. Image source: https://stihi.ru/2019/09/10/1832 That maintainer from Nebraska JVM ecosystem, build tools, containers, platforms, etc. Apache Maven ecosystem: Libraries, Plugins, Repositories Your automation frameworks, plugins and infrastructure Your project and velocity
9. +
10. 10 See ge.apache.org helps Used in Beam, Groovy, Kafka, Lucent, Pulsar, Solr, etc. • 37 onboarded projects • 31 days per week - savings from the build cache • 116 days per week - savings from all caching • 30k builds per week • 503d of total build time per week
12. 1 2 Let’s Chat at the Gradle Booth!
13. Async Q&A: Gradle Community Slack speakerdeck.com/onenashev
14. Community > Code
15. Maintainer != Community Leader (chuckles) I am in danger
16. Project Maintainer is not [ALWAYS] a Community Leader
17. Community Leader is not [ALWAYS] a Project Maintainer * but a community maintainer?
18. Maintainers Don’t Scale * … and don’t grow on Git trees
19. User Comitter Maintainer Community Leader Stakeholder or mentor Leadership is not about code Fast track to leadership
20. Mentorship programs are great for the community
21. Mentorship Programs. Why? • Onboarding individual and company contributors • Community bonding and retention • Driving key initiatives • Guerilla marketing • Growing community leaders
22. Mentorship Programs • Learning experience for all parties • Community bonding • Nice2Have: Delivering Something • Nice2Have: Driving the project’s roadmap
23. Outreach Programs in Jenkins jenkins.io/sigs/advocacy-and-outreach/outreach-programs
24. In Gradle Build Tool • GSoC 2023 - Support for Kotlin DSL in Eclipse / Buildship • 2 mentees in Major League Hacking (MLH) newsletter.gradle.org/2024/01
25. Tanish Ranjan Hongjie (Jay) Wei Kotlin Foundation Gradle in Google Summer of Code 2024 community.gradle.org/events/gsoc
26. Not just code! Zainab Abubakar @zaycodes • Google Season of Docs 2020 ◦ jenkins.io/blog/2020/12/04/gsod-project-report • Keynotes at CloudBees/CDF events • Presented at the D&I Council at CB • Multi-year SheCodeAfrica collaboration on documentation/code hackathons ◦ Event sponsorship ◦ Co-promotion
27. Community leader candidates are out there Mentee Co-mentor(s) Users Comitters Maintainers Leaders Lead Mentor Org admins Organizers Sponsors
28. Being a Lead Mentor is hard Difficult Exhausting Not always fun … but rewarding
29. archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/selfish_contributor Being a Lead Mentor is hard… but rewarding James Bottomley, “The Selfish Contributor Explained”, FOSDEM 2020
30. Mentorship is great for YOU • Side projects!!! Swag!!! • Leadership practice • Learning together with mentees • Visibility in open source, network • Influence in the community
31. Exposure and visibility on the market Ewelina Wilkosz – Most Valuable Jenkins Contributor @ Jenkins World Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit – Select FOSS Event
32. Networking jenkins.io/blog/2020/01/29/gsoc-report/ 32
33. [Community] Leadership == Path to the next roles • People manager • Product manager • Project manager • Community manager • …
34. Your mentors do not have to do it during their spare time
35. archive.fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/selfish_contributor Being a Lead Mentor is hard… but rewarding James Bottomley, “The Selfish Contributor Explained”, FOSDEM 2020
36. “The Selfish Contributor Organization Explained” * In my backlog / Hall of Shame
37. Mentorship is great for Your Company • (?) Open-source ecosystem around products
38. Ecosystem needs time and effort 38 wiremock/ecosystem
39. A lot of time and effort 39 testcontainers.com/modules
40. 40 x.com/dastbe/status/1303858170155081728
42. 42 Open Source Standards and collaborations is a great way to start * Unix way
43. Mentorship is great for Your Company • (?) Open-source ecosystem around products • (?) Features in our FOSS projects and products
44. Facilitating the Roadmap github.com/gradle/gradle/issues/283 Example: • Experimental projects you cannot find time for • Compatibility • Adoption in the ecosystem, e.g. IDE and developer tools
45. Do NOT do it alone It is not enough to have one champion of the roadmap “It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me”.gif Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZBMjnF6-4
46. Mentorship is great for Your Company • (?) Open-source ecosystem around products • (?) Features in our FOSS projects and products • Marketing content • Visibility in open source • Recruitment opportunities
47. Mentorship is great for Your Company • (?) Open-source ecosystem around products • (?) Features in our FOSS projects and products • Marketing content • Visibility in open source • Recruitment opportunities • Leadership practice for engineers
48. [Community] Leadership == Path to the next roles • People manager • Product manager • Project manager • Community manager • …
50. Takeaways • Mentorship in open source is not just volunteering • Mentorship is good for your career • It’s a great way to practice leadership skills • “Leadership practice” is Learning & Development, can be justified at your company
51. References • My slides: speakerdeck.com/onenashev/ • Gradle at GSoC: community.gradle.org/events/gsoc/ • Blog from the Dynatrace times: engineering.dynatrace.com/blog/mentoring- in-open-source-my-journey-so-far
53. 5 3 Let’s Chat at the Gradle Booth!
54. 54 Let’s do a Developer Productivity Interview! calendly.com/onenashev/
56. Community over Code © jenkins.io/participate 56
57. It’s [always] a great time to contribute! community.gradle.org/contributing jenkins.io/participate wiremock.org/docs/participate java.testcontainers.org/contributing 57
58. Questions? Contacts: GitHub: oleg-nenashev Twitter: @oleg_nenashev