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Newcomers need you, how to be a good mentor

vkmc
April 28, 2016

Newcomers need you, how to be a good mentor

OpenStack Summit Austin 2016

vkmc

April 28, 2016
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  1. Newcomers need you, how to be a good mentor Mahati

    Chamarthy - Intel Corporation Rossella Sblendido - SUSE Victoria Martinez de la Cruz - Red Hat Inc.
  2. Open-source is made of people ◉ # hired contributors >

    # independent contributors ◉ Hired contributors: design/implementation of new features, fixing high/critical priority bugs ◉ Independent contributors: bug reporting, fixing low/medium priority bugs, bug triaging, wiki updates
  3. Onboarding process ◉ OpenStack onboarding is hard ◉ This impacts

    negatively on some type of contributors ◦ Contributors with no experience in open-source ◦ Contributors with time-constraints
  4. Mentoring helps the community ◉ More diversity ◉ More ideas

    ◉ Bigger and more qualified community
  5. Mentoring helps individuals ◉ Growth & Exposure ◉ Learning ◉

    Impact on an individual's professional life
  6. “ "Fools say they learn by experience. I prefer to

    profit by other people's experience." - Otto von Bismarck
  7. Internship programs ◉ Outreachy ◦ Underrepresented groups ◦ 3 months,

    2 rounds per year ◦ Sponsored by several organizations/companies ◉ Google Summer of Code ◦ Students ◦ 3 months, 1 round per year ◦ Sponsored by Google
  8. Mentoring in Summits ◉ Upstream training ◦ Experienced engineers interested

    in sharing their first steps on the community ◦ Every Summit! ◦ Legos ;)
  9. Lightweight mentoring ◉ Women of OpenStack Speed Mentoring ◦ Pair

    mentors and mentees to work after the summit ends ◦ People who are already involved with the community
  10. General mentoring ◉ openstack, openstack-dev and openstack- internships mailing lists

    ◉ #openstack-101 on IRC ◉ New folks often picking irrelevant bugs that are usually invalid? - Good news! they want to help us!
  11. I spotted a newcomer, what should I do? ◉ Never

    assume anything ◉ Ask about their technical interests ◉ Ask about their environment (if any) ◉ Point them towards the right docs/people ◉ Let them know they can ping you if they need something else
  12. Knowledge requirements ◉ You should be familiar with the tools

    used by the community (Git, Gerrit, CI) ◉ You should be able to assign a project to your mentee that spans few months
  13. Commitment ◉ If you plan to change job or the

    OpenStack project you contribute to, it’s probably not a good time to commit to mentor!
  14. Time management and delegation ◉ Establish some ground rules: ◦

    Let them know when you are available ◦ Teach them on how main communication channels work (IRC/ML) ◉ Schedule one on one meetings ◉ Introduce your mentee to other people in the community
  15. Get to know your mentee ◉ Try to understand the

    experience level of your mentee to assign a doable task (not too easy, not too hard) ◉ Try to encourage your mentee to find answers on her/his own before asking ◉ If your mentee is too silent, establish a time to talk and get feedback
  16. Have fun! ◉ What’s the point of mentoring if you

    don’t have fun? ◉ Celebrate your mentee’s success ◉ Smile when something goes wrong and point the mentee kindly toward the good direction
  17. Mentors don’t know everything ◉ Don’t feel bad if you

    don’t have answers to all the questions, nobody does! Find them together with your mentee!
  18. References ◉ Upstream Training - http://docs.openstack. org/upstream-training/ ◉ Guidelines for

    lightweight mentoring - https: //drive.google. com/file/d/0BxtM4AiszlEyVkEtdktmWjBPN3c/ view