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Neary: Effective mentoring programs
Over on his blog, Dave Neary investigates mentoring programs, like Google Summer of Code and others, to see what works and what doesn't. In particular, he looks at why so few of those who are mentored end up as project contributors, and what can be done to change that. "Mentored tasks should be small, bite-sized, and allow the apprentice to succeed or fail fast. This has a number of advantages: The apprentice who won't stick around, or who will accomplish nothing, has not wasted a lot of your mentor's time. The apprentice who will stay around gets a quick win, gets his name in the ChangeLog, and gains assurance in his ability to contribute. And the quick feedback loop is incredibly rewarding for the mentor, who sees his apprentice attack new tasks and increase his productivity in short order."
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Neary: Effective mentoring programs Posted Jun 1, 2011 3:37 UTC (Wed) by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606) [Link]
"...why so few of those who are mentored end up as project contributors..."
Uhmm, because the most important reward for most "apprentice" is the money? At least for now, they'll be able to use the experience later on their life when/where applicable.
Yet, the sponsors get good PR, the apprentices get the rewards, the FLOSS projects get the contributions. Everybody wins regardless of how effective the mentoring programs are, except for the mentors...
Neary: Effective mentoring programs Posted Jun 1, 2011 9:40 UTC (Wed) by dneary (subscriber, #55185) [Link]
Hi,
Most mentoring programs (with the exception of GCI and GSOC) don't offer money to people who join. GNOME Love has an IRC channel, a mailing list and a wiki page.
Some mentoring programs offer fringe benefits, like bringing people to the community conference, but this is far from universal.
Cheers,
Neary: Effective mentoring programs Posted Jun 1, 2011 16:56 UTC (Wed) by totierne (guest, #75343) [Link]
Mentors need to be more like managers and less like developers.
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