DRAFT: FINAL HAS BEEN MOVED TO MentoringFAQ
Mentoring FAQ
Who runs the Ubuntu Women Mentoring Program and how do I contact them?
The Mentoring program is a community effort with several volunteers. It is currently led by Michelle Hall.
To contact us regarding this program, you may:
Send an email to our mailing list (this is a publicly archived mailing list)
Send an email Michelle Hall, Laura Czajkowski and Elizabeth Krumbach directly:
On IRC, join #ubuntu-women-project (pubilcly archived) or #ubuntu-women on irc.freenode.net, where volunteers will be able to guide you. There may not be people monitoring this channel 24/7, so please be patient if nobody responds, or try the mailing list instead.
How to begin?
For mentors
Please read our Mentoring page, this entire FAQ document and once comfortable with the framework of our program you may add yourself to our Mentors page, you will be contacted by a member of the Mentoring leadership team listed above.
For mentees
Contact the Mentoring leadership team detailed above, ask for a mentor on #ubuntu-women or ask on our mailing list.
What happens next?
Now it is up to you and your mentor to decide how to accomplish the task at hand.
- Both mentor and mentee will need to devote some time to establish contact, discuss and work out a feasible plan. This is between the two individuals as time commitments may differ a lot.
- Read the relevant documentation and/or use Google frequently while trying to follow the mentor's advice as much as possible. If you don't understand, don't hesitate to ask him/her again or rephrase your question. It may take a few more meetings or messages but you will be able to accomplish a great deal together.
- Remember that the actual work will have to be done by you usually on your own. A mentor can guide you on how to do new things, but cannot do the task for you.
- Please remember that people's lives and workloads can change, and they may vary their level of commitment at anytime. Please be considerate of time commitments on both sides.
If you have any problems with the mentoring program or with your mentor or mentee, you can contact us, and we will do our best to sort things out.
Other Notes
- In the Ubuntu community women are not required to identify themselves by gender or provide any personal information on public lists, forums or IRC. However, we encourage you to to be more open with your mentor as it would help them get to know you better and establish a stronger relationship for future reference.
- After you accomplish your task you may discuss continuing to maintain contact with your mentor with new questions or initiate new projects as they are available. You could also use your experience and continue volunteering by becoming a mentor here so as to return good-will to the project which helped you learn.
- Please blog your experience and tell us about it so we can link that as inspiration for other newcomers!