Mentoring Partnerships
Launchpad Entry: https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu-women.org/+spec/ubuntutheproject-community-n-ubuntu-women-mentor-partnerships
Created: 2010-08-18
Contributors: MelissaDraper
Stakeholders: Ubuntu Women
Summary
Ubuntu Women aims to provide mentoring to its members to help ease the initiation in to the world of Ubuntu (and FOSS) contributions.
Forging partnerships with projects will assist Ubuntu Women members in obtaining real project experience.
Rationale
The current mentoring framework doesn't provide clear paths from interest to contribution. These projects will let our members take defined steps towards the goal of contributing to Ubuntu, either directly or indirectly.
Use cases
- Melissa is nervous about learning this funky bzr thing as she's not used it before. Knowing there's someone to turn to, who has been recommended by Ubuntu Women as someone who won't be mean or creepy, would make her much more confident and likely to give it a go.
- Elizabeth wants to be a sysadmin when she grows up. She wants to get some real experience that's not just on her test system at home. A partner project looking for someone to keep tabs on the server their wiki and website is on would help Elizabeth get experience, and the project can get on with projecting.
- Amy has never contributed to a project because she never quite knows where to start. A list of trustworthy partner projects that are providing 'bitesize' tasks in the bug tracker can help her to know which little things to do to get aquainted with how the project system works.
- Amber wants to learn how to maintain debian packages. She has read through all the information but is nervous about trying to help because she's scared failing will only prove what mean people say about women and computers. A partner project would be able to take her on as a co-maintainer with a mentor that will be helpful if she makes mistakes (and keep them their little secret).
- Nigel is interested in proactively helping fix the FOSS gender imbalance and wants to do this by mentoring. He already runs a project. Partnering with Ubuntu Women would allow those wanting mentoring to find his project, and Ubuntu Women would have advice for things he can do to make the project welcoming.
Alan contributes to Nigel's project. Nigel appoints Alan to coordinate the mentoring partnership. Alan will make sure that he is known as the point of contact, and will herd cats^W^Wact as concierge for new contributors. He will also communicate concerns between the two parties.
Scope
Initially, this partnership program should aim utilise links that Ubuntu and Ubuntu Women already have with projects whose applications are in our repositories, or which aim to be.
Aiming to strengthen links we already have with groups like Gnome/KDE Women is a good start as we have some overlap with these groups already.
Implementation
- Formulate a set of criteria that the project should match to be relevant as a provider of Ubuntu oriented mentoring.
Suggestions: have a CoC, be in ubuntu repositories or aiming to be, use <number> launchpad tools, etc
Make a contact form available for mentors and mentees to sign up; asked questions which allow for both to go into detail about what their experience and interests are in order to make good pairings (see the infosec mentors project signup for an example).
- In addition to individual mentors, create a registry of projects and provide reliable contact information for a partnership coordinator within the partner project
- Appoint a group of Ubuntu Women volunteers to act as a Points of Contact for the partner coordinators.
Regular (monthly?) optional coordinator q&a sessions
- A guaranteed time set aside and attended by UW representatives (Leaders and Points of Contact) where coordinators and mentor-seekers can attend if they choose to, and raise concerns or make suggestions.