[Fedora-mentors-list] Re-introduction, re-launch, comments?

[Runa Bhattacharjee]

Greg DeKoenigsberg wrote:
Hi,

>So this list has been basically empty this year -- no posts so far in all
>of 2006.  Which is a shame; it's an idea with potential.
>
>Why hasn't it succeeded?  My idea: I don't think people know what is asked 
>of them, as mentors.
>
>  
>
I personally do not know what exactly is expected of me as a mentor. To 
recount an incident, the other day someone popped into #fedora-mentors 
irc channel looking for help. He said that **he wanted to contribute**. 
I had to keep questioning him to fully understand his area of interest 
and then I directed him to the other appropriate channels where he could 
find people of similar interest as I was not in a position to answer all 
his questions.

As a result, first of all I think the mentors ought to be given a brief 
outline of how we should interact with new mentees i.e. how to solve 
their initial queries, provide appropriate direction and help organise 
themselves. It could be like a questionaire to understand their area of 
interest. If they are clear about it then its easy for us, it not then 
we can help them figure it out. The last thing we might be looking here 
is confusing the mentees with our lack of proper understanding of the 
processes. I guess Sankarshan already mentioned this in his mail about 
how their mentees are teaching them about "to be prepared".

Secondly the #fedora-mentors channel is very sparsely populated and 
hardly any word exchanged there all day long. I am logged in there from 
9:00 AM to 9:00 PM Indian time and I have hardly seen any conversation 
since the past 1 month. Probably its because of the lack of visibility 
of  the Fedora-Mentors project as indicated by Maureen. 1 hour a week is 
pretty much acceptable and people like me who hardly ever need to move 
out of office during work-time can help back up as well.

Imho, the Mentors project ought to be integrated while promoting all the 
other projects as we have people from all these special groups 
volunteering in for  Mentors. So in case someone is looking for a point 
of contact, a Mentor is the first thing that comes to mind

regards
Runa
Fedora Mentor - Translation

[irc nick: runab or mishti]