Request for feedback: Developer Mentoring Program

[Scott Howard]

Hello devs,

The Ubuntu MOTU Mentoring program has been dormant for some time but
is now being restructured. The Mentoring Reception team has come up
with a new proposed program that incorporates designated development
teams. We are seeking feedback on our proposed program [1], and would
appreciate comments from MOTU, development team members, and the DMB.

A detailed description is given at [1], but here is a general summary:
The program will change from a MOTU mentoring program to a Developer
Mentoring program. The new program will have two levels: "General
Mentoring" and "Specialized Mentoring." The general mentoring program
will take novice devs (some packaging, bug triage/fixing, or patch
reviewing experience) and pair them up with volunteer mentors. The
mentee will work with the mentor to gain experience in package
maintenance in Ubuntu, coordination with upstreams, etc. and
eventually reach ~universe-contributor level ability. Specialized
mentoring will pair a ~universe-contributor level mentee with a member
of a designated development team (MOTU, Desktop, Kubuntu, etc.) with
the goal of eventually joining that team.

Mentoring will occur in public channels (motu-mentors mailing list,
IRC, etc.), and coordination of the mentoring program will occur in a
private mailing list (so mentors can speak freely about their
experience with students and express with whom they would like to
work.) Assignment and tracking of mentees will occur on Launchpad,
similar to how the Debian Maintainer program tracks their applicants.

See the wiki for more details and reply with your feedback! Keep
<motu-mentoring-reception at reponses.net>  cc:ed on your responses (that
is the private list), and you may speak privately to the team through
that address.

Also, if you are interested in mentoring or helping out with the
reception team, please reply to
<motu-mentoring-reception at reponses.net> with whether you would like to
be a "general" mentor and/or a "specialized" mentor (and what team).
The program won't start until we have worked out some more technical
details, but we would like to start including future mentors in
planning and the first implementation of the program.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDevelopment/MentoringReception/MentoringProposal


Regards,
Scott Howard