Minutes of MOTU Mentoring Meeting

[Emmet Hikory]

On Friday, 19th October 2007 13:00 UTC, a meeting was held to discuss
the future of the MOTU mentoring program.

Daniel Holbach opened the meeting, emphasising that the Mentoring
program was designed to be a framework for one-on-one coordination
between developers and new contributors, but was not the only mean by
which new contributors could find assistance.

Cesare Tirabassi reported that from the point of view of the MOTU
Mentoring Reception, there was insufficient feedback on the process,
making it difficult to judge how many contributors are still active,
and the availability of mentoring slots.  As the program is growing
quickly, it is becoming very difficult to keep up.

Luke Yelavich reported that while his assigned mentees are active,
there is little mentoring required at the current time, as they have
other time committments, and are becoming self-sufficient for current
tasks.

Cesare points out that this is the kind of feedback he would like to have, so
that slots can be made available to new contributors.

Luke is indeed thinking of offering one or two more slots as his guys have
already got a little experience even though are not yet ready to move on
their own.

Daniel asked how we might determine the point at which participants
are ready to "move on on their own".

Luke believes that this should be left to the discretion of the Mentor.

Emmet Hikory suggested that the process could be split into two
phases, the first being to provide help with "How can I help MOTU?",
and the second being "How can I become MOTU?"

Cesare asked if Mentors would be willing to support the first part, to
which Luke, Emmet, and Daniel all expressed they would.

Discussion followed about pros and cons of the proposal, and how to define
goals for the two parts.

Christophe Sauthier asked about considering the first of these to be
related to Ubuntu membership, to which general discussion resolved
that this should remain separate, and that MOTU Mentoring should focus
on packaging/development, rather than general membership (although
membership is available from packaging/development work)

Andrea Veri expressed that it would be ideal to define the expected
results of mentoring, to make the goals clearer to Mentors, to which
Daniel added that it would also make the process clearer for Mentees.

Further discussion indicated that the process split was poorly
defined, and Emmet was asked to define in more detail.  Cesare asked
about implementation, without any clear answers.

Andrea also asked if there were requirements to request a mentor, and
Daniel and Cesare reported that they were asking people to have gained
some packaging experience, but not yet very active.

Christophe mentions that we should make more use of the possibility to mentor
bugs. Emmet and Cesare agree.

Further discussion on the topic did not lead to any firm resolution.
It was agreed that the mentorship process needed review, and that
there were several different possible solutions.  Discussion on the
motu-mentors mailing list was encouraged, with a possible later
meeting to finalise.

Emmet and Cesare will propose a first draft to motu-mentors.