[UbuntuWomen] Mentoring program

[Vid Ayer]

Hello All !

Earlier I was creating the static page on mentoring for the new
web-site[0] and wanted the women here to give some feeedback and ideas
on what they want from the Mentoring project. I am still waiting for
some input from you all, especially women.

How do we ensure active participation from Mentors in UW without
making newcomers jump through loops.

0] Can we ask newcomers to contact the listed Mentors directly (if
yes, do we need to take the individuals permission to list their email
ID on the webpage)

1] Should we ask people to write to us before we list them as mentors.
Coming from DW, I can personally say that the method they follow [1]
works very well (at least it did for me :-)).

2] Can we ask Mentors to conduct courses? - I dont know how many will
do that but if mentors volunteer, there are enough women (and men)
interested in learning.

3] What was the medium women prefer: MList or private mail, IRC,
online tutorials, <anything else>?

4] Would women be willing to contact a Mentor directly and ask for
specific technical help or would you prefer someone else to initiate
contact.

5] Are you concerned about privacy.  Example: While applying for a new
"foo" position, the employer/headhunter may google and find that
newbie question you asked such a long time ago.

Personally, I found Debian-Women's mentoring program useful but YMMV.
So please tell us what is missing and which direction you wish the
program to take.

Also, I would like to suggest that it will be easier if all the women
who attended the Paris summit help us out here. You have met many
developers there and can easily find folks interested in mentoring
women in Ubuntu. Any thoughts...

Thanks for reading !

-Vid

[0] http://www.ubuntu-women.org/mentoring.html
[1] http://women.debian.org/mentoring/