Mentorship programs. Growing new team and community leaders
Sessionize YouTube Speaker Deck
Designing mentorship and outreach programs that grow maintainers and community leaders.
Slides
Abstract
Mentorship and outreach programs are often considered as side projects. Although they are a nice way to spend time and have fun, one may say they rarely add new long-term contributors to your company project or community. Is it true? Is it even the main goal? Or is it about team bonding and growing new maintainers and community leaders?
Let’s discuss how to organize mentorship programs that help grow your current community and contributors. How do we involve a contributor in broader community efforts? How do we help them grow and take on new roles? Let’s discuss various program types, including wide outreach programs such as GSoC or Hacktoberfest, newcomer assistance, focused maintainer mentoring programs, and individual leadership training like shadow officers.
The talk is based on my experience in the Jenkins, FOSSi, the Continuous Delivery Foundation and other communities. I organized or helped to organize several mentorship and outreach programs: contributor/maintainer onboarding, GSoC/GSoD, Outreachy, CommunityBridge, various hackathons, and board member training.
Read more about my open source mentorship and my participation in Google Summer of Code.