I would be interested, but I think it would depend on the adoptee not
just the adopter. I would not want to end up being the fount of
knowledge and turn into a crutch for the adopted person.
Aur S.
As far as the adoptee taking undue advantage of the adopter’s time and
willingness to help, I’ve been on teams where we use Social Contracts to
outline expectations and responsibilities from the start. This provides
a good framework for resolving clashes. For instance, if the adopter can
devote 2 hours per week yet the adoptee is asking eight detailed
questions per day, the Social Contract can be used to remind both sides
of the match to what they have agreed to.
Doing a quick search on Google for mentoring agreements, I found a
simple one at:
https://www-personnel.salford.ac.uk/docs/Code%20of%20Practice%20on%20Mentoring.doc
where Appendix I was a simple example agreement, Appendix II was
‘Periodic Mentoring Partnership Review’ and Appendix III was ‘Monitoring
and Evaluating the mentoring relationship’. Perhaps this is overkill and
people would prefer much more informal arrangements (if any) but I still
think it is a good idea to synchronize the adopter and adoptee’s
expectations early on. I would hate to see the fallout of a bad match
overshadow the success of the remaining ones.
Regards,
Jim
SonOfLilit wrote:
Of course, interesting discussions should still go to ruby-talk. And if I’m
predicting correctly, this will spawn MANY interesting discussions (as that
is what cognitive resonance does).
That would be good. Let’s give it some time to see the outcome !
Cheers,
Vincent
PS: for the infrastructure, why not create a rubyforge project and setup
a wiki over there ? That should scale up to a reasonable size.
On 2/14/07, Jim C. [email protected] wrote:
As far as the adoptee taking undue advantage of the adopter’s time and
willingness to help, I’ve been on teams where we use Social Contracts to
outline expectations and responsibilities from the start.
I hate the idea of a “social contract.”
The obvious solution is mentor refactoring:
red: newbie asks question
green: mentor answers question
refactor: each person asks if they like the other guy, find someone
else if they don’t
Simple, low stress, low obligation, no hard feelings
The whole point of this is to make it easy and comfortable to learn
the basics of Ruby. Contracts? Yuck!
Pat
p.s. I didn’t read the contract, so I have no clue what it looks like.
But I can just about guarantee you that anything called a contract
and delivered in .doc is of no interest to me 
barjunk wrote:
all day long for my day job, and I could probably help some other
What do we do next?
James’ idea about moving this offlist has merit.
Mike B.
I am in - as a Newbie and to help answer questions from new-er-bies.
I am the organizer of the Chicago Area Ruby Meetup - if y’all join (it’s
free for you) you have access to forums, etc. It is not seeing much
traffic right now (user traffic - there are no ads, and I make $0 from
it - in fact, I pay to keep it).
Here’s the link - join and email. I’ll do whatever I can, within the
limited functionality of Meetup.com, to help coordinate.
Steve R.
http://ruby.meetup.com/77/about/
PS - I realize most of you are nowhere near me, so you’d be unlikely to
attend the meetings, but it would be cool to have people in Lebanon,
Nigeria, Germany, Australia, wherever as members…
This seems like psychological overkill to me - it would scare the hell
out
of newbies if they are anything like me.
I think the mentor should just know that he may always say “listen, this
is
too much for me, please find someone else who has more time” and it’s
totally OK.
About Vincent’s wiki suggestion, yes, that could work, only:
- I don’t have time to setup infrastructure.
- The infrastructure I’d really want to exist is some form of recording
and
public display of all willing mentoring sessions. Perhaps an email
address
that both sides are asked to CC conversations they don’t mind sharing to
(or
a gateway between the sides) and a nice website allowing anyone to
browse
the conversations.
That would make a GREAT learning resource.
What’d be even better is to provide recorded chatrooms for whomever
wills to
use them. Perhaps 37signals’ chat system would do? Is it manageable with
it
in a free way?
Aur S.
I’d be really thankful if someone else takes up infrastructure
management,
as I really can’t ATM.
I think this is a great idea ! I can’t wait for being adopted by Matz ^^
Seriously, I’m interrested in trying the experience of adopting a
newbie, but
I’m not sure if my explanations would be clear enough, as my english is
somewhat poor. However, as it is a 1 to 1 relationship, it would be
logical
to take into account the prefered language(s) of the adopter and the
adoptee.
Did you already think about that ?
Well, since for now it’s coordinated here and by email, just tell me
where
you are from and what languages you speak 
This goes to anyone else.
Aur S.
Did you already think about that ?
–
Olivier R.
Well, since for now it’s coordinated here and by email, just tell me where
you are from and what languages you speak
This goes to anyone else.
Aur S.
Ok.
I speak french, and I live near Paris. I would be more comfortable
helping
someone whose native language is french. But, as Greg suggests, it may
be a
way to improve my english a bit, to help an english-speaking person.
Actually, I fear more for the pupil than for me, if my english
explanations
confuse him more than it helps !
On 2/14/07, Olivier [email protected] wrote:
I’m not sure if my explanations would be clear enough, as my english is
somewhat poor.
Couldn’t the pupil teach the teacher English as part of the deal?
Just a thought.
On 2/14/07, Steven R. [email protected] wrote:
limited functionality of Meetup.com, to help coordinate.
Steve R.
http://ruby.meetup.com/77/about/
PS - I realize most of you are nowhere near me, so you’d be unlikely to
attend the meetings, but it would be cool to have people in Lebanon,
Nigeria, Germany, Australia, wherever as members…
http://www.rubynewbie.org is available. Once I have gainful employment,
I’m
willing to buy the domain and put it to work for this purpose.
–
Samantha
http://www.babygeek.org/
“Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all
things are at risk.”
–Ralph Waldo Emerson
Well, I think such things should come AFTER they get to know each other,
if
it is needed, on a personal basis.
In general, both give away free time interacting by email.
I think grown up people on this list don’t really need such a phase
before
every email they send.
If a certain case arises - handle as you will.
Just my thoughts, what do other people think?
Aur S.
Pat M. wrote:
p.s. I didn’t read the contract, so I have no clue what it looks like.
But I can just about guarantee you that anything called a contract
and delivered in .doc is of no interest to me
Agreements/contracts don’t have to be long, ugly or scary (disclosure:
IANAL). I’ll do some editing of the one I found but basically it boils
down to this:
This agreement supports the mentoring partnership between:
Mentor:
Mentee:
Date:
Agreed objectives:
*
Mentee:* (What I hope to get from this mentoring partnership…)
*
Mentor**:* (I will provide support in the following ways - email, phone
hours, etc. …):
The groundrules for our mentoring partnership are: This should include
your agreed responses to issues of confidentiality, time commitment,
availability (when and where you can both be contacted), …
Reviewing partnership objectives: (It is a good idea to review this
agreement and your objectives at an appropriate time).
We will review this agreement on: _____________
If people agree that this is too time consuming or unnecessary,
completely understood and I’ll drop it. I just think that having
potential matches get to know each other a little better and discuss
some groundrules is not a bad thing.
-Jim
I’ll volunteer to be a mentor.
Dan
SonOfLilit wrote :
Oh, by the way, in the future, could volunteers list their topics of
interest in short? Not a long exact enumeration, […]
I can help more specifically with Gtk, OpenGL and algorithmic.
Oh, by the way, in the future, could volunteers list their topics of
interest in short? Not a long exact enumeration, just something like:
“I work with numeric calculations and Rails and would be more helpful
with
those.” or “I do graphics with OpenGL and could help with that”.
Especially Rails experience matters, since newbies tend to be separated
to
pure rubyists and railsists.
SonOfLilit wrote:
Well, I think such things should come AFTER they get to know each
other, if
it is needed, on a personal basis.
But that is the point, the matches don’t know each other is this is only
a starting point for them. I completely agree though that this is a
personal decision for them to decide if they need this or want to
formalize any of the points they discuss.
I think grown up people on this list don’t really need such a phase
before
every email they send.
Although I have only been lurking on this list for a couple of months, I
have been totally impressed with the expertise of the Ruby community,
the help offered and the lack of flames. None of what I have offered
today I think should get in the way of this.
I’ll change the scope of when this agreement could be used by pointing
out that if potential mentors / mentees would fill out their respective
sections in advance when seeking a match, you would then have a starting
point to work with to make matches based on skills/needs,
locale/language, availability or anything else they wish to disclose.
Currently, people are volunteering but you don’t know much about them.
When a match is made, both parties can decide if they want to make a
combined agreement or not based on their own comfort levels. I certainly
never envisioned this as a process that happens before every email sent.
Now to plagiarize Ed Borasky, it’s my time to be .
-Jim
Say… Where do newbies look for help first?
A link here could do wonders.
Hey I saw on the adopt a geek thread you were creating a resume
generator. I
was looking at doing the same thing. How is it coming?
I think emailing her off-list would be more proper