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RE: [technology-pmc] So what is the process for finding project mentors?
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> It requires some digging into the community and finding somebody who is
> interested in the project and is willing to help. I'll admit that this is
> hard, but I think it lays some pretty important groundwork for the project
> to move forward in community development (which is a very important part
> of being an Eclipse project).
Developing a community and hunting down mentors from a fixed list of individuals who by definition have a fixed set of interests and don't necessarily have time or (for some of them) inclination to serve as mentors is not the same thing.
I'd like to figure out a way to make project mentoring more aligned with original goals of helping projects along rather than providing yet another hurdle for prospecting projects to clear.
> Maybe we might consider providing one mentor from the PMC for projects
> that need it. I actually quite like this idea as it provides a little
> more PMC glue into the project.
I am all for this. Of course, I can't actually mentor any project (not being on AC), so maybe my vote doesn't count on this.
> At a minimum, the PMC should get actively involved in
> the process of finding a mentor; we can make suggestions, and since
> several of us are on the Architecture Council, we can make sure that
> finding a mentor for a new project makes its way onto the agenda for our
> monthly calls.
This would be very helpful. I would urge AC to try to formalize the process for finding mentors and get something recorded in the development process. Sending an e-mail to the AC mailing list doesn't seem to work. Approaching individual AC members directly could be really difficult for someone who is new to Eclipse Foundation. For instance, we publish a list of AC members, but not e-mails.
> Several of your Oracle colleagues and at least four WTP committers are
> Architecture Council members. Start there.
Right. I will start working my connections. As I mentioned, I wanted to see what the experience is like for someone who is not already connected in the community. I think I got enough from that experiment to be able to discuss process improvements.
Oracle
Konstantin Komissarchik | Consulting Member of Technical Staff
Phone: +1 425 201 1795 | Mobile: +1 206 898 0611
Oracle Eclipse Tooling
411 108th Ave NE, Suite 2100 | Bellevue, WA 98004
-----Original Message-----
From: Wayne Beaton [mailto:wayne@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, November 10, 2008 1:06 PM
To: konstantin.komissarchik@xxxxxxxxxx; Technology PMC
Subject: Re: [technology-pmc] So what is the process for finding project mentors?
(a) To find the required mentors, projects "work the crowd". This
requires more work than sending an email or creating a bug. It requires
some digging into the community and finding somebody who is interested
in the project and is willing to help. I'll admit that this is hard, but
I think it lays some pretty important groundwork for the project to move
forward in community development (which is a very important part of
being an Eclipse project).
(b) I think there are some things that we can do to improve this, but we
need to be careful about doing too much. I'm quite sure that I do not
want to automatically assign mentors for all new technology projects.
I'm not sure how well that would scale: there are currently only four
PMC members who are active members of the architecture council.
Maybe we might consider providing one mentor from the PMC for projects
that need it. I actually quite like this idea as it provides a little
more PMC glue into the project. I'm not sure how PMC members would feel
about having a project effectively assigned to them (that hasn't worked
well in the past). At a minimum, the PMC should get actively involved in
the process of finding a mentor; we can make suggestions, and since
several of us are on the Architecture Council, we can make sure that
finding a mentor for a new project makes its way onto the agenda for our
monthly calls.
Ultimately, you have to "work the crowd". From past conversations, I
recall hearing that there was some interest from the e4 project about
facets. There must be somebody there you could speak directly with about
being a mentor. There must be somebody from the WebTools project would
would be willing to do it. I appreciate the experimental nature of you
"not trying to use your connections", but connections is what it's all
about. Linkage with the community and with other projects is a very
important part of what it means to be an Eclipse project. Several of
your Oracle colleagues and at least four WTP committers are Architecture
Council members. Start there.
We've really been pressing hard on the topic of mentoring projects on
the last few Architecture Council calls. Hopefully, we'll be able to
convince a few of them to take on some more responsibility...
Wayne
Konstantin Komissarchik wrote:
> The Faceted Project Framework proposal is moving along nicely. There has been
> some activity on the newsgroup, I blogged about the project, explicitly reached
> out to two projects who might be interested in leveraging this technology (PDT
> and CDT), there is interest from at least three projects at Eclipse (not
> counting WTP). So, by all objective measures, this proposal is ready to move to
> incubation stage. The only problem, is that I haven't managed to figure out how
> to line up mentors for the project (a requirement for moving to the incubation
> stage). The eclipse development process offers no guidance on this. I tried to
> use bugzilla to open a "bug" against Architecture Council
> (https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=253040), since that seems to be
> the way that AC wants to hear from the community, but there wasn't even a single
> response on the bug (opened on 10-31). Note that I am explicitly not trying to
> use my connections to reach out to individual members of AC, since I want to
> better understand obstacles facing projects during the startup phase.
>
>
>
> So I have two questions for the rest of the Technology PMC:
>
>
>
> (a) In your experience, what do projects typically do to line up mentors?
>
> (b) What can we do to improve the process in this area? I have previously
> proposed that Technology PMC take on the job of mentoring projects incubating
> within the project. Since the primary function of the Technology Project is
> incubation, this makes more sense to me than asking projects to find two other
> individuals from AC. In a lot of ways, this PMC is already mentoring projects.
> Other ideas?
>
>
>
> - Konstantin
>
>
>
>
>
> Oracle <http://www.oracle.com>
> Konstantin Komissarchik | Consulting Member of Technical Staff
> Phone: +1 425 201 1795 | Mobile: +1 206 898 0611
> Oracle Eclipse Tooling
> 411 108th Ave NE, Suite 2100 | Bellevue, WA 98004
>
>
>
>
>
>
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