Reorganizing Ambassador Mentoring

Reorganizing Ambassador Mentoring Ticket [ticket:359]

The Mentoring program reorganisation is one of the task FAmSCo accepted as reported in the ticket above metioned. There are a lot of comments in the tickect and each one is worth to be mentioned so below we gathered them in order to keep clean and clearful both suggestion and proposals.

Starting Point

Jiří Eischmann initially started the discussion filing the ticket [ticket:359] with this motivation:

• at the moment there isn't any rule for getting a mentor stepping down from his/her appointment;
• some regions are asking to establish a process for revoking the Mentor status due to a long inactivity;
• (maybe) is just the case to get regional communities, and not only the mentors, able to nominate new mentors.

Relevant Comments

Since every FAS member is able to edit the ticket, a lot of comments are present in the queue, here's the main (open to any note):

comment #	contributor	comment	notes (please add the author)
comment # 1	Robert Mayr	Before revoking, asking him the reasons for his inactivity
comment # 23	Maria Leandro	Setting up an automatic-inactive status if the Mentor doesn't record any activity after XX time, instead just shutting it out. Setting up add a sidekick to the mentoring process. If we have a count of ambassadors that have been helpful into the mentoring process, then we could identify easily new potential mentors to help. Having at least 50% of similarities in the mentoring process
comment # 26	Joerg Simon	Sometimes Mentor's work will go unnoticed and in mentoring this is often only between Mentor and the candidate. We can't have the same approach in every region; we have common values - which is true - but if we do not have to live with the regional consequences it is easy to make this decision.
comment # 27	Maria Leandro	Tatica's questionnaire
comment # 33	Sirko Kemter	Dividing the pure approval process from a possible mentoring process, yes some doing really mentoring and some doing just by the book approval process. Real mentoring is much much more ornate as the mentoring which is done from the most, so with the currently mentoring process not doable. In some regions we have to do really mentoring, they dont know what ssh, gpg, irc and so on is, they need a lot of things help with to fullfill their task as an Ambassador.
comment # 35	Joerg Simon	A wizard like membership process will make the onboarding easier - but of course there was also not worked on it ;) The content is more extensive than what we had before. Implementing it in the right place should find an owner. But as long as the basic processes that we established years ago (like closing fama tickets after 14 days without updates) are not conducted anymore more thoughts need to be put in.

Structured Proposals

comment #	contributor	proposal	notes (please add the author)
comment # 5	Justin W. Flory	Retiring People may be disappointed to see many mentors inactive for long time, so finde some kind of autation to remove the name from the wiki (that is one of the main page for the Ambassadors process) could be helpful. When the Mentor is active again, he can easily add his namen to the page. Adding Community-based nomination to meet Ambassadors needs.
comment # 19	Abdel G. Martinez L.	How the mentor should be guiding the prospect The prospect need to have a FAS account. He/she should look for a mentor near to his/her region. Fulfil a few requisites by his/her own (have a blog, link the blog with Fedora Planet, participate on their regional meetings, contribute on other sub-project, know the reimbursement workflow, organize an event). The mentor should review (by an interview) if the prospect is ready. If the mentor approves the prospect, then the prospect would be reviewed by another mentor in other region. If both mentors approve, the prospect should pass an exam. A few questions related to Fedora Project. If he/she passes, FAmSCo (?) would approve their request.
comment # 28	Charles Profitt	Having the mentor status granted for one year and active mentors can automatically renew their 'status'. An inactive mentor would lose their status based on their not responsding to a notification email. This avoids removal being a 'personal' thing. There should be some formula for determining if there are enough active mentors. This could be based on population of the area or number of active ambassadors or just a minimum established for each region.
comment # 29	Robert Mayr	Mentors should follow a mentoring structure, they should touch at least all the topics in the guidelines when mentoring new candidates; Mentoring is very time expensive, if you do it right! After 2-3 years this activity becomes very hard, specially if you also contribute to some other areas. I can immagine having a sort of mentoring "seat" for max two years, after that you get removed (or you can get also confirmed directly by your region and reappointed by FAmSCo/FOSCo); Within these 2 years it is not important how many candidates you have; as tatica says, even 4-5 a year is a good job; Mentoring will remain, even if we set up a mentoring structure, very subjective and different from region to region (and that's very important). Nevertheless we should work towards having a process which should be much easier for those who are already contributing in other groups. These candidates already know the Project (hopefully), and will be able to give much better answers when they organize an event and get asked by end users about the Fedora Project.
comment # 34	Justin W. Flory	Things Ambassador should ever know (Basis). Once we have a shared base, it will be easier to discuss or layer regional challenges into the equation. But I find it difficult to discuss the issues without first having this common base.

Hope this page being helpful to put things together.