Future of Mentoring

BADCamp 2015

Alina Mackenzie Cathy Theys

Note: To use presentation:

• git clone [email protected]:drupal-mentoring/future-of-mentoring.git
• cd future-of-mentoring
• php -S localhost:8000
• open browser http://localhost:8000 or http://bit.ly/future-mentoring (network connection required)

bit.ly/future-mentoring

Note:

• Follow along: slides and speaker notes available online
• Presentation is done in reveal.js and is available on github.com

Alina Mackenzie

alimac / czaroxiejka

University of Illinois at Chicago

Note:

• system administrator and web developer based in Chicago
• working with Drupal ~4 years since Drupal 7, involved with community ~2 years
• passions: automation, learning organizations, making participation in OSS open to anyone
• organization that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms itself

Cathy Theys

YesCT / YesCT

BlackMesh

Note:

• Cathy Theys, YesCT. Started 9.5 years ago, have been a mentor for since .. Portland for sure. I work at BlackMesh and it's my fulltime job to work on drupal core.

Past

You are not defined by your past. You are prepared by your past. — Unknown

Note:

• to talk about where we are going, we must acknowledge where we have been and where we are now

2011

Note:

• several smaller initiatives put mentoring on the map as key part of the project

Issue summary initiative

Note:

• d.o gets a new feature: editable issue summaries
• xjm (Jess) starts the Issue summary initiative

Note:

• anyone can update the issue summary
• overview of the problem, steps to reproduce, screenshots, proposed resolution
• why? encourage contribution by increasing understanding of the issue

IRC office hours

Note:

• catch (Nathaniel) with xjm support starts weekly IRC Office hours to do triaging
• regular time, online
• requires familiarity with IRC

“Needs...” tags

Note:

• Various “needs...”tags existed prior to mentoring initiatives

Note:

• Usage of “needs...” tags starts to get more used thanks to office hours
• tags identify a task that needs to be done
• once task is completed, remove tags

2012

Contributor tasks

drupal.org/contributor-tasks

Note:

• jhodgdon (Jennifer) creates first contributor tasks document as central place for people to find out how they could contribute to Drupal.

DrupalCon sprint day

Note:

• DrupalCon Denver has the first Friday sprint called Core Office hours sprint, with two rooms, one general sprints and one mentored.

Note:

• There was a live commit from the first sprint.
• Live commit is a fun and exciting activity that brings contributors together to talk about their roles and what they did to solve an issue
• Core committer reads and explains the patch, then commits the code changes to Drupal

drupalmentoring.org

Note:

• xjm builds drupalmentoring.org to build a community around it and where people could share attendance lists, tasks, mentors...
• separate site from drupal.org
• agile: allowed for rapid development and customization

2013

Note:

• Big changes in 2013...

drupal.org upgrade

Note:

• Drupal.org upgrade to Drupal 7 broke drupalmentoring.org
• The upgrade removed the JSON feature, breaking drupalmentoring.org code, and dm.o used for new contributors to say they were starting other tasks

Say it with words

Note:

• Before, the assigned field was used to indicate when people started writing
• Now, needed a way to say "I'm starting on a task", and since many tasks assigned field not usable for that. (And, when an issue has someone assigned other people will not work on an issue (usually), even if it was assigned a long time ago, and that can block progress on an issue.)

Note:

• This change in behavior has many benefits, as it helps participants conquer their fear of making a comment early, while with a mentor and is more communicative and people can work on different tasks simultaneously. and it happens where the whole community can see it, not just on dm.o, allowing for less duplicate work, and more exposing of mentoring integrated into the normal workflow.

T-shirts

Note:

• The 4th mentored strint happened in Portland and it was the first one where the DA provided T-shirts for mentors.
• Typically bright color, easy to spot T shirt.

2014

Remaining tasks template

Note:

• Dreditor added the button to add the remaining tasks template.

Tools

Note:

• Mentors in the past would help people set up dev environments, each was different.
• Brian Gilbert (realityloop) had a goal to pick some standard set of tools that were likely to work on a wide variety of machines and were good enough to get people started on a sprint day.
• Acquia Dev Desktop was not usable for that, for Drupal 8. Brian, and scor worked very closely with Acquia to get ADD beta ready for an upcoming sprint in time.
• Acquia Dev Desktop, allowed people to quickly start contributing on the sprints.

Task cards

Note:

• People like swag.

Note:

• First appearance on Drupal South, NZ and refined over next Cons.
• 5-7 cards with discrete tasks
• Explorer, Developer, Community Contributor, Documenter, Mentor
• tangible artifact, suggested paths

Present

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present. — Bil Keane

Note:

• What has happened in the past few months?

Drupal Association support

Note: At DrupalCons sprints and mentoring are linked. In Bogotá 2015:

• documented all of the sprint planning tasks

Note:

• DA staff began implementing sprint planning tasks for LA
• Financial support: sprint task cards, stickers, lunch, (more) signs, booth
• DA provides DrupalCon tickets for experienced mentors

groups.drupal.org/mentoring

Note: goal: make mentoring wisdom more distributed and the activities that are being done more transparent

• announce monthly mentor meetings
• post meeting minutes
• address questions from mentors

drupal.org/project/mentoring

Note: goal: having the todo lists discoverable and any d.o user able to comment, edit and work on them without having to get permission in a separate system (google docs, another site, trello)

• track tasks as issues
• use Plan issues for documenting overarching tasks and have conference-specfic issues
• track due dates

Documentation

• Mentoring at Drupal events
• Mentoring coordinator
• Mentor lead responsibilities

Note:

1. child pages of drupal.org/core-mentoring
2. used at Mentor Orientation: dramatic reading to engage attendees
3. describe responsibilities: Sprint and Planning, Sprint Room, Booth, Communications, First Time Sprinter, Novice Issue Triage

Integration with general sprint

Note:

• general sprint and mentored core sprint

Note:

• Los Angeles 2015, core commit happened around 2pm, earliest ever
• Core mentored sprint room emptied out, remaining first time contributors join general sprint room and continue their work together with experienced contributors and initiative leads

Note:

• Goal is to integrate first time sprinters into the general sprint room

Communications

Note:

• first used personal email, then a Google spreadsheet add-on
• improved mentor communications using MailChimp starting with Bogota
• reusable templates, scheduled emails

Note:

• Continuous adaptation: using sticky notes to indicate need of assistance

Note:

• Another adaptation: decorating T-shirts with tape
• Promotes creativity, fun, team bonding

Word is out!

Note:

• Drupal 7 had 900 contributors with commit mentions, Drupal 8 has over 3000
• Drupal success with getting new contributors involved and mentoring
• other open source projects like Docker are interested and investigating drupal mentoring techniques
• bodes well for future

Vision of the future

The best way to predict the future is to invent it. — Alan Kay

Note:

• reintroduce yourself
• coming up: 2015.. you mean we're in the future??
• generally describe vision

Note:

• 2015... you mean we are in the future??

To accomplish the vision

Moar automation

Note:

• Mentor Leads have responsibilities that can be automated. Mentors have skills that would be better used on tasks that need thought. Use automation to free up the mentors to mentor, or do other process improvements.

Automate html list of mentors on events.drupal.org

Note:

• we recognize mentors by listing them on the core mentored sprint page on DrupalCon website
• also having a list of mentors, encourages new contributors to sign up

2239073

Figure out how to automatically generate list of mentors HTML

Note:

• We used to have the communication lead also copy and pastes out of that same email and manually edits the list of mentors. We have views, and there is no need to wait for "human approval" of mentors. Let's automate it.

Mentor MailChimp integration with events.drupal.org

2572663

Integrate Mentor sign-up with MailChimp list

Note:

• Right now, after mentor fills out the drupalcon webform, and email gets sent and the mentor communication lead copy and pastes into mailchimp. There is api integration, let's use it.

Make it easier for people to find relevant first issues

2332789

Reduce Novice Contribution differences and
consolidate novice contribution landing pages,
content, blocks

Note: an issue to redesign and consolidate and remove duplicate docs
Dashboard
sidebar
Landing page

1290740

How to label, aggregate and expose issues, docs, forum posts and groups to Topic pages

Note: something

Have instructions on the issue for how to work on the issue

2013222

Add "Issue tasks" to project issues and correlate tasks with handbook documentation

2193871

Create an Action Block for Short Messages for Users & Visitors

Tell people which issue are workable

2572061

Add a dismissable notification when somebody goes to a core issue while in RC

New contributors can easily get and use tools

2233509

tools

Note:

• might have a "better" solution when bandwidth is not an issue. but need to consider ADD/native when wifi is a problem

Mentors who have not been to an in person event can start mentoring locally

Note:

• Need more detailed, facilitator and lead, instructions.

Conversation

Note: Conversation starters

• measures of success?
• "mentors should do real mentoring" - what does that look like?

Thank you

czaroxiejka YesCT

Note:

• Tweet us your mentoring stories and feedback