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Mentoring:
             We’re Doing It Wrong


Leslie Hawthorn
@lhawthorn
linux.conf.au 2012
Community Manager
   AppFog, appfog.com
Outreach Manager
Oregon State University Open Source Lab, osuosl.org
Google Open Source
 code.google.com/opensource
UC Berkeley
        •   Participant in the
            Undergraduate
            Research
            Apprentice
            Program

        •   My contributions
            to the the
            corpus of
            scholarly work in
            Medieval lit = 0

                                  Sather Gate image courtesy of Flickr user livenature
                Anne Middleton photo taken from http://english.berkeley.edu/profiles/94
The FOSS Mentor’s Lament

•   Mentees don’t
    become long-term
    contributors

•   Mentoring programs
    don’t scale

•   Return on
    Investment
    considered poor


                         Watch image courtesy of Flickr User ribbitvoice
Dave Neary on
       Mentoring Programs
                http://bit.ly/MentorROI


•   Excellent analysis of
    why mentoring ‘fails’

•   Poor retention rates
    = better to DIY?

•   Decrease the time it
    takes to vet mentees



                                          No Tourists image courtesy of Flickr User jenniferwoodardmaderazo
Retention Rates
• Search Google for
  “good conversion
  rate”
  • 2%, 2.5%,10%,
    15%, 18%
• Prequalifying is
  best practice with
  any recruitment
  process
                          St. Ignutius image courtesy of Flickr User interdev
Effective
Prequalification




  “Everyone Gets Tacos”
                          Tacos image courtesy of Flickr User mikeitup
Getting & Retaining
New Contributors

       This is a good and noble goal.

      I’ve come to the conclusion that
        having this as the ultimate goal
      completely misses the point.



                            Holy Grail Ale image courtesy of Flickr User brostad
How Newbies Help You
 Whether They Stick Around Or Not




    They are the people who know
    everything you have forgotten.



                                     Suck button image courtesy of Flickr User jessamyn
New Perspectives




The opportunity for introspection provided by
 newbie feedback is vital to a project’s health.

                                          Ignorance is Strength image courtesy of Flickr User drtiki
Let’s Get Meta:

the problem is how we
 approach the problem
Arguments for
Contributing to FOSS
•   Resume fodder

•   Portfolio builder

•   Opportunity to gain new
    skills

•   Get an awesome job

•   Get the boss to pay for
    you to come to LCA!


                              Roll of 20 USD bills image courtesy of Flickr User Images_of_Money
When We’re Talking ROI
            There’s a Total Mismatch

•   Desired Mentor ROI                  •   Desired Mentee ROI

    •   Decrease my bus factor              •   Learn stuff so I can

    •   Get work in my project done             •   Get cool job
        faster
                                                •   Find fame and glory
    •   Finally have time to fix that
        #$@!@$% bug that’s been in my           •   Retire at 40 on tropical island
        queue for 3 years
Big Question of the Day

    ROI? Really?
Reframing the Argument




                  Bill & Ted Comic image courtesy of Flickr User divine_harvester
“You receive free,
   give free.”
“With great freedom
       comes
great responsibility.”
Promoting Our Values
•   Importance of high quality
    output

•   Pride in one’s craft

•   Joys of exploring and
    tinkering

•   Impact of collaborating
    across geographies and
    cultures

•   Most importantly: freedom
Importance of Influence

            People may not agree with you and
               they may not do the things you’d
              like them to do, but the power of
             impacting their thought process is
                      immeasurable.




                          Influence Ripples image courtesy of Flickr User cambodia4kidsorg
FOSS Mentoring is a Lab


                 Not
                  a
               Business
                     Mad Scientist image courtesy of Flickr User jarich
Remember,
I’m a Failed Mentee
Did my professor waste
      her time?
So in conclusion....
     Be excellent to each other.

 And make sure everyone gets tacos.
Thank You!
                       Questions?




Leslie Hawthorn
@lhawthorn
linux.conf.au 2012
Legal

• This presentation is licensed CC-BY-3.0:
  http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
• Unless otherwise indicated, all images or
  logos are the property of their respective
  copyright holders and are considered fair
  use or used with permission.

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Mentoring: We're Doing It Wrong

  • 1. Mentoring: We’re Doing It Wrong Leslie Hawthorn @lhawthorn linux.conf.au 2012
  • 2. Community Manager AppFog, appfog.com
  • 3. Outreach Manager Oregon State University Open Source Lab, osuosl.org
  • 4. Google Open Source code.google.com/opensource
  • 5. UC Berkeley • Participant in the Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program • My contributions to the the corpus of scholarly work in Medieval lit = 0 Sather Gate image courtesy of Flickr user livenature Anne Middleton photo taken from http://english.berkeley.edu/profiles/94
  • 6. The FOSS Mentor’s Lament • Mentees don’t become long-term contributors • Mentoring programs don’t scale • Return on Investment considered poor Watch image courtesy of Flickr User ribbitvoice
  • 7. Dave Neary on Mentoring Programs http://bit.ly/MentorROI • Excellent analysis of why mentoring ‘fails’ • Poor retention rates = better to DIY? • Decrease the time it takes to vet mentees No Tourists image courtesy of Flickr User jenniferwoodardmaderazo
  • 8. Retention Rates • Search Google for “good conversion rate” • 2%, 2.5%,10%, 15%, 18% • Prequalifying is best practice with any recruitment process St. Ignutius image courtesy of Flickr User interdev
  • 9. Effective Prequalification “Everyone Gets Tacos” Tacos image courtesy of Flickr User mikeitup
  • 10. Getting & Retaining New Contributors This is a good and noble goal. I’ve come to the conclusion that having this as the ultimate goal completely misses the point. Holy Grail Ale image courtesy of Flickr User brostad
  • 11. How Newbies Help You Whether They Stick Around Or Not They are the people who know everything you have forgotten. Suck button image courtesy of Flickr User jessamyn
  • 12. New Perspectives The opportunity for introspection provided by newbie feedback is vital to a project’s health. Ignorance is Strength image courtesy of Flickr User drtiki
  • 13. Let’s Get Meta: the problem is how we approach the problem
  • 14. Arguments for Contributing to FOSS • Resume fodder • Portfolio builder • Opportunity to gain new skills • Get an awesome job • Get the boss to pay for you to come to LCA! Roll of 20 USD bills image courtesy of Flickr User Images_of_Money
  • 15. When We’re Talking ROI There’s a Total Mismatch • Desired Mentor ROI • Desired Mentee ROI • Decrease my bus factor • Learn stuff so I can • Get work in my project done • Get cool job faster • Find fame and glory • Finally have time to fix that #$@!@$% bug that’s been in my • Retire at 40 on tropical island queue for 3 years
  • 16. Big Question of the Day ROI? Really?
  • 17. Reframing the Argument Bill & Ted Comic image courtesy of Flickr User divine_harvester
  • 18. “You receive free, give free.”
  • 19. “With great freedom comes great responsibility.”
  • 20. Promoting Our Values • Importance of high quality output • Pride in one’s craft • Joys of exploring and tinkering • Impact of collaborating across geographies and cultures • Most importantly: freedom
  • 21. Importance of Influence People may not agree with you and they may not do the things you’d like them to do, but the power of impacting their thought process is immeasurable. Influence Ripples image courtesy of Flickr User cambodia4kidsorg
  • 22. FOSS Mentoring is a Lab Not a Business Mad Scientist image courtesy of Flickr User jarich
  • 24. Did my professor waste her time?
  • 25. So in conclusion.... Be excellent to each other. And make sure everyone gets tacos.
  • 26. Thank You! Questions? Leslie Hawthorn @lhawthorn linux.conf.au 2012
  • 27. Legal • This presentation is licensed CC-BY-3.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ • Unless otherwise indicated, all images or logos are the property of their respective copyright holders and are considered fair use or used with permission.

Editor's Notes

  1. Thank yous: organizers, sponsors, audience; Donna, Mary, Jacinta & Deb for reviewing abstract & helping me refine it.\nBefore we get into the meat of this presentation, I’d like to give you a bit of my background and some insights into why I’m giving this particular talk.\n
  2. Just joined a Portland, Oregon based startup - language agnostic PaaS company\nWeek 3, day 3 and given holidays in states it’s more like 2 weeks all told\nNot relevant experience for this talk but they hired me because of ....\n
  3. Home of some of the world’s largest open source projects - shameless plug, osuosl.org/donate\nLinux Foundation, Apache, Drupal (yay Drupal Down Under!!!)\nMentoring is an integral part of the lab’s operations\nStudent “grads” highly sought after - successfully acquired companies, Mozilla, Fortune 100 jobs\n
  4. Managed Google Summer of Code 2006-2010, 18+ yrs\nCreated contest now known as Google Code In in 2007, pre-university 13-18 yrs\nSome of the world’s best known FOSS mentoring programs, get paid to work on FOSS\n\n
  5. Undergraduate Research Apprentice program - extremely prestigious program\nProfessor studying the interplay between 14th century law courts and creators of literary works (specifically secular texts)\nMade a lot of photo copies in the basement of the Boalt Hall Law Library and spent a lot of time with Prof. Middleton learning about the roots of the English legal system\nI am a failed mentee, but we’ll come back to this later\n
  6. 25% “conversion rate”\nhuman intensive interactions cannot be automated - we’re used to automating out repetitive tasks\nRTFM is our closest approximation and it doesn’t yield useful results\n\n
  7. Dave’s post talking about his experiences in Summer of Code and those he’s heard of\nPercival Graham on the Great Documentation Project for LilyPond\n25% retention rate for Mr. Graham, attendees at Community Leadership Summit report 1/6 retained from programs like GSOC\n\n\n
  8. 25% is actually a great conversion rate if we are talking about a biz perspective (tyvm Jacinta)\nGentoo has gotten that up to 80% with pre-qualifying tasks\nLowering time spent on prequal is a decent enough point\n\n
  9. I take my role as a mentor and role model for the various communities I serve very seriously\nI also don’t scale (but now you know why I talk this fast)\nbalancing personal need with needs of community - be as available as possible - set office hours if you need to\nlimited time resources - quick vetting process needed - set a pre-qualifying task before future follow up\n\n
  10. we’ve turned this into the holy grail of why you’d mentor\nthe point of the holy grail was that it was really, really hard to find\n
  11. Newbies ignorance has immense value - they are your “this sucks” button - credit Josh Gay\nSometimes “this sucks” isn’t useful, but often it is; Document what sucks is a great vetting task\nLet’s get recursive: simply having new people approach the project makes the project better able to have new people approach it\n
  12. the best “new blood” challenges status quo in project’s approach to everything\n
  13. so now that I’ve argued that just getting new people in the door provides ROI\nwe’re looking at this process and analyzing through SW dev lens: ROI, scalability and efficiency\nthis is inherently flawed - let’s consider what that approach does for our mentees\n
  14. You can learn about version control! You can learn how to work in distributed teams! You’ll learn how to program from some of the best people in the industry! You’ll learn all the things you need to know to be hired by top employers! I know all these arguments because I’ve made them. They are also accurate. All of this is essentially an argument that investing your time will lead to a cash payout for you - ROI - and we generally agree that cash is not always great for FOSS. Remember Stormy’s keynote from 2008 - “Would You Do It Again for Free?”\n
  15. When we’re looking only at ROI, that’s not a long-term motivator for anyone on either side to keep on keeping on. Discussions of ROI come from places like balance sheets, where you care about annual revenue at best and quarterly revenue most of the time.\n\n
  16. How many of us got involved due to ROI? - show of hands (betting there will be zero)\nROI has got fsk all to do with what we’re trying to do here\n\n\n
  17. So, let’s be clear. This is conference rule #1. Frankly, it’s life rule #1. And note too - we don’t say “be excellent to each other as long as I get something out of it” or “be excellent to each other as long as it scales” or “be excellent to each other as long as there is sufficient ROI.” Part of being a mentor is simply being excellent to each other. But beyond that ....\n
  18. While this is a quote attributed to Jesus Christ, I’ve always thought it was the essence of the GPL.\nIt is easy for us to forget that we are highly privilegedi people. No matter what our financial circumstances, if we’re working in tech and attending this conference we’re quite intelligent. That in and of itself is a great privilege. The fact that we have those privileges means we ought to use them well.\n\n\n
  19. We are freed by our native intellect. We are freed by our connections to each other that help us get things done, the economic empowerment that working in a well paid field brings us. I’ll argue that it is our responsibility to help others. Period.\n
  20. You can expose someone to these ideas in seconds. I was: learned about FOSS from seeing the GNOME foot when attempting to restart a music player. Took me years to do something about it, but it took 2 minutes for me to be permanently inspired.\n
  21. I use a macbook air, I’m presenting using keynote and I work for a PaaS company.\nI consider myself a free software free culture advocate. I helped edit the FSF’s last call for contributions.\nI believe in the power of these ideas and I advocate for them everywhere. \n
  22. we cannot expect to see immediate quarterly or even annual returns\nit’s research and development and may lead to absolutely no immediate benefit\nyou have no idea what the value of your time will eventually be. you may never know. \nthat doesn’t mean you shouldn’t invest your time and energies.\n\n
  23. So, here’s the kicker folks. Because of that internship at Cal, I got a job working as a marketing assistant for a patent attorney who was the VP of Biz Dev at a comms semi start up. Because I worked for him, I started being interested in patent and copyright law. And things like the EFF. And because I knew about those things, I ended up being assigned to recruit for open source based teams at Google. Which led to my job on Google’s Open Source Team.\n
  24. Prof. Middleton is a Guggenheim fellow and UCB is well funded. She certainly had budget to get those photocopies made without having to spend hours talking to me about Piers Plowman and Chaucer.\nI have produced fsk all in the academy. I have contributed nothing to the research area in my academic field.\nBut I am here with all of you today because of what she taught me and the time she spent with me.\nI bet she has no clue what I’m up to, but I really hope she’d be proud of what I’ve accomplished\n
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