Mentor program

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johanar
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Mentor program

Post by johanar »

Having seen it successfully used in other developers communities, I'd like to try starting a (so far unofficial) mentor program for XMOS developers. The plan is that those who need help getting started post some basic info about themselves and their project and then someone with more experience in this particular area, who can spare a little time every now and then, volunteers as mentor. It's then up to the mentor and mentee to decide how often and by which means they will communicate.
What a mentor program can do for you:

* Help you getting started with a bigger project.

* Avoid costly hardware mistakes (if your electronics skills are a little rusty, it might be a good idea to have someone else look at your schematics before making PCBs).

* Obtain expert knowledge in some area.

* Give more reliable support than asking questions in a forum and hoping for someone to reply.
What the mentor program can't do for you:

* Have someone else do all the hard work while you sit back and relax.

* Get you started with your first microcontroller/programming/electronics project ever. There are lots of good tutorials on the web and university courses for this. It would kinda be a little waste of resources to have a mentor teach you the basics.

* Give any promises. The mentors are unpaid volunteers so you can't demand that they do this and that.
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johanar
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Post by johanar »

Here's a short template you can use for requesting the help from a mentor.

* Brief project description, preferably with a link to it's XCore project page.
* How far you have got and how far you think you have left.
* Elaborate on what you need help with (electronics, programming in general, software interface to some external hardware etc.). Try to be as detailed as possible.
* How often and how much help you would like.
* And I suppose it would be useful to mention which timezone you live in and if you work during the days, evenings or weekends.
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johanar
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Post by johanar »

Anyone interested in becoming a mentor? Maybe you could post a few lines about yourself to let others know you're there. But just to make clear, it's still the mentors who are supposed to pick their mentee, not the other way around :)

Interesting stuff to know:

Your area(s) of expertise, how much time you can spend on mentoring, at what times you'd be able to help (don't forget to include timezone :)) and of course what kind of projects you'd like to help with.
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jonathan
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Post by jonathan »

I think you'll want to advertise this group in the forums if you have not already. Looks like a great initiative.
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