[KinkForAll] Re: Mentoring

[iron rose]

I'm making a new thread on mentoring, to let the original diversity thread continue to talk about diversity and brainstorm new ideas.  Thank you everyone for all the responses!  I'm excited to see so much interest in this idea.

What do people think about using "allies" instead of mentors?  I like the word "allies" because I often see it associated with minority groups (glbt, feminist, and people of color are the groups I've seen it used in conjunction with).  It also has the right connotation of "here is someone who will be on your side & help you".

Here's what I'm thinking of how mentoring could be implemented for us:

We post a link to the main page (and everywhere that makes sense) called "Find An Ally".  The page will talk about what allies are for, and what you might expect from an ally for KinkForAll. 

I'd like to present two options then, here:

1. The page will ask them to email the google groups list (here!), using the word "Ally" in the subject.  (So anyone uninterested in helping can filter that out of their inbox.)  They can describe what help they are looking for; for instance, someone could write "Are there any other genderqueer people here who have been to a kinkforall and can answer some questions for me?"  Someone else could write, "I'm wondering what the environment is like for people of color.  Are there other people of color here who could email me & tell me about it?"  Or perhaps it could be as simple as "I want to present on polyamory but I'm not very experienced with doing presentations.  Can someone help me make a stellar presentation?"  Or even, as something I would have written when I got started, "Help! I can't make heads or tails of the computer stuff, can someone walk me through it?"  (We should list a bunch of examples like this on the FindAnAlly page so people get the idea.)

Then anyone who thinks they can help would email the asker in personal emails (off-list) and then the conversation can continue between them.  (I think right now the default is reply-to-list, so we will have to be careful when replying.)  We will need to make sure someone has replied to all the emails - either someone can take the responsibility of checking in every few days, maybe, that everyone's been responded to, or maybe if we respond we send a note to the group.  (This could get traffic-heavy, so I'm not sure it's a good idea.)  We do also want to make sure not to overwhelm emailers w/ responses, though, so maybe emailing the list is a good idea.  I don't know, anyone have better suggestions for how to handle the logistics here?

2. The page will have a list of names of people who want to volunteer to be allies.  It will be a list of name, email address (obsfucated, maybe, to prevent spambots?) and a little background (or maybe a link to your blog or website if you have one). 

Honestly I'm kind of grooving on the Option #1.  What do people think?  If people like it I'll go ahead and make a first cut at the pages I suggest.

-ironrose

On Sat, Sep 26, 2009 at 6:57 PM, Bitsy <bit...@gmail.com> wrote:

I've been a bit bothered by the tone of the last few emails on the list.
Ironrose had, what I thought, were some good ideas to try to address a problem we all know is there, and, I think they have seemed to have been pushed aside too quickly.

Specific comments:
[maymay, expect when noted]

>Like I said in my previous email, I think that's *everyone's* task.
>Appointing specific people or highlighting specific volunteers to do a
>task that is so central to a community that everyone should be doing
>it makes no sense to me.

I do think it makes sense for people to take charge, there is a reason at the event you have designated time keepers -- its because if everyone were in charge of doing it, it would likely never get done.

>There are other examples I could cite, like Bitsy, whom I met at Sex
>2.0, saw for the second time ever at KinkForAll Boston, but who ended
>up saving the day for KinkForAll Boston, as you know.

I'm not so disinvoled as all that.  I may had not have met maymay before, but I was intending to come to KFANYC and 2, but for conflicts.  I knew people who were at KFANYC, knew/know several of the people trying to make KFADC happen, and defiantly fall in the demographic of in (to some extent) the BDSM scene, white, geeky, middle/upper-middle/yuppie class.  I (and HotShot315, if I may say this little bit for him) are the types that advertising through fetlife will bring in.  Which is fine, but, really not the reaching out I feel like KFA needs to do.

>That's why spotlighting individual human beings seems a really
>inappropriate way to do that in a flat unconference structure like
>KinkForAll. To put it technically, doing so changes the topology of
>the communication network and it's a flat-out mistake.

Maybe... but, for me one of the big things that influenced my desire to learn more about KFA was that I looked at the list of people going and said, hey, I know that that person is cool. (Not as a friend, but someone I'd seen present before.)  I think it is these kinds of person to person links are supper important, that is why people are asked to blog etc. about KFA.
Which is to say,

>I think we should totally "implement mentoring" and I think that the
>way to do that is by actively going out to other communities in person
>and online and finding people who we think would be interested in
>joining the KinkForAll community or who we would like to see join the
>KinkForAll community and talking to them and then answering their
>questions when they come back to you with them. *That's* "implementing
>mentoring" as it applies to this community. That's what this entire
>diversity thread is trying to encourage us to do, isn't it?

Yes.  But, where?  Maybe people here who have membership in the non(for lack of a better way to talk about it)fetlife could talk about where people in their community exist online?

Maybe there is something that could be done to make something more prominent on the webpage.  I think something really really needs to be done with the reaching out idea, and in more then just an ad-hoc way, and in a way that recognises we are aren't as involved as maymay is.

[ironrose]

> To avoid reinforcing previous trends, perhaps we should have like a
> brainstorm page, of presentations people might want to give, or of
> presentations people might like to see.  That might help spark ideas
> for other people, or someone might see a presentation topic listed
> there and suddenly realize, "hey, I could give a presentation on
> that!" where before they might think that no one would be interested
> in what they have to see. We can also use this to avoid a particular
> skew, because we can always add topics on things that we haven't
> seen in prior kfa's to encourage a more diverse topic set.

I think having a link to this, as a permanent thing seem like a good idea.  We could call it something like past and future presentations highlight the presentations we would like to see highlighted.  This moves something with low prominence to something with higher prominence.

All of this said I haven't a clue how to reach non-geeky people so...

Bitsy

[maymay]

On Sep 28, 2009, at 7:23 PM, iron rose wrote:

> 1. The page will ask them to email the google groups list (here!),
> using the word "Ally" in the subject. (So anyone uninterested in
> helping can filter that out of their inbox.) They can describe what
> help they are looking for; for instance, someone could write "Are
> there any other genderqueer people here who have been to a
> kinkforall and can answer some questions for me?" Someone else
> could write, "I'm wondering what the environment is like for people
> of color. Are there other people of color here who could email me &
> tell me about it?" Or perhaps it could be as simple as "I want to
> present on polyamory but I'm not very experienced with doing
> presentations. Can someone help me make a stellar presentation?"
> Or even, as something I would have written when I got started,
> "Help! I can't make heads or tails of the computer stuff, can
> someone walk me through it?" (We should list a bunch of examples
> like this on the FindAnAlly page so people get the idea.)

A couple of questions/suggestions:

* Wiki pages aren't currently named with verbage, except in the case
of the EditMe page (a meta-meta-exception). Rather than "FindAnAlly",
what do you think about calling this page "Allies"?
* If incoming ally request emails have the word ally in them in
various places in the subject, it will be harder to batch process.
What do you think about using a similar subject convention as has been
established for the individual locales? I.e., rather than "using the
word 'Ally' in the subject", what about "starting an email's subject
line with the word "Ally", a colon, then a space, then your subject?
Assuming this makes sense to you, a good place to document the
convention would be the UsingTheMailingList wiki page.

> Then anyone who thinks they can help would email the asker in
> personal emails (off-list) and then the conversation can continue
> between them. (I think right now the default is reply-to-list, so
> we will have to be careful when replying.) We will need to make
> sure someone has replied to all the emails - either someone can take
> the responsibility of checking in every few days, maybe, that
> everyone's been responded to, or maybe if we respond we send a note
> to the group. (This could get traffic-heavy, so I'm not sure it's a
> good idea.) We do also want to make sure not to overwhelm emailers
> w/ responses, though, so maybe emailing the list is a good idea. I
> don't know, anyone have better suggestions for how to handle the
> logistics here?

* I really like the way you're talking about encouraging people to ask
questions of their own, and having discussions with them to make them
feel more comfortable here. I'm wondering, do you feel that making
whatever helpful information those conversations produce, perhaps in
the form of an ally's response, available to the public is important?
** If so, are you considering coming up with some kind of process to
make that information available to other people? For instance, what
if, this month, someone sees the 20 minute time limit thing, feels
concerned about that, writes in asking about how to make a stellar
presentation in twenty minutes, and then you respond to this person in
an email. Then, next month, someone else writes in with the same
question. Assuming requesting the help of allies becomes popular, how
are you going to manage incoming requests, and what are you going to
do to make sure that this effort "creates lasting benefit" for our
KinkForAll community, and for the public at large?

> 2. The page will have a list of names of people who want to
> volunteer to be allies. It will be a list of name, email address
> (obsfucated, maybe, to prevent spambots?) and a little background
> (or maybe a link to your blog or website if you have one).

* Emails change over time, and I wonder how likely it is that people
will sign up to volunteer to be allies and then forget they have done
so. What do you think about rather than listing emails directly,
having each person who "volunteers" in this way to be an ally create a
link to their wiki user page, which is guaranteed to list their up-to-
date email address (as far as logging into the wiki is concerned), and
is also automatically obfuscated to anonymous visitors?

> Honestly I'm kind of grooving on the Option #1. What do people
> think? If people like it I'll go ahead and make a first cut at the
> pages I suggest.
>
> -ironrose

Of the two options you presented, option 1 seems more effective to me.
I'm curious to see what you're envisioning in practice so I can get a
better feel for what you're talking about.

Cheers,
-maymay
Blog: http://maybemaimed.com
Community: http://KinkForAll.org
Volunteering: http://ConversioVirium.org/author/maymay

[David Phillips]

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 10:23 PM, iron rose <ironr...@gmail.com> wrote:

What do people think about using "allies" instead of mentors?  I like the word "allies" because I often see it associated with minority groups (glbt, feminist, and people of color are the groups I've seen it used in conjunction with).  It also has the right connotation of "here is someone who will be on your side & help you".

 

 

As a multi-racial Queerman living with HIV, I find that the examples you cite for the use of "ally" speak  against its use in the proposed KFA context.  Allies are out-of-group, not in-group--our allies in World War II were not American.  For further instance, allies to LGBTQQI people would be heterosexual, cisgender persons of unambiguous sex.  Perhaps "supporter" is a better choice, if "mentor" doesn't feel right.

 

Namaste,

David

[Syd Gottfried]

I really like this idea, whatever the allies/mentors/supporters end up being called.  As far as making the conversations public, I think that should be up to the person asking the question.  Perhaps the "ally" could ask, towards the end of their interaction, the question-asker they would be comfortable having the conversation made public so that it could possibly help others with the same question.  If the answer is yes, then there would be a process for doing that.  I don't want the conversations to automatically be made public because that might scare off some people from asking questions at all, who might be more private, or who might have a slightly more personal question. 

Syd

[maymay]

On Sep 29, 8:03 am, Syd Gottfried <sydsp...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I really like this idea, whatever the allies/mentors/supporters end up being
> called.

The more I think about this, the more mentors/allies/supporters/
whatever sound like FetLife.com's "greeters." If you're unfamiliar
with what FetLife.com greeters do, check out Episode 8 of JohnBaku and
Tonja's "This Week In Kink" podcast:

http://thisweekinkink.com/home/2009/9/29/twiks-8-defining-sluts-why-woman-have-sex-and-are-you-using.html

Skip to about 10 minutes and 20 seconds into the audio recording at

http://media.libsyn.com/media/thisweekinkink/TWIKS008.mp3

to hear the part where they discuss FetLife greeters and what they do.
The important snippet is:

JohnBaku: "So what is a greeter? […]"
Jen/SLF: "Greeters, um, well hopefully everybody who's on FetLife
listening to this was greeted by someone personally. It's just a way,
there's 40 some odd of us and we greet every single person who joins
the site so that everyone doesn't feel like they're alone in this big
dark world of FetLife, y'know? There's at least one person you can go
to, and uh, we give information about how the site runs, answer any
questions that you might have or point you in the right direction."

So, two questions come to mind from this:

* If you're familiar with FetLife greeters, do you think what they are
doing is useful and can be applied to this community? Obviously,
KinkForAll is not FetLife, but with all the discussion about mentors
and so forth, I thought this worthy of note.
* What do you think of the term "greeter." There's been some (very
poignant) objections to all the other options, so I'm wondering what
people think of this other term. Are "greeters" less us-versus-them
sounding than "allies"?

[Syd Gottfried]

What about "KFA Enthusiasts" or something like that, since that's what the people volunteering to answer questions would be, right?  Just people who are really enthusiastic about KFA and like talking about it with people?  I would say that I'm a KFA Enthusiast, and I would totally volunteer to answer anybodies questions about the event.

[iron rose]

Good points, all.

I took a first cut at this concept here: http://kinkforall.pbworks.com/Finding+Support (and added a link on the main page).

-ironrose

[iron rose]

I think greeters are a good idea in addition to what's evolving out of the mentoring discussion.  Greeters are a good way for us to reach out and explicitly welcome people, while the supporters/mentoring/allies stuff is a good way to encourage people to reach us.  So both are good.

How about this for an implementation of "greeting":

When people sign up on the KfA location pages, make sure everyone gets one or two emails simply welcoming them and saying that we're happy to have them.  This is kind of what Maymay said he was already doing with emailing people when he saw something interesting.

How to deal with the logistics...er...I don't know.  Maybe we should just ask a few people in each city to divvy it up?  Any other ideas?

-ironrose

[maymay]

Ironrose and I had a good conversation tonight over IM in which we
tried to more fully understand what the other was thinking.

Nothing new sprouted from the conversation, except a clarity on these
points:

* that we like the concept of creating a situation in which people who
join the KinkForAll community in any way are made to feel welcome here.
* that we are working towards improving two distinct, but related,
issues. The first is expanding the diversity of KinkForAll
participants by doing active outreach of various kinds, and the second
is welcoming people who have found their way (regardless of how) to
KinkForAll by being receptive and warm to them upon early contact.
* that the existence of "supporters/mentors/whatever" do not prevent
the possibility of sending emails to people who sign up on an event's
wiki homepage with an interesting topic.

In keeping with transparency, the relevant snippets of our conversation:

> Maymay: Greeting in terms of emailing someone who has a cool topic
> is a reaction in my mind, not outreach. It's the "let's make this
> person feel comfortable." It's *not,* in my mind, a response to
> increasing diversity.
> Maymay: s/response/solution/
> Ironrose: Ok, I agree with that!
> Maymay: Okay!
> Maymay: :D
> Ironrose: I still think it's a good idea
> Maymay: Me too!
> Maymay: That's why I do it.

A little while later, after crystalizing this, Ironrose said:

> Ironrose: I think you should send an email to the list, asking: "I
> would like to see encouraging emails being sent, but the question I
> have for you is how?"
> Maymay: Okay, I think I can do that.
> Maymay: Uh…just a new thread?
> Ironrose: I'd put it on the "human contacts" thread.

So this email is a response to Ironrose's prompt. I would like to see
encouraging emails being sent, but the question I have for you is how?
Ironrose proposed this in the previous email:

On Sep 29, 2009, at 7:08 PM, iron rose wrote:

> When people sign up on the KfA location pages, make sure everyone
> gets one or two emails simply welcoming them and saying that we're
> happy to have them. This is kind of what Maymay said he was already
> doing with emailing people when he saw something interesting.

So, first, thanks for the positive call-out. I appreciate that. :)

Second, the only distinction I currently see between what Ironrose is
saying here and what I have already said in the past is the following
point. And of course, if I'm still misunderstanding something, please
correct me.

* Ironrose would prefer to see a some kind of formal process put into
place to "make sure everyone gets one or two emails". I'd prefer that
people merely watched wiki sign ups (you get emailed about wiki page
changes automatically unless you opt out of getting wiki page updates
via email) and if they saw something that intrigued them, send a short
email saying so. I.e., "kind of what Maymay said he was already doing

with emailing people when he saw something interesting."

I would like not to be the only person doing this. As a brief
questionnaire, has anyone else been doing this, or considered sending
private emails of this variety to people? If so, why? If not, why not?

Most of the reasons why I think a more ad-hoc approach is better are a
direct response to Ironrose's very important next question:

> How to deal with the logistics...er...I don't know. Maybe we should
> just ask a few people in each city to divvy it up? Any other ideas?
>
> -ironrose

I don't know how a system such as one that requires everyone be
emailed once or twice as a greeting would work, and that's why I asked
above, how do you think it would work? There are a number of data
points that any system designed to make sure that everyone gets one or
two "greeting" emails will have to keep track of, and some additional
communications overhead that would need to be developed to accommodate
that:

* Who already received a greeting?
* Which people have sent the greeting to that person?
* If more than 2 persons perform "greeting" functions, how would they
coordinate to ensure that only 2 and not 3 or more of them send a
greeting email?
* How will they know which people signing up on a wiki event page is
"new" to KinkForAll and which have participated in previous events?
Bear in mind there's no authoritative record of who participates in an
event. A significant chunk of people who have participated in previous
events have not signed up to do so ahead of time on wiki pages.

There are other logistics questions to be handled in such a system,
but I'll leave it at those 4 for now.

So after considering all of that…again, I wonder, and so I ask, do you
guys think that it's important to ensure that everyone gets a
welcoming email or two? If so, why is that crucial? Would we get the
same, or similar, benefit from spending our energies encouraging
people to simply send personal emails to one another if one person
signs up with some topic that intrigues you personally? Also, from the
perspective of someone who is new to the community and receiving one
of these emails, would you feel more personally welcomed by an email
that came from an individual who had genuine interest in the topic you
suggested or from someone whose task it was to ensure that you were
not left out of getting greeting emails?

Anywho…lots to think about, and again, I'm glad to see that we're
making some forward motion with regards to discussing specifics about
what to do, why, and how what we're doing on an individual level fits
into the bigger picture. This is cool. I'm looking forward to hearing
your thoughts.