Rails Mentors

[Brian Hogan]

I'm ready to move forward on the Rails Mentors project, but I could
use your help.

First, I need about 5 to 10 people willing to volunteer to be mentors.

Second, I'd like to have some suggestions on how this should all work.
I'll start by sharing my vision for this.

I'd like mentors to be able to sign themselves up for various topic
areas, such as Basic Rails, RSpec, Test::Unit, Associations, maybe
even something generic like General Rails Development. Basically I
want a mechanism where a mentor can say "Hey, I'm available to help
you for this much time." The mentor would then have a page that would
show the topics he or she can help with, as well as their feedback
scores. It would also show what methods the mentor chooses to use,
whether it's skype, yugma, mac screen sharing, etherpad, vim+screen,
etc.

A potential student could come along and find a mentor, either through
a topic search or by browsing around, or maybe even by following a
direct link to the mentor's page. The student would find the mentor
and ask for assistance with their problem by describing the goal they
want to achieve.

If the mentor accepts, then the discussion could be taken elsewhere.
The site's main goal is to plan the meetup, virtual or phyiscal.

The mentor would schedule the time of the meeting. This would tell the
system that a meeting was to take place so that evaluations could be
sent to the mentor and the student after the meeting.

The student evaluates the mentor on some criteria like
* provided clear explanations and examples
* was easy to understand
* was technically knowledgeable

etc

and a freeform testimonial

The mentor evaluates the student on
* Preparedness
* Willingness to learn
* Effort

etc

and a freeform testimonial

Mentors and students each get points for the evaluations. This way,
students know if mentors are doing a good job, and mentors know they
don't want to waste time with a D or F student :)

More importantly though, once a student reaches a certain number of
points, I want them to be able to become a mentor.

I really need help fleshing these ideas out, so I'll take any
suggestions you all might have. What's important to me is to have

* a points / achievements system like stackoverflow or xbox live to
keep people interested
* an easy way for people to get volunteer help
* a way to fairly protect reputations
* and most importantly, to follow the mantra of "see one, do one,
teach one". You learn best by teaching to others.

Your thoughts?

[Sarah Allen]

I love this idea and I think the structure you have proposed is good.
I think the part about the student describing their goal is really
important. Can I volunteer to mentor after June 13th? Maybe
participants can have a status area where they can write stuff like:
"working on a big deadline, available after May 31st" or something to
let people know when they are going radio-silent.

Thanks for spear-heading this!

Sarah

http://www.ultrasaurus.com

[Doug Sparling]

I'd be up for mentoring, but probably not until June sometime.

I am a "mentor" at RubyLearning and for the last few weeks I've been mentoring a Ruby beginner via IM, mostly answering questions and pointing him to resources that might help. So far it's mostly be installation issues...

[melvin ram]

I would like to participate. I like your vision of things but it may
be too much to launch with. How about starting off with only those
things that have the most value, i.e.:
* Mentors list out their areas of expertise, when they area available
and how many students they can handle.
* Mentees search or browse the site for mentors available, and when
they'd like help, they send a message.
* A free form feedback "wall" similar to facebook, with a single
rating tool (stars) for the experience someone had with you.

I suspect the above 3 things would create 80% of the value with 20% of
the effort.

However, if you want to build out the full thing, charge ahead and let
me know if you want/need help. I'll help however I can.

[Jeff Schoolcraft]

I'll echo Melvin's thoughts here.  When I read your vision and then saw the mentions of "not until June" I was thinking to myself: "You'll be lucky if that site is ready by June".

I think the overall vision is a good one, but I agree with the need to ruthless cut features to get to a 1.0.

I'd go with Melvin's list as a start, with a few comments:

• Have to get very picky about what goes in a mentor's profile (maybe name, UTC time available, contact, areas -- simple tags maybe, booked/free -- blends # of students, and schedule crunches and lots of other things and still lets their profile linger)
• Start with just browsing the site from a student perspective (we can quickly add search later but by time, by tag, etc will add a lot of complexity)

Barely enough to get people connected.  I doubt any engagement would be so short that we couldn't put off the feedback section for 1.0 and add it the very next release.  Even if it was, we could probably get away with asking people to retroactively give feedback if it's within a reasonable time frame.

--
Jeff Schoolcraft
http://thequeue.net/blog/
Microsoft MVP

[Brian Hogan]

Keep the ideas coming. I'm totally fine with scaling things back, but
I also don't fear building big stuff quickly. I'm hoping for a july 1
public launch because that will give people some time to schedule for
this. That's going to be the biggest problem.

I love the idea of availability in terms of # of students you can
handle. Can anyone throw out ideas on how that might work?

Also, I like the simplified evaluation. is a 5 point or 10 point scale
appropriate?

[Jeff Schoolcraft]

Can you tell me the difference between a priority of 9 or 10?

I think beyond a point the size of the scale just gets obnoxious...  3 (good, bad, neutral).  5 (excellent, good, neutral, meh, horrible)

I think it should be availability as an on/off switch.  If some people can mentor 3 or 4 people, great, they can switch off when they hit their limit.  Others might be one, others might not even be related to the number of people.

[Brian Hogan]

I agree with the availability toggle. I don't think it really matters
either but I'd love to hear more.

Some people prefer more granular scales when evaluating things. Think
about education. You don't have A, B, C, D, or F.... you have A, A-,
B+, B, well, you get the point. And education is on a 100point scale.

(I spent the last two years doing decision analysis and ranking, the
psychology behind ranking and grading is fun stuff, for sure!)

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 1:48 PM, Jeff Schoolcraft

[melvin ram]

Well I think of a mentoring someone as more than just a QnA session
that normally happens in IRC channels. So they'll probably last for at
least a couple months. As such, I think people should start
conservatively (I plan on mentor 2 people to start with) and if you
have more time, you can add availability. I think once we have a batch
of 10 people getting mentored, we'll have a better sense of how much
time it really takes.

re: points - 5 point works for me.

On a slightly different note: One requirement I will have is that my
mentees must not be a help vampires. I'm not going to be google or
github for them. They need to take initiative and when they ask me a
question, I'll probably ask them questions more of the time, rather
than giving them answers... to guide them towards becoming self-
sustaining.

I'm not sure if this is how others want to do it. If it is, we should
communicate it somehow. If not, I think my profile should let me put
in this type of message so they can decide if they want it.

[Brian Hogan]

Re: help vampires....

that's exactly why I wanted the person asking for help to outline
their goal. It makes them think of "what am I going to build".

That's how I run my mentorship practice.

I'm interested in this notion of "slots" though... @Melvin, how do
you see that working?

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 2:01 PM, melvin ram

[Dana Jones]

Just jumping in a bit late... are you thinking more long-term
mentorships, or short-term mentorships? Both?

Dana

[Dan Pickett]

I'm up for this and like where it's going, Brian.

I agree with Melvin's point. With the ratings of the mentees it will
have to be immediately clear to me that they have a history of being
good learners. Probably the testimonials from any previous mentors
would help aid this alongside the ratings.

I almost like the idea too of some sort of "office hours" for instant
messaging/skype - on demand mentorship from a good source without the
irc trolls.

Regards,
Dan

[Noel]

As a potential mentee I think having clear goals defined at the outset
is a good idea, Setting clear/agreed upon goals can also be part of
the initial mentoring.

Maybe a person seeking a mentor would fill out a questionnaire to aid
the selection process. (don't want to make this complicated just
things like amount of Rails knowledge, other programming skills, areas
of interest etc.) A mentor can also have an "interview" with a
potential mentee and see if they are a good fit. At the end of the
day, the mentor can opt out of mentoring if they feel the mentee is
not putting in the right effort.

As for ratings, the one thing to keep in mind is that 2 mentors may
rate the same person differently based on personality and the fact
that one mentor may have higher expectations. A poor rating from the
first mentor, may in essence "disqualify" someone from getting
mentored in the future due to their poor rating.

Finally, short vs. long mentoring, I would expect that some
relationships turn into friendships and as such can go from short term
to long term mentoring.

[Brian Hogan]

I'd love to see this turn into pairing, long-term mentorships, etc.

Here's an issue i have though - I do offer mentorship as a hourly
service. I am fine donating time to this site to help people, but I
would like to make it known that I am available for hire outside of
the site, or even to come train somewhere.

However, that leads into something I'm uncomfortable with - I don't
want this to be a place for people to screw over newbies. I'd also
love for mentors to be able to make a name for themselves here too,
and it would allow people who are looking for professional trainers to
find them easily.

Does anyone have any ideas how this and its associated problems can be
avoided?

First and foremost, I want this site and this project to be helpful
and useful, and I am willing to go so far as to make it part of the
terms of service that any mention of monetary compensation is
expressly forbidden.

Just talking out loud... it's an ugly scary issue, at least to me. I
feel dirty even bringing it up.

[Zach Moazeni]

First, I'd like to offer myself as a mentor.

Second, I like Melvin's thoughts about scaling it back a bit. At least
for launch. I usually take the approach "Let's start doing it, and
we'll figure it out later." So I'm not too afraid of making mistakes
early on. If anything, we'll learn from them.

As for the evaluations, I'm getting mixed messages about who is
evaluating what. I'd envision the mentors are evaluated by the
students, not the other way around. I think the student's evaluation
should come from their conversational relationship with their mentor,
not from a public/private profile. And even the mentor's evaluations
could simply be a list of comments (blog or forum post). It doesn't
even have to be a formal scale, at least to start.

I'm also in favor of the "On/Off" capacity switch, mainly because I
expect that number to change due to the different relationships and
situations (on both the mentor's and student's sides). Certain
students may take more time, and the mentor may be ok with that.

Personally, I'm not huge on setting an availability schedule, but I do
like the idea of College's "Office Hours". "I am making myself
available during this time. I may work on other items, but you know
I'm more easily available right now than other times". That may just
be me though. We don't have to adopt that through-out the entire
program.

Regarding "Help Vampires", part of me thinks that's the mentors
responsibility to a) choose, b) guide, and if necessary c) let go of a
student. I'm also worried about this too, but I don't think it's
anything we need to build in for launch. However, one idea could be to
set a length to the mentorship. After it's done the student could then
"re-apply" and potentially be "re-accepted". On the flip side, the
mentor may want to stay within a certain skill bracket, and that could
be used as a conversation for the student to "move on" but be able to
stay in contact. I wouldn't seeing this hindering long term
relationships, and it may even promote setting goals. I would see this
tracked informally. Just a thought.

Regarding Professional Mentorship, I don't personally have any
worries. But then again I'm not a Professional Mentor. I wouldn't say
that's a conflict of interests, but rather just be honest and state
that we're volunteering our time. If they want a "more than a normal"
amount of our attention we may continue to volunteer beyond that or
direct them to professional services with us or with others. "Normal"
is defined by the mentor. Some services may even aid the program and
the relationship. Again feels like the waters a mentor should navigate.

Thoughts?

[Brian Hogan]

Zach:

I want mentors to receive evals, but I also want the mentors to be
able to evaluate the students so that the students can "unlock" the
ability to become mentors themselves.

I need feedback on how that might work, of course.

I believe strongly in "see one, do one, teach one", and that this
needs to be a rolling group. Eventually, you and I may tire of this,
but we can move on knowing that those we've helped are helping others.

[Jeff Schoolcraft]

coach, mentor, student ?

when a student gets ready to mentor they get a coach that just checks in on both sides of the relationship to make sure things are going as they should?

maybe first mentor role is coached, and if good to go, they're full scale mentors?

[Brian Hogan]

maybe when you want to mentor you get a mentor to "sponsor" you"?

hmmmm

[Zach Moazeni]

I may be the only one, but this confuses me. How does the mentor's
evaluation of the student allow the student to then become a mentor?
Feels like a rather error-prone structure.

I don't know how comfortable I am with mentors dictating whether a
student is really a "student" or a "mentor". At a philosophical level,
I'd say a mentor is not a mentor without their relationship with a
student. So why not have the student's choice determine whether a
person is a qualified mentor? That's where I see student's feedback
about the mentor being important in their selection. (I'm not throwing
out the fact the mentor has to accept a student.)

I do think the mentor will give the students evaluations, but that
feels private to their relationship (or perhaps it's dependent on the
mentor's teaching style). I don't see a need for mentors publicly
evaluating students.

I don't see any problems with Jeff's coaching idea, but I don't know
if we should mandate their first role has to be coached. (In fact I'd
probably argue the coach is still a mentor, just in a different
capacity. Semantics though)

Am I missing something bigger here? It sort of feels like we're over-
thinking it.

[Brian Hogan]

There's a lot to think about here.

I want to encourage people to give, not to just take. Specifically, I
want students to become teachers. If evaluations from mentors aren't
the answer, what is?

Perhaps a recommendation from a mentor?

[Jeff Schoolcraft]

No, coach is just a mentor mentor.

I think it's over-thinking.

I'd say plan on most people using the system as intended and not trying to put checks place until we need it, which came up in the first version of this thread.

[Brian Hogan]

It's easy to say "they should use it as intended" but we need to
define what that means.

How does a person get to be a mentor? Do they just sign up to be one
from the start? If so, how does that give the site any credibility?

I was thinking that we seeded it with our volunteers from RailsBridge
first and then I wanted to use the points system. Now, only a couple
of people have come out against the scoring of the students. Anyone
else feel like chiming in?

On one hand it's easy to go in and add checks later. But that also
means we have to deal with political battles and "fairness issues"
later.

let's keep this discussion going.

[Brian Hogan]

As for ratings, the one thing to keep in mind is that 2 mentors may
rate the same person differently based on personality and the fact
that one mentor may have higher expectations.  A poor rating from the
first mentor, may in essence "disqualify" someone from getting
mentored in the future due to their poor rating.

This is a really, really good point.

On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Noel <wwyd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>

[Luis Felipe Hurtado Campuzano]

Hi all, I'm the guy who is giving the first free Ruby on Rails course (virtual) in South America. The course started yesterday and I will be giving you feedback about how it goes... I'm using much of the ideas exposed here. Currently there are > 30 students.

There is a redmine instance without any versioning module on... just forums, wiki and files. I'm creating content in the wiki and defining weekly objectives. Students have to post in forums their questions and work for each objective.

About the mentoring, my 2 cents:

1. Not every person who is behing mentored will be a good mentor... maybe is not interested in mentoring someone else after a couple of years of experience.

2. The evaluation schema I defined for my course I think is good because they post study notes about the week objetives.

Thx

2009/5/19 Brian Hogan <bph...@gmail.com>

[Jeff Schoolcraft]

It's very easy to say it.  I know, I did :)

Hopefully credibility will come after the site has been established.  As a result of a self organizing and policing community.

I just don't want to hold things up or lose momentum because we get wrapped around 5 stars, or 10 rubies, or whatever (not picking on ratings, just what I had).

Let's focus on the "define what [they should use it as intended] means" part of this.

Maybe something like this:

Provide a way for willing and capable individuals to connect to form a mentor/student (master/apprentice) relationship with open, honest feedback between both parties, for the furthering of the community in general through the growth and empowerment of those individuals [maybe without financial something].

It's your baby, I think it's a great idea.  I could use a mentor.  Probably a few :).  I'd like to think I could mentor some folks as well.

Jeff

[melvin ram]

My general opinion at this point is "let's get this show on the
road."

Anyone who wants to make themselves available as a mentor can become
one. If they are not effective, mentees will stop using them and
probably switch. If a mentee is a slacker, I can't imagine a mentor
investing too much time with them.

After a month of real mentoring, there can be a discussion about what
is good & what sucks. We can change course accordingly.

re: Financial & commercial aspect of this project:

I don't think it should be "against the rules". If I have 2 hrs per
week to dedicate to mentoring and a mentee needs more, they can either
get help with a second mentor or offer to pay me. If we find it to be
a common practice, we could formalize it somehow. If we find a mentor
abusing members of the group, the group/moderators can act accordingly.

[melvin ram]

I think long/short term will be organically determined by the mentors
availability & interest and the mentee's needs.

[Mike Gunderloy]

Well, *that* message really exploded my inbox. Good work, Brian. It
seems like getting a mentorship program going could really help
RailsBridge get on the map, and it fits in perfectly with our mission
statement. So I'd urge that you proceed with all deliberate speed to
get a V1 program up and running, then fine-tune. I'll throw in a few
more comments, but it looks to me like there are plenty of willing
hands for this effort.

On May 19, 2009, at 9:14 AM, Brian Hogan wrote:

> I'd like mentors to be able to sign themselves up for various topic
> areas, such as Basic Rails, RSpec, Test::Unit, Associations, maybe
> even something generic like General Rails Development. Basically I
> want a mechanism where a mentor can say "Hey, I'm available to help
> you for this much time." The mentor would then have a page that would
> show the topics he or she can help with, as well as their feedback
> scores. It would also show what methods the mentor chooses to use,
> whether it's skype, yugma, mac screen sharing, etherpad, vim+screen,
> etc.

There's room here, I think, to do some overall positioning of how our
mentorship efforts work. It seems to me that mentoring is only part of
a large spectrum of ways we can help people, and it would be good to
clue people in to the various ways right on the mentoring page/
subsite. Something like "for quick and easy questions, come see us in
#railsbridge; for more extensive help, sign up for mentoring; for self-
service learning, visit RailsTutor; for a long-term engagement, we can
help you find a reliable mentor to hire."

It would also be useful to provide some resources to help students
prepare to not waste mentor time - at the very least, "how to install"
links for all the different methods of sharing. The lower impact we
can make this on the mentors, the more likely they are to stick around.

> Mentors and students each get points for the evaluations. This way,
> students know if mentors are doing a good job, and mentors know they
> don't want to waste time with a D or F student :)
>
> More importantly though, once a student reaches a certain number of
> points, I want them to be able to become a mentor.

I'd like to see us provide the opportunity and encouragement for
students to grow into mentors. At the same time, we ought to recognize
that not everyone will want to take that path.

>
>
> I really need help fleshing these ideas out, so I'll take any
> suggestions you all might have. What's important to me is to have
>
> * a points / achievements system like stackoverflow or xbox live to
> keep people interested

It's sort of tricky to design something like that without it being
gamed. I'm sure you know that.

Mike

[Ryan Bigg]

I like this idea! A site that we can colloborate about how to get and give help by being mentors and mentorees is a great thing!

Ryan Bigg

Mocra

http://mocra.com

[Mike Gunderloy]

On May 19, 2009, at 1:41 PM, Brian Hogan wrote:

> I'm hoping for a july 1
> public launch because that will give people some time to schedule for
> this. That's going to be the biggest problem.

Well, I wouldn't want to see things unduly rushed, but given the
amount of enthusiasm you've uncovered today, my guess is that having
people ready to mentor sooner than July 1 shouldn't be a huge problem.
Might be worth thinking about an earlier soft launch with minimal
functionality, and then a big PR push later.

Mike

[Mike Gunderloy]

On May 19, 2009, at 2:14 PM, Dan Pickett wrote:

> I almost like the idea too of some sort of "office hours" for instant
> messaging/skype - on demand mentorship from a good source without the
> irc trolls.

As you know, we're already doing a little support in #railsbridge as
people wander in. I suspect that's only going to increase, as people
find out there's an alternative to #rubyonrails. We have pretty much
not been discovered by the trolls yet, but when (not "if", sigh) they
show up I think the #railsbridge ops should have no trouble in
kickbanning. Much as I'm generally in favor of laissez-faire, it
doesn't work well on IRC.

Mike

[Mike Gunderloy]

On May 19, 2009, at 3:00 PM, Brian Hogan wrote:

> Here's an issue i have though - I do offer mentorship as a hourly
> service. I am fine donating time to this site to help people, but I
> would like to make it known that I am available for hire outside of
> the site, or even to come train somewhere.
>
> However, that leads into something I'm uncomfortable with - I don't
> want this to be a place for people to screw over newbies. I'd also
> love for mentors to be able to make a name for themselves here too,
> and it would allow people who are looking for professional trainers to
> find them easily.
>
> Does anyone have any ideas how this and its associated problems can be
> avoided?

I don't see any serious problem in our mentors making paid mentoring
services available as well, outside the bounds of RailsBridge. A few
thoughts:

1) It should be clear from the start - probably in the mentor's
profile - where the boundaries are. "I can offer two hours per week
for free, but if you needs are more extensive than that, please talk
to me about a commercial rate." It seems like this will naturally self-
adjust; if someone only offers ten minutes a week for free, others
will probably get the business.

2) We'll need to get any such language cleared legally, as we don't
want to affect our (hopeful) non-profit status.

Mike

[Matías Flores]

Just throwing some of my thoughts after reading the whole thread.

First of all, I like the idea of this project and I'm willing to
become a mentor in one or two months from now.

Regarding ratings and evaluations, I'm ok with the original idea of
mentors and students rating each other in many areas, but if we are
going to have only one "rating" score, then I think that I prefer the
free form field. As Noel mentioned, different people would rank the
same student differently.

Personally, I see this ratings/feedback thing only useful for mentors
to know if a student is abusive and/or a help vampire, if he is
willing to learn and put some effort on the process or not, etc, to be
able to dedicate mentoring time to someone who will really appreciate
it and will benefit from this. Of course, this should work the other
way around too (students giving feedback from their experience with a
particular mentor).

I don't really like the idea of students being blocked as mentors
until they get promoted to a "mentor belt" stage by another mentor.
That could discourage potential mentors from jumping in at a later
stage. Who will determine that someone is ready to be a mentor if he
has not been a student first? I would prefer that anyone willing to be
a mentor registers him/herself as such, and a testimonials thread or a
recommendation system where other people could recommend this person
as a mentor. Mentors could then recommend their previous students as
mentors directly on the students profiles. Students can in turn add
recommendations to their mentors if they are happy with them.

Of course, all this have the risk of having people listed as mentors
who are not yet ready to be mentors in practice, but I think that this
approach fits better with the "inclusive" philosophy of RailsBridge.

Regarding Brian's worries, I don't think professional/private
mentoring or consulting should be an issue with this program. We just
need to define clearly what the boundaries are, just like Mike said.

Now, what happens with people that is currently mentoring someone
outside of this program? I guess they could just register themselves
as a mentor and a student and keep going as if they have met on the
RailsMentor site?

Regards,
Matías

2009/5/19 Mike Gunderloy <lark...@gmail.com>:

[Brian Hogan]

Matías:

Thanks for your thoughtful comments.

Okay, everyone -  there's a few things to think about here.

1. Do we start with 10 mentors and let those 10 invite others to become mentors? Or do we just let anyone sign up to mentor?  It's very important (at least to me) to encourage "students" to start teaching others, but we also have to balance this with reputation.

2. Sounds split on the evals vs recommendations. As a mentor, evaluations are important to me. It's how I learn whether my practices are effective or not.  How about the old-style ebay +/- feedback with a required comment? Or maybe just a recommendation, but also a private evaluation?

(I need a way to balance "doing good" with "getting rewarded" because people need that motivation to keep giving away their time so I'm just looking for answers.)

3. in terms of different people ranking the same student differently, that balances itself out. Just look at how universities work. Your GPA is the measure of how you do, not an individual instructor's assessment. It's how well you do on average.

And nobody says you can't just close your account and start over, so maybe it's not even worth doing evals?

4. Anyone know a lawyer that could help us draft up a "we're not responsible if someone gives you bad advice that costs you millions of pennies" clause? Or do we not need that?

[melvin ram]

> 1. Do we start with 10 mentors and let those 10 invite others to become
> mentors? Or do we just let anyone sign up to mentor?  It's very important
> (at least to me) to encourage "students" to start teaching others, but we
> also have to balance this with reputation.

I suggest starting with the volunteers and going from there. In the
long run, I think it should be open to anyone. An advanced beginner
will be a decent mentor to a beginner so limiting who can be a mentor
will only disrupt organic flow.

> 2. Sounds split on the evals vs recommendations. As a mentor, evaluations
> are important to me. It's how I learn whether my practices are effective or
> not.  How about the old-style ebay +/- feedback with a required comment? Or
> maybe just a recommendation, but also a private evaluation?

I'd just pick one and run with it. Just use the "i came up with the
project" card in the interest of getting things moving :D. The simpler
and less complex, the better. Hell... you could limit it to 140 char
and integrate with twitter.

[Mike Gunderloy]

> 1. Do we start with 10 mentors and let those 10 invite others to
> become mentors? Or do we just let anyone sign up to mentor? It's
> very important (at least to me) to encourage "students" to start
> teaching others, but we also have to balance this with reputation.

I think given the overwhelming interest we've seen in the mentoring
idea, the focus ought to be on "strike while the iron is hot". Sign up
the folks who responded on the thread as the first 6 or 10 or 13 or
whatever mentors, and don't worry too much about the process right
this moment (as with all my other feedback, feel free to ignore -
you're doing the work, not me).

>
>
> 4. Anyone know a lawyer that could help us draft up a "we're not
> responsible if someone gives you bad advice that costs you millions
> of pennies" clause? Or do we not need that?

I'm not *too* concerned with that to being with, though we'll want a
proper ToS and perhaps even a click-through contract down the road. I
can raise these matters when I go in to talk to our lawyer about the
non-profit incorporation, which will be fairly soon.

>

One more thing I think you ought to start considering sooner rather
than later: right now this is a supply-side effort, but we're going to
have to figure out how to find/stimulate the demand as well. How do
newbies find out the RailsBridge is doing mentoring? How and how
aggressively will we promote the service?

Mike

[Brian Hogan]

Regarding striking hot irons,  I've got hosting and the domain in place and signup crap is done. I'll be working on mentor profiles throughout the weekend. 

We'll be using railsmentors.org

[Michael Breen]

On May 22, 2009, at 8:10 AM, Mike Gunderloy wrote:

> One more thing I think you ought to start considering sooner rather
> than later: right now this is a supply-side effort, but we're going to
> have to figure out how to find/stimulate the demand as well. How do
> newbies find out the RailsBridge is doing mentoring? How and how
> aggressively will we promote the service?

What about buying some ad time on RailsEnvy and Railscasts when we get
our financials in order?

[Zach Moazeni]

I'm trying to line up a couple talks with University Department Heads
and Computer Science classes for a few colleges in the West Michigan
Area. They seem really interested since it's only adding value to
their students.

I don't think this is going to a golden hammer, but raising awareness
locally may come back to pay off.

[Jeff Schoolcraft]

You would think since Gregg and Ryan are both activists we wouldn't have to buy time on those venues.  But I've been wrong before.

[Dana Jones]

So exciting!!! It's great to see progress being made, Brian. I deliberately stayed out of the discussions about the "how" of RailsMentors since I can't (right now) make the time commitment of actually *being* a mentor, but it was really a treat to witness smart, motivated, passionate people working on something together that is ultimately for the greater good.

Dana

[Dana Jones]

I see no downside to small, localized efforts like this, Zach. Just
like the teaching kids effort Sarah Allen is involved in and the
"involving women" project Sarah Mei is spearheading up, this can only
lead to good.

If RailsBridge can do anything to enable you, please don't hesitate to
ask.

Dana