Proposed talk: How to Mentor Your Open Source Developers

[danhillenbrand]

Hey team, I'd like to present this talk on how to mentor developers. It could actually be for anyone, but I thought I'd make it open source specific (at least in title) for the purposes of our open source group! I believe this is one of the biggest holes we have in software development, but I haven't found a lot of information about how to solve it. I did finally find two goods books to help me put something together, plus a variety of other sources. The two books I'm talking about are "Managers as Mentors", and Andy Hunt's "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning"

Anyway, what do you think?

[tlberglund]

@danhillenbrand This sounds fantastic. Permit me to suggest, as a change of pace for DOSUG, some sort of group exercise to underscore a main point of your talk. Intuitively, it just seems like it would fit here.

If you don't hate the idea and want to brainstorm on it, I'd be happy to do that with you. Just post an outline when you've got one, and I'll make up group exercise ideas. Or you can do that yourself. Or you can hate the idea. You're the baus here. 😀

[danhillenbrand]

@tlberglund Group exercise sounds good to me...as long as it doesn't involve push-ups. When I figure out what I'm going to say, I'll share. Collaboration is my middle name (although I usually shorten it to just "Collab"), so getting some input from you or any other willing folks is quite welcome!

I mentioned this talk idea to Cody Powell from TEKsystems last night at djug, and he said he would be interested in attending, even though he's transitioning away. And he added he'd invite a couple other TEK folks, so it sounds like there's pretty good interest in this type of presentation.

Interestingly, the other talk idea I have would be very heavy on group participation, in order for folks to have some "aha" moments. But that'll be a subject for another thread sometime.

[tlberglund]

@danhillenbrand Win. Just post an abstract when you've got one, and we'll get it booked. People are asking about May/June, so keep us apprised. Very glad to have you speaking. :)