On Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:12:06 -0400, Patrick Shanahan wrote:
* lack of mentoring program (it's not easy to start contributing if you don't have long history of working with computers, which is many women's case , AND finding a mentor to help you get started is not incredibly easy)
is it harder for a woman to find a mentor than a man?
As someone who's participating in a mentoring program, I can say that finding someone who has the right skill set to help augment the "mentee's" skill set isn't as easy as it might seem it should be. I don't think that's necessarily a problem that's a function of the gender of either party in the relationship. Often times, it seems that it's useful to have a third party assess the skills prospective mentors have and then match people up based on the needs of the mentee. For my own mentoring relationship (and I'm a mentee in that relationship), I never would have even met my mentor if it hadn't been for a third party doing that assessment, and the pairing is quite good. Perhaps it would be useful to incorporate some sort of formal mentoring program within the community. Could the Google SoC program provide some guidance on how to do this effectively? (That program seems to be somewhat like a mentoring program and also seems to be quite successful, so maybe that would be a good starting point) Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org