Hi, About a year ago, I attempted to start a mentoring program for code contributors. In the end, 34 people applied, 21 of whom had some on-list presence on pgsql-hackers, 10 committers agreed to mentor a total of 15 applicants. Now, it's time once again to open applications. Of the 15 mentor-mentee relationships, nine will continue for the coming year, and six will (for various reasons) be dissolved. Now it's time to reopen applications so that some new people can hopefully get involved. If you're looking for a committer to mentor you, here's the form to fill out:
https://forms.gle/mxTMigxM3Mg3o3me8 For the avoidance of doubt, I will email the six people who are not continuing with their current mentors just after I send this email, so that they know that they should fill out this form if they want to try to find a new mentor. The nine people who are continuing with their current mentors do not need to reapply. I have made some changes to the form for this year in response to feedback. A major concern that I heard was that not all mentors are willing to provide the same kinds of support; for example, I will give people advice about projects they're currently doing, but I rarely suggest entirely new projects. That might work for some people, but not others; hence, this year's form allows mentees to say what they want their mentor to do for them, so that potential mentors can judge whether there is a fit. Also, a number of mentors stated that they really wanted to be mentoring people who were either on their way to becoming committers themselves or at least people who were highly involved. Therefore, this year's form asks about what kind of work each applicant intends to do and how much time they anticipate being able to spend on it. This is intended to help committers understand, when offering to mentor someone, how involved that person intends to be, and also to judge the level of fit between the applicant's interests and their own. I plan to leave this form open for applications until April 4, so you have a bit more than 2 weeks to fill it out if interested. After that, I'll contact committers and see who is willing to mentor which applicants. Given the fairly large number of mentees continuing with their current mentors, the number of new spots may be quite limited. So, please don't feel bad if you don't get matched with someone. On the other hand, please do apply if you're interested: it's entirely possible that some new committers will agree to participate, in which case we have more spots, and in any case, somebody who might not have agreed to mentor anyone else might agree to mentor YOU. You won't find out unless you try! -- Robert Haas EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
