[Mentoring-coordinators] SummaryMentoringIESG2

["Fred Baker (fred)" <[e-mail]>]

> On May 23, 2016, at 9:05 AM, [e-mail] wrote:
> 
> <SummaryMentoringIESG2.pdf>

"Mommy and me"... you might not want to say that out loud to the mentees. BTW, I'd suggest we call them "freshmen" and define the term to mean "has attended at least one and less than five IETFs". Define a "newcomer" as someone attending their first IETF meeting.

There is a park/beer garden within walking distance of the ANA Intercontinental. When we were there last, we had some kind of event there (the social, maybe? I don't recall precisely).

Looking through the draft review, author, finalization, and presentation teams. I think I need to be brought up to speed on your objectives and how you see this playing out.

v6ops just got a note from Edwin Cordero, reviewing a draft in a review team. The review was useful, but pointed out a disagreement that Edwin had with the IPv6 design more than it pointed out issues in the draft. The good news is that it triggered some conversation on the list; the bad news is that he is likely now seen as not-very-clued. My suggestion: before the next review team files a review, let's have a subject matter expert sit down with them.

Regarding author, finalization, and presentation teams - at first blush, That doesn't sound right.

If I view the IETF participant pool as a set of concentric circles, I might see something like the following. I'll number circles from inside to out.

#1: people who have been around and make things happen. In leadership in some way.
#2: people who have been around and make things happen, but not in leadership. Usually draft authors, but may simply be people that are well known and respected.
#3: people that are just starting to write and work on drafts, otherwise similar to #4
#4: people that read drafts, attend meetings and comment, or comment on mailing lists.
#5: people that lurk on mailing lists
#6: people that read drafts and/or RFCs but generally have no idea where they come from
#7: everyone else

There are probably other categories, but you get the drift.

I see the mentorship program as moving people from one ring to the next - usually from #6 to #5 or #5 to #4. Occasionally we get to move someone into #3, but not that often. There is some hurdle they need to get over, and we (hopefully) enable them to do it. I have people I mentor at Cisco that are Area Directors, but that's quite a different story.

BTW, people usually get from #3 to #2 on their own, based on interest and energy. The mentoring program for getting into #1 (leadership) is called "be a co-chair"; sooner or later, you become someone that can mentor someone else, and you might get kicked upstairs.

What "author, finalization, and presentation teams" sounds like is force-fitting a transition from #3 to #2. In my experience, a person might need help authoring their first draft (learning the tools and format, primarily, but maybe getting from "what I want to say" to "saying it"). However, if they have sufficient with-its to accomplish that, they're on their way as long as they have someone they can ask questions of. An example might be draft-szigeti-tsvwg-ieee-802-11. Tim and I work in the same company, and he came to me for help filing a draft. He had what he wanted to say in a Word document. I turned that into an XML and a .txt for him, and filed it when he approved it. He presented it at IETF 93, and I followed up at IETF 94 and 95. He didn't need help presenting the draft, although he has had questions along the way about process.

So - help me out here. What do you have in mind?