Wikimedia Hackathon 2019/Mentoring Program/Email1

This email was sent out to WMHack19 Mentors on Wednesday the week of the hackathon:

Hello!

If you are receiving this email you have expressed interest in helping with our mentoring program during the hackathon. Thank you! If you are still able to help, this email has a few notes for you around how the mentoring program will work.

Mentors should plan and join the mentor matching and project matching sessions which will take place back to back on Friday morning between 11:30 - 12:30 in Computer Room 02 3NP.


 * [Info] The main points of contact for this years mentoring program are Christoph Jauera (WMDE-Fisch), Aaron Halfaker, Srishti Sethi & Rachel Farrand
 * [Info] During the opening we are drastically reducing the number of participant announcements that happen during the open mic time. This is because we have received feedback that the information presented there was not relevant to most participants and took too long. During the “open mic” in the opening of the hackathon we will have brief 90 second announcements from representatives of each of the 3 focus areas as well as 30 second announcements from participants with newcomer friendly projects who already have easy newcomer specific tasks published on Phabricator.
 * [Info] We will have separate mentor matching sessions and project matching sessions. Based on past years feedback we have realized that some newcomers are looking for one on one help with something specific while others are looking for a project to work on. Our mentor matching session will happen first and then our project matching session will happen after that. The project matching session is for anyone looking for collaborators or to collaborate and not only few newcomers.
 * [Info] Our hackathon venue consists of multiple private spaces spread out over a public library. Because of this we also ask that mentors become familiar with all of the spaces and travel around the spaces and make a greater attempt than usual to communicate using IRC and telegram.
 * [Action] If you want to be in our general “helpers” telegram chat, please join us! This chat will be used by mentors, organizers, and those staffing the technical help desk to get quick help for newcomers who have questions and to solve issues as they come up. t.me/Wmhack19help
 * [Action] Go ahead and add yourself to the mentoring page here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2019/Mentoring_Program
 * [Action] We are looking for mentors who would like to help us improve our mentoring program before future events. If you have some time between events to help develop this program please let me (rachel) know!

Thanks!