On Thu, Apr 15, 2021 at 10:06 AM Salz, Rich <rsalz=40akamai.com@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I am more and more convinced that, instead on counting on some centralized way to attract new people and then get complaints when they do not stay, maybe there is a better way would permit to achieve our goal in a more distributed way. I do not think that group mentorship for the IETF is working -- I tried at a previous company, and none of the mentorees are still participating, so that's not the way.
One idea I had, which I mentioned to Lars when we chatted after the Nomcom selections, was an "invite a friend" program. If you come to the IETF, and you "sponsor" a colleague, then they get reduced/free admission. Of course, all sorts of details to be worked out there. But I hoped it could encourage distributed diversity. Especially for junior engineers, you can keep travel and lodging costs low :)
Wow, I really like that idea. I've fairly much always worn one of the "smiley face" stickers, and always try introduce myself to people wearing the newcomers ribbon - I've struck up some good conversations, but I'm not sure that they've "stuck".
I've also signed up to be a mentor a few times, but in most of the cases I only briefly met my mentee, and in at least two of the cases I wasn't able to find them at all (even after 5 or 6 mails).
I like the reduced charge for first time colleague idea - I've "mentored" a few people from my company, and that's gone much, much better. I suspect that a fair bit of this is simply that there is a different dynamic between people in the same company...
However, as much as I like this idea, it also has some really bad downsides -- it implicitly advantages those from larger companies. If someone is the only attendee from a smaller company, they don't have anyone to mentor them.
If we do do something along these lines, I think that we also need to focus on the mentoring program... actually, strike that - *whatever* we do we should focus more on the mentoring program...
w
The computing scientist’s main challenge is not to get confused by the
complexities of his own making.
-- E. W. Dijkstra
complexities of his own making.
-- E. W. Dijkstra
