Community Credit Forums

One area that i am struggling with is in how to quantify mentoring submissions.  One type of submission that will be awarded will be for helping somebody to become a first time speaker.  I think that you can have the person reference you in their submission or vice versa if you have helped somebody to get to the point of giving their very first presentation at a user group.  I am wondering about other types of mentoring.  What types should be included and how do we measure them and cross-check them?

That's a good question - and one I don't readily have an answer for...I'm guessing for other types of mentoring there would have to be almost a two-part validation of the event, i.e., the mentor and the person being mentored would both have input as to what exactly took place and how it helped in order for points to be awarded. Another option would be that a person being mentored would submit the points on behalf of the mentor rather than the mentor submitting for the points. This has the built in cross check that might be required for something like this to be measured.

 

What about turning part of this into a community-credit.com resource? Sure some mentoring has to be done face to face and with some kind of external validation of points etc, but some advice/mentoring services are suitable for "mass broadcast" and lend themself to easier validation.

Perhaps a section of the community-credit.com website could be set aside for mentoring advice. Articles from existing experts/identified mentors could be credited and would eventually build up a valueable resource for new members of the community. It might even drive some people to find this site.

I'm thinking articles on subjects such as how to structure a technical presentation, ways to get the word out about your user group events etc.

This could even be tied into the idea of having a way for user groups/associations being able to enter a points competition for their members. Perhaps regularly a user group organiser could be invited to post an article with points being contributed to their user group's total.

 

Thanks,

Christopher Fairbairn

I think that creating a resource section on Community Credit is a great idea, although I am trying not to cross the line of beng a resource site, but instead being a site that recognizes other resources.  There are so many resource sites out there, that I don't think that the world needs another one for things like "How do I do xxxx in asp.net".  However, having an area for resources to support writing articles, starting a user group, growing new speakers, mentoring others is one that would add a lot of value to the site.

Regarding competitions between user groups, I really like the idea, especially between local groups.  In Florida, we have 3 user groups very close to each other and it would be interesting to see how the activity of their members compares to each other.  Not only interesting, but it I think it would be fun to be involved in the competition.  It would also bring recognition to people in the groups and make the members aware of each other, which would be a tremendous way for techies in the same area to know about each other.  I am sure this applies to many different areas around the world.  From a networking standpoint, it would also be very effective because you could get your name out there to your local community and they will know who you are.  When they are looking for help with a project and you are looking for new work, they would know you as one of the very active people in the community.

"However, having an area for resources to support writing articles, starting a user group, growing new speakers, mentoring others is one that would add a lot of value to the site."

Interesting point. Most resource sites deal with specific technical issues and don't deal with wider business or social issues. While it's important to develop your coding skills as far as possible, it's also important for you to have the necessary soft skills to know what is important and what is not. It's far too easy to get sucked into the latest technological craze without actually seeing what it can do for your company or community. It would be great if mentoring actually involved giving something back to the community as well as to an individual.