call for applications: mentoring program for code contributors

Hi,

I'm working to start a mentoring program where code contributors can
be mentored by current committers. Applications are now open:
https://forms.gle/dgjmdxtHYXCSg6aB7

Nine committers have volunteered to mentor one person each; hence, the
anticipated number of acceptances is less than or equal to nine. In
the future, we may have more mentors, or some mentors may be willing
to take more than one mentee, or some mentoring relationships may end,
opening up spots for new people, but right now I have nine slots
maximum. Even if less than nine people apply initially, that doesn't
guarantee that your application will be accepted, because the way this
works is you can only be matched to a committer if you want to be
matched with them and they want to be matched with you. If you don't
already have a significant track record on pgsql-hackers, it is
probably unlikely that you will find a mentor in this program at this
time. Even if you do, you may not match with a mentor for any number
of reasons: not enough slots, time zone, language issues, your
particular interests as contrasted with those of the mentors, etc.

The basic expectation around mentorship is that your mentor will have
a voice call with you at least once per month for at least one hour.
Before that call, you should give them some idea what you'd like to
talk about and they should do some non-zero amount of preparation.
During that call, they'll try to give you some useful advice. Maybe
they'll be willing to do other things, too, like review and commit
your patches, or email back and forth with you off-list, or chat using
an instant messaging service, but if they do any of that stuff, that's
extra. Either the mentor or the mentee is free to end the mentoring
relationship at any time for any reason, or for no reason. If that
happens, please let me know, whether it's because of an explicit
decision on someone's part, or because somehow the monthly voice calls
have ceased to occur.

Periodically, someone -- most likely not me, since a few people have
been kind enough to offer help -- will contact mentors and mentees to
get feedback on how things are going. We'll use this feedback to
improve the program, which might involve adjusting mentoring
assignments, or might involve taking such other actions as the
situation may suggest.

In the future, I would like to expand this program to include
non-committer mentors. The idea would be that committers would most
likely want to mentor more senior contributors and senior
non-committers could mentor more junior contributors, so that we pay
it all forward. If this is something you'd be interested in
participating in, whether as a co-organizer, mentor, or mentee, please
let me know. It might also be advantageous to expand this program, or
have a separate program, to mentor people making non-code
contributions e.g. mentoring for conference organizers. I've chosen to
focus on mentorship for code contribution because I know enough about
it to function as an organizer for such an effort.

If you apply for this program, you can expect to receive an email from
me in the next couple of weeks letting you know the result of your
application. If for some reason that does not occur, please feel free
to email me privately, but note that I'll want to give a bit of time
for people to see this email and fill out the form before doing
anything, and then I'll need to talk over possibilities with the
mentors before finalizing anything, so it will take a bit of time.

Finally, I would like to extend a special thanks to the mentors for
volunteering to mentor, and a more general thanks to everyone who
contributes to PostgreSQL in any way or is interested in doing so for
their interest in and hard work on the project.

Thanks,

--
Robert Haas
EDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com