Node.js Mentorship Initiative Updates
Tags: Nodejs, Mentorship

This post was written by A.J. Roberts, A.A. Sobaki, and the Node.js Mentorship Initiative Group.

Photo by Donny Jiang on Unsplash

A lot has happened since our last blog post ( https://medium.com/the-node-js-collection/node-js-mentorship-working-group-573dac18d8ff ). Thanks so much to everyone who’s participated in our previous rounds. We’ve learned a ton and it’s really shaped the direction of our initiative. We’re excited to fill you in on some changes since the last time.

Before we dig in, here’s a link to where we’ve got our repo set up: https://github.com/nodejs/mentorship. This will contain all updates and information in the future.

What’s Changing?

First, we’re going to have a broader focus on the mentoring topics. Now, in addition to getting help making code commits, mentees may also learn to contribute to a team through working groups and initiatives. This will provide opportunities for people who have little or no coding experience to participate in the program.

Second, we’re placing more of an emphasis on longer-term engagement with the Node.js project. Code changes will be related to ongoing projects rather than one-off commits and many opportunities will include ongoing involvement with a team after the formal mentorship period has ended. This will help focus effort on where the actual needs of the project are and ensure maximum value is gained from our mentors’ time.

Third, we’re going to have many more opportunities to participate in the program. Each opening will be much more specialized so that mentees know what they are signing up for. This will help us to better direct mentees only to opportunities they are specifically interested in. Mentors will be able to onboard more quickly and get mentees up to speed making meaningful contributions. Mentees will be able to achieve their personal goals in a more concrete way by making these contributions front and center.

Updates to the Mentorship Initiative

Following the above changes to the initiative, the mentorship group has successfully accepted its first mentee. This is just the first step towards a process that will be focused on bringing more people who are willing to learn and contribute towards the growth of the NodeJs community.

The mentorship initiative group would be collaborating with other initiatives to help bring in more mentees into the community.

What’s Next for the Mentorship Initiative?

We’d like to end this post with some thoughts on where we see the Mentorship Initiative headed in the future.

We believe that many of the mentees will go on to become mentors themselves, helping the initiative gain momentum as time goes on, helping to bring more and more contributors into the Node.js ecosystem, and eventually the broader OpenJS ecosystem.

Projects that are currently stalled or understaffed will be able to thrive with the help of mentees. At the same time, those mentees will gain valuable experience contributing to an open-source community and working on a team in general. They’ll also make new friends and interact with some of the most talented people in the software world today.

We’d like to see mentees go on to create their own initiatives and projects inside and outside of the Node.js ecosystem, and use the skills and experience gained from the program to enrich their careers and lives, and the lives of others who benefit from their contributions.

We have the unique opportunity to help shape Node.js into something even bigger and greater than it already is, and we’re excited to see what that looks like. Come help us create the future of Node.js at https://github.com/nodejs/mentorship!

— The Node.js Mentorship Initiative