Call for Mentors for the Vector Data Code Sprint: 12-14 July 2022 🎓
Tags: openapi, standards, geo, hackathon
Published: 2022-07-05 08:29:00

_We are looking for brave volunteers to help us run the mentor stream of this event, by offering tutorials, mentored projects or 1:1 mentoring._ 

The Code Sprint is a three day virtual event hosted by the [Open Geospatial Consortium](https://www.ogc.org/) (OGC), where dozens of developers from around the world come together to code and share their ideas. The main goals of this code sprint are to support the development of open standards for geospatial information and to support the development of software which implements those standards, as well as creating awareness about the standards and software projects. The Vector Data Code Sprint focuses on a set of standards and candidate standards which are related to some sort of vector representation: **OGC API Features, Moving Features, Routes and 3D GeoVolumes**.

The code sprint takes place on the OGC-events Discord server, and we leverage its channel structure to create a collaborative and productive environment. You can find more information on the [sprint page](https://developer.ogc.org/sprints/17).

In the code sprint we would like to also welcome developers which are new to OGC standards, but are keen to learn more about them. Although they can attend the main track, they may feel a bit lost there, so we would like to offer them a parallel track, with more suitable content. On the mentor stream, developers will have the opportunity to give their first steps using the standards and projects, and hopefully this will build an engagement which will continue past the code sprint.

We have opened a call for volunteers from the related Standard Working Groups and software projects which implement the standards, to participate in this mentor stream. If you are interested in being a mentor, these are the main activities where your contribution would be most valuable.

## Tutorial
You could present a tutorial/ entry level workshop in a topic which fits within the [topics of the code sprint](https://github.com/opengeospatial/developer-events/wiki/Vector-Data-Code-Sprint#topics). We prefer hands-on tutorials, where participants have the opportunity to do something practical and achieve some results at the end of the session, as this promotes more engagement. Just bear in mind that their knowledge about the standard or related projects may be limited, although they may be very knowledgeable about coding and technology in general. In the past, the duration of these sessions was about 45 minutes, but it is entirely up to you. You can find [here](https://github.com/opengeospatial/developer-events/wiki/November-2021-Geospatial-API-Code-Sprint#mentor-streams), an example of a mentor stream from a past code sprint. To propose a tutorial, you can edit [this](https://github.com/opengeospatial/developer-events/wiki/Vector-Data-Code-Sprint#mentor-streams) section of the wiki page and add your session below, following the same format of the sample tutorial. All the tutorials take place in the [#Mentor Room](https://discord.com/invite/xHT3uxnC) voice discord channel. You can use the #Mentor room text channel for asynchronous discussions, during the code sprint.

## Project
You could propose an activity from your project which is suited for beginners. For instance for a SWG, this could be completing the OpenAPI definition of the standard. For a software project, it could be adding documentation, or even testing. The important thing is that you specify very well what needs to be done, and provide all the elements that are necessary to pursue this activity, because people may not be aware of where to look for them. To propose a project, you can edit [this](https://github.com/opengeospatial/developer-events/wiki/2022-VECTOR-DATA-CODE-SPRINT:---Mentored-Projects) section of the wiki page with all the relevant details. You are also welcome to add a session for explaining the project activity to the [schedule](https://github.com/opengeospatial/developer-events/wiki/2022-Joint-OGC-%E2%80%93-OSGeo-%E2%80%93-ASF-Code-Sprint#schedule). You can set the location to the [#Mentor Room](https://discord.com/invite/xHT3uxnC) voice discord channel. You can use the #Mentor room text channel for asynchronous discussions, during the code sprint.

## 1:1 Mentoring
Even with a stream of tutorials and projects available to start with, some people may still feel a bit lost. To address this, we would like to offer them the opportunity to find a mentor that could be a point of contact during the code sprint and support them in their activities, or at least point them to someone who could help them. If you are running a tutorial or offering a project, we would encourage you to be a mentor, but you could be a mentor even if you are not without doing any of these. There is a section of channels which is dedicated to #Mentoring. If you would like to be a mentor, please get in touch so we can assign you a #mentor role on discord. Once the code sprint starts, we encourage you to introduce yourself on the #whois channel and attend the #find-a-mentor room - this is the channel where people will look for 1:1 mentoring. You don’t need to be an expert in all the topics covered during this code sprint, and you certainly do not need to be available 24:7 during the code sprint. We appreciate your contribution, even if it is for a limited period of time.

_If you have any queries, please get in touch in discord by DM (to doublebyte#8420). We really appreciate your collaboration, in making this code sprint more community based and hopefully contributing towards growing your own community._