Starting an Open Mentorship Handbook!

Technology communities committed to transparency and openness (like free and open source software, or FOSS, communities) adopt sets of practices to facilitate their collaboration. In order to work together developing software, practicing open science and facilitating open data, collaborators must build robust communities to publicly discuss and improve their projects. Healthy communities that continue productively into the future must find ways to engage and nurture new contributors in order to maintain and grow their communities. Some communities struggle to attract new contrinbutors in the first place, while other communities attract many new contributors, but struggle to coach those contributors on how to become leaders, reviewers, and maintainers of their community's work. Open mentorship programs provide a safe space for interns to learn how to work in an open, public manner with open communities, and how to create and maintain public works. Unfortunately, documentation on how to be a mentor in an open mentorship program is often non-existent, out of date, or scattered across many different resources. The Outreachy team is launching an Open Mentorship Handbook, to gather best practices in mentorship and to provide a collaborative way to share the knowledge that we've amassed in this area. Come learn about this initiative and participate in a collaborative session about the Handbook and Open mentorship!