Ubuntu-Women Mentoring Program!

The Ubuntu-Women Mentors program allows new Ubuntu contributors to work together with experienced developers, translators, documentation writers, testers, and other skilled contributors. Our goal is to encourage women and newcomers in Ubuntu to increase participation and contribute to tasks where they have no experience and are willing to learn.

Potential mentors are the rôle-models who possess a diverse range of skills across different areas in Ubuntu and mentoring is based along the Each-One-Teach-One motto to facilitate easier sharing of knowledge and technical expertise while directly interacting with the new entrant(s). It could be a mentor-mentee(s) collaboration via email or IRC (as per the convenience of the people involved) and span across areas like :

  • Package and/or maintain software to be included in the next release.
  • Writing locales for languages (which dont have any as yet) and sending it upstream.
  • Providing technical assistance for a specific task.
  • Creating desktop art (icons, screensavers, wallpapers,...) for Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu/Xubuntu.
  • Writing technical documentation for a planned release.
  • Maintaining technical wiki pages and integrating them with the relevant sections or even translating them to other languages.
  • ... any other Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Edubuntu/Xubuntu related task.

You can have the lasting satisfaction of encouraging others to learn and grow in this wider community. In fact, if you think there are areas we haven't covered, where you could encourage others positively in Ubuntu-Linux, tell us about them ! Don't feel you have to be an expert: anything you can pass on, which will help others, is valuable.

How does it work?

Folks volunteering for the UW-Mentor project would be those already involved in developing Ubuntu-Linux and are willing to help others improve their skills in specific areas. Potential mentors are requested to answer this Mentoring Survey, to help us evaluate and understand you better.

We will list each mentor with their current areas of interest, on this webpage and appreciate and thank each person willing to volunteer their time to help others here. Please read this Mentoring FAQ for more details.

Want to be mentored in something our current mentors don't provide? Check out our MentorRequest page. Perhaps someday someone with the skills you need will come along! This also helps potential mentors know there is a need for their skills :)

Currently active mentors and their areas of interest

  • Jerome Gotangco
    Documentation, Edubuntu, bug triage (xorg, g-a-i, u-m).
  • Clytie Siddall
    Translation, i18n localization, translation etc.. and could help with documentation.
  • Vincent Untz
    Gnome desktop-related stuff (to develop ideas for the desktop, fixing some bugs, growing the desktop group, etc...)
  • Elizabeth Krumbach
    Communication in Ubuntu - IRC, mailing lists, forums

Request : Please do not contact any of the mentors with questions about Ubuntu user-related problems. For this purpose we already have an devoted community who help Ubuntu users.

Other Mentoring Program Activities

The Mentoring Program also sponsors the Ubuntu Women Courses, see this page for more information.

Communicate with us !

We have a mailing list and you can mail your ideas, questions, suggestions, criticisms, feedback, to : ubuntu-women AT lists DOT ubuntu DOT com (Please subscribe before posting a message). After you have joined this list, you can easily contact the mentors.

If you prefer IRC, join #ubuntu-women on freenode.net, where volunteers will be able to guide you. There may not be people monitoring this channel 24/7, so please be patient if nobody responds, or try the mailing list instead.

Please see the Mentoring FAQ for information about contacting the coordinators of this project directly.