Re: Mentoring newcomers

[Brian LeRoux <b...@brian.io>]

Ross, been meaning to respond to this forever. Quick answer is: YES
lets pursue this. We need more and better training materials and I
would love if that stuff came as a part of the f/oss proj docs dist.


On Fri, Mar 30, 2012 at 8:26 AM, Ross Gardler
<rg...@opendirective.com> wrote:
> Regarding creating some training materials. I met with a company
> based here in the UK who might be interested in helping create some
> training materials for the project. Like all volunteer driven efforts
> there needs to be a number of people willing to make this happen. As a
> random idea would anyone here be willing to support an activity such
> as outlined below.
>
> For now lets assume all costs incurred, but not salaries, would be
> covered and that outputs would be donated to the Cordova project for
> reuse by the community in any way compatible with the ASF licence
> (note I'm not saying I have secured funding for this activity, I'm
> asking if those with the necessary skills would be willing to help
> produce materials if funding were found).
>
> - organise a training event somewhere
> - fly in key Cordova personel
> - deliver training with video cameras present
> - post produce training to make it suitable for online consumption
>  - video, slides, how to documentation etc.
>
> I'm thinking this would cover topics such as:
>
> Basic (user):
>  - downloading and installing Apache Cordova
>  - writing a hello world app
>  - deploying to each of the major platforms
>  - building a more complex app with JQuery Mobile (or similar)
>  - overview of advanced topics
>
> Intermediate (contributor):
>  - setting up an Apache Cordova development environment
>  - running build scripts and unit tests
>  - reporting bugs/requesting enhancements
>  - making changes to Cordova
>  - contributing changes upstream
>
> This is obviously alot of work and would not directly contribute to
> the core code of the project. However, it might help attract new users
> and contributors (such as those at the company I originally referred
> to). Does this sound like something I should pursue with respect to
> finding the resources to cover this work? Would someone here be
> willing and able to provide the necessary training content?
>
> If there is sufficient (genuine) interest I will continue to pursue,
> but if there wasn't enough community energy behind it I don't see how
> I can make it work so will just drop it.
>
> Ross
>
>
>
> On 19 March 2012 22:47, Brian LeRoux <b...@brian.io> wrote:
>> No, tho Adobe has started creating a bunch of them lately. [1] I think
>> its a good start but this content should be free, as in source, and in
>> a more discoverable place (like our docs).
>>
>> Its been an education process for everyone. =/
>>
>> And anyhow, I think this might be a different thing altogether.
>> Something wherein we create an example video and add it to the docs
>> ... opening up the opportunity for someone else to contribute an
>> example translated. Also, we need to reopen the training materials.
>>
>> [1] http://tv.adobe.com/show/adc-presents-phonegap/
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Filip Maj <fi...@adobe.com> wrote:
>>> Brian have we made publicly available any of the webcasts we recorded/gave
>>> as Nitobi over the past two years or so?
>>>
>>> On 3/16/12 3:02 AM, "Ross Gardler" <rg...@opendirective.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>On 7 March 2012 19:32, Brian LeRoux <b...@brian.io> wrote:
>>>>> Hey Ross, sorry for the delayed response! Been meaning to answer this.
>>>>> The short answer is we try to be available as possible in every place
>>>>> possible. We're all over twitter, irc, stackoverflow, the various
>>>>> mailing lists and confs. When at Nitobi we did regular webcasts and
>>>>> in-person training (monthly). Thats dropped off of late. Formalizing
>>>>> our in person training would be good.
>>>>
>>>>As a start I'd be very interested in exploring the webcast idea. If
>>>>there is sufficient momentum from Cordova devs to make this happen
>>>>then I'd like to see what we can do as a trial. Is there any
>>>>information about the kinds of webcasts you ran and which worked well?
>>>>
>>>>Ross
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 1:49 AM, Ross Gardler
>>>>> <rg...@opendirective.com> wrote:
>>>>>> I was recently at an event in Sri Lanka. At this event I discussed
>>>>>> Cordova with a number of employees from a large IT services company
>>>>>> called Virtusa (predominantly India based but with offices in a number
>>>>>> of countries). They currently use PhoneGap and were very excited to
>>>>>> hear that it was coming to Apache as Cordova.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The main problem they had was upskilling their developers. It sounded
>>>>>> like there was the potential for widespread use of the Callback code
>>>>>> within Virtusa but that training was an issue. Obviously not all their
>>>>>> developers would be coming to this community but it was felt that a
>>>>>> number might be interested in getting involved and addressing the
>>>>>> problems their teams come up against. We therefore discussed ways of
>>>>>> kickstarting their involvement.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Naturally I discussed some of my own ideas with them, but before we
>>>>>> discuss those I wonder if the community ever did this kind of work in
>>>>>> the past before coming to the ASF? Do you have any models that have
>>>>>> worked well for you in the past?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Ross
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Ross Gardler (@rgardler)
>>>>>> Programme Leader (Open Development)
>>>>>> OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>Ross Gardler (@rgardler)
>>>>Programme Leader (Open Development)
>>>>OpenDirective http://opendirective.com
>>>
>
>
>
> --
> Ross Gardler (@rgardler)
> Programme Leader (Open Development)
> OpenDirective http://opendirective.com