RFC: Mentorship Program

šŸ’¬ General
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What is the mentorship program?

The mentorship program is an initiative in D_D to help educate and grow the D_D members. Its goal is to enrich the lives of mentors and mentees through the sharing of knowledge, wisdom, life experience, and skills.

Why build a mentorship program in D_D?

Developer DAO exists to accelerate the education and impact of a new wave of web3 builders.

The mentorship program is a major step toward the D_D mission statement becoming reality.
Additionally, the program will help accomplish the two goals listed at developerdao.com.

  • Onboard, Educate & Support Web3 Developers
  • Foster & Build Web3 Tools & Public Goods

The mentorship program is the logical next step in taking D_D to the next level with respect to our mission, goals, and overall objectives.

How do we execute a mentorship program in D_D?

There are many ways to execute a mentorship program in D_D. We have come up with a Minimum Viable Mentorship Program (MVMP) and long-term goals for the program. In the ideal world, we would launch the perfect mentorship program on the first try but as we all know, that would take forever to plan, build, and execute. Instead, we built out an MVMP plan and long-term goals that we would like to push towards.

We will detail the MVMP and long-term goals below.

The Minimum Viable Mentorship Program (MVMP)

Flow diagram describing the MVMP iterative loop
Flow diagram describing the MVMP iterative loop976Ɨ222 15.7 KB

The minimum viable mentorship program should consist of a way to onboard members, connect mentors with mentees, and collect feedback.

These questions should accomplish most of the onboarding questions:

Questions
  • Mentor signup
    • Build question list
      • Timezone
      • Native Langauge
      • Gender
      • Preferred Gender of your Mentor/Mentee
      • Region
      • Time available each week
      • What are your goals for the mentorship program?
      • What does success in the program look like for you?
      • How often would you like to communicate with your mentee?
      • What technical workshops would you like to see during the course of this program?
      • What life skills workshops would you like to see during the course of this program? (may be worded as what life skills do you need to improve ex. Finance, health, etc)
      • Why are you being a mentor?
      • What does an ideal mentee look like to you?
      • What do you do in your spare time?
      • What interests you in the world?
      • What would you like to improve in the world?
      • What do you think doesnā€™t need improvement in the world?
      • What does ā€˜public goodā€™ mean to you?
      • Tell us a bit about yourselfā€¦
      • To sum it up, what skills do you have that enable you to be a mentor?
      • Are you open to having an interview with the mentorship team?
      • Do you already have a mentee in mind?
  • Mentee signup
    • Build question list
      • Timezone
      • Native Langauge
      • Gender
      • Preferred Gender of your Mentor/Mentee
      • Region
      • Time available each week
      • What are your goals for the mentorship program
      • What does success in the program look like for you
      • How often would you like to communicate with your mentor?
      • What technical workshops would you like to see during the course of this program?
      • What life skills workshops would you like to see during the course of this program?
      • What do you find easy doing alone?
      • What do you find difficult doing alone?
      • Where do you think you might need help?
      • Why do you think a mentor could help you?
      • What skills do you hope to learn from your mentor?
      • What skills do you hope to learn outside your mentor?
      • What does an ideal mentor look like to you?
      • Where are you in your career?
      • Where do you want to be?
      • Are you happy at work?
      • What skills do you want to gain? (ex. Networking, Career Growth, Mentorship (this one is kinda meta), Dealing with coworkers, etc.)
      • What do you do in your spare time?
      • What interests you in the world?
      • What would you like to improve in the world?
      • What do you think doesnā€™t need improvement in the world?
      • What does ā€˜public goodā€™ mean to you?
      • Do you have a mentor in mind?
  • Feedback Doc

Once these are answered, the mentors will be interviewed and matched with a mentee. From there, we will begin a feedback loop of mentoring and gather feedback until the end of the mentorship cycle.

This feedback will be used to improve the program going forward.

Long-term mentorship program

The long-term goals of the mentorship program are detailed below:

6 Month - Functioning and Active
  • ntindle (Nick)
    • someone gets a boost in 6 months
    • 20 mentor pairs
    • active meetings
  • Piablo:
    • Have developed a good reputation in the broader web 3 ecosystems. To be getting a good name for ourselves in the broader space. Have to be able to say ā€œD_Dā€™s got an awesome mentorship program.ā€
      Direct mentorship program.
    • The learning materials we are creating in the DAO are conducive to the mentorship program. Great synergy between the Education Guild and the mentorship guild is achieved.
  • Ropats
    • Automated and fully functional onboarding into the mentorship program
1 year - Successful and Scalable
  • 7i70 (Tito)
    - Mentee LEVELS UP to become a mentor
  • ntindle (Nick)
    - 100 Successful Mentorship pairings
    - Mentors are paid for their work, and there is a way to validate the work they are being paid for is meaningful
    - Get 10 people large salary increases as a direct result of our mentorship program.
  • Piablo
    • 15 active mentors are available at any given time to take on a new mentee
    • Have D_D be one of THE places to learn and get connected to Web3
  • Ropats
    • A viable scaling plan for scaling the mentorship program past 1000 active mentees is complete and in use
2 year - Productive and Prestigious
  • An initial mentee proposed project is completed in full with help of current and past mentees and mentors

Some of the additional services the mentorship would like to provide in conjunction with other teams include:

  • Wellness meetings for mentees for topics such as financial stability, career advice, and other non-technical skills
  • Education meetings for mentees revolving around hot Web3 topics such as the latest technology in smart contracts, decentralized finance, or other technical topics
  • Education Platform memberships and potentially completion requirements
  • Proof of completion of the mentorship program
  • Compensating the mentors in some way for their time, potentially through $CODE
  • Utilizing mentees to work on D_D projects to help them grow their skills

Co-Authors

@with-heart
@Piablo
@ropats16
@7i7o

11 Likes
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I think itā€™s great that weā€™re starting with an MVP & iterating. It seems this program will play ā€œmatchmakerā€ between mentee & mentor. I think with a lot of connections being made organically in the DAO, perhaps we could leave space for those to choose their mentee or Mentor if they already have an established relationship.

All in all, Iā€™m happy to see this project going, and looking forward to seeing how it evolves.

2 Likes
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Glad to see this!
I think if itā€™s possible, a mentor can be matched with more than one mentee?
Perhaps between 1 ~ 3 mentees. For the situation that some members have same objective can learn from mentor and discuss each other. (If the number of mentors isnā€™t meet the mentees)
But 1 on 1 is the best way to ensure the path be pushed well in my thoughts.

1 Like
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Agreed that this should be possible long term. Weary of doing it for first-round though due to the numerous problems that I expect to arise in a 1-1 already

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In the mentorship meeting we discussed:

Adding an ā€œI donā€™t think this is working outā€ point of contact

Adding a paired speed dating style intro between mentors and mentees

Reconfirmed the need for presentations on topics such as relationships in work, career advice, and technical skills on a regular basis that are recorded

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Agree with this proposal and I think that jimxjim idea makes a lot of sense ā€œ1 - 3 menteesā€

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hi there! Iā€™m a long time lurker, first time actually interacting with D_D stuff. I am personally so excited about this program! Iā€™ve got one question and one suggestion/idea:

  1. Iā€™m curious what service(s) do we expect or suggest that a mentor would provide? Is the desired focus specifically job seeking in web3, so essentially resume & portfolio review, interview practice and prep? If not just those, what else?

  2. I have a suggestion that I wonder could fit into this program eventually - I call it the Mentor Continuum. To counteract a potential disproportion of mentors to mentees (assuming that there will be more mentees seeking mentors because D_D is about onboarding folks into web3, not patting ourselves on the back for already being in the space), I suggest some sort of questionnaire and skills self-assessment so members at all levels can feel like they can offer something from the leet-est of us to the lowliest newb. We all have something to teach one another, and finding where you are on the Mentor Continuum might help folks seeking mentors themselves to look for a mentor that is maybe just 1 or 2 levels above them, rather than everyone trying to swarm the most ā€œprestigiousā€ mentors for their time, and eroding their commitment to mentoring, or overwhelming them with too many mentees. I think a positive side effect to this would be it will create more mentor/mentee pairs overall because it encourages a maximum of people to consider being a mentor.

  3. Per my question about what a mentor can offer, if someone wants to mentor but rates themselves low on their skills, maybe they would be motivated to be an accountability buddy / cheerleader for someone who needs nudges to stay motivated themselves? Maybe part of the questionnaire and skills self-assessment could be an open ended prompt for folks to share what they could do for a mentee.

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Thank you for sharing an example of your mentoring platform. Currently, it is implemented with MVP, I recommend reading Cleveroadā€™s article to finalize it.