Exploring a new Mentorship Program for TODO Group

[annania]

The TODO Group Steering Committee has been actively exploring the idea of launching a mentorship program tailored to open source practitioners working in or with Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs). Before we move forward, we’d love to hear from you!

We’re looking to better understand the community’s needs, interests, and ideas so we can co-create something meaningful and impactful. Whether you’re brand new to OSPOs or have years of experience, your perspective matters.

We’d appreciate your thoughts on the following:

1. Would you be interested in participating in a mentorship program—either as a mentor, mentee, or both?
2. What outcomes would make participating in this mentorship program valuable to you? (Ex. skill development, career growth, stronger community connections, navigating OSPO challenges, or something else?)
3. What topics or focus areas would be most valuable to cover (e.g., governance, metrics, compliance, community building, internal advocacy, etc.)?
4. How should the mentorship be structured? (One-on-one, group sessions, cohort-based, async check-ins, etc.)
5. Have you seen successful models elsewhere we could learn from?

Feel free to share any other ideas, needs, or experiences that could help shape this program.

[chrisxie-fw]

Great to see the TODO Group launching this program — big thumbs up! 👍

As for the questions raised above, I think the answers will largely depend on what both mentors and mentees want out of this program. If there’s enough interest, details could be worked out in a meeting.

[CsatariGergely]

I would be interested in both the mentee and the mentor roles.
As a mentee mostly skill development, solving OSPO issues and community connections would be relevant for me.
I do not know what is the best way to organize it. For a mentee most probably the one-on-one setup is the most effective, while for the mentor maybe a group setup.

[zhiqiang-yu]

It's a good idea. Just like Gergely, I would be interested in both the mentee and the mentor roles. And I think we need both group sessions and one-on-one sessions with local languages.

[Maryblessing]

I would be interested in both the mentee and the mentor roles. As a mentee mostly skill development, solving OSPO issues and community connections would be relevant for me. I do not know what is the best way to organize it. For a mentee most probably the one-on-one setup is the most effective, while for the mentor maybe a group setup.

To the suggestion above, I'd propose the 'train-the-trainer' format. Where trained mentors can then go ahead to train potential mentees. @CsatariGergely is this something you think might be useful?

[Wuhanqin]

**I’d like to participate in this program in a dual role (both as a mentor and a mentee). My availability is flexible since I’m a university student. I have some understanding of OSPOs and believe they serve as a bridge between enterprises, as well as between academia and industry—functioning as a dedicated office or department.

Key discussion points, in my opinion, should include:

Community building

Managing evangelists

Exploring new development opportunities in open source to create emerging job roles

I’m trying to act as an evangelist to connect students with enterprises, as well as enterprises with each other. (Note: For simplicity, I’m loosely equating "enterprises" with "communities" here—apologies if the concept isn’t perfectly precise.)

As for the program structure, asynchronous communication or group-based mentoring would work for me, as long as there’s a defined engagement requirement.

Regarding successful models, I’m still experimenting with my own approach. Convincing a company to engage in this seems challenging—unless the company inherently has an educational outreach mission or relies on open source for its ecosystem development.

These are just my humble thoughts.**

[DavidPHirsch]

I think this is a great initiative, would love to participate as a mentor 👍🏻

[Wuhanqin]

**Thank you teacher.I am glad to be your mentee(student).

I am currently an evangelist for two communities. How can I analyze open-source strategic planning for the communities, and build connections between communities, or between foundations and communities? I believe a crucial responsibility of an evangelist is to engage developers. There’s an issue with developer enthusiasm—how do you energize the development atmosphere in a community when facing a large group of volunteer developers?

I am a student with a background in big data (a science discipline), so you can treat me as someone skilled in data analysis and statistics.**

[decause-gov]

This is exciting news!

Our OSPO at CMS.gov has been engaged in a few cycles of mentorship since our launch, and collected and published some guidance and resources for how we have approached supporting early career contributors:

https://dsacms.github.io/ospo-guide/growing/mentorship/

Hope this is helpful, and happy to answer any questions as needed :)

[Wuhanqin]

**I've been busy with my thesis recently, and I'm very interested in the content of U-OSPO(university-ospo). I'm particularly concerned about the following questions:

1. The differences between UOSPO and traditional OSPO.
2. How should we operate UOSPO for universities at different levels?
3. How can we establish a U-OSPO?
   I am really confused with these questions.**