Hack for LA

1st rule of mentoring: limit nothing

• It’s better to acknowledge not-knowing than to point teams down a wrong or sub-optimal path.
  • Your pointers to reliable on-line sources of information might be as or more valuable to participants as answers to their specific question whether of technical information or of the datasets.
• Responding to teams’ questions is not a 24/7 responsibility, but please check the communication channels you’ve listed regularly, and get back to participants in a reasonable timeframe.

2nd rule of mentoring: raise the bar and expect greatness

• Help teams define workflow, generate ideas, problem-solve, and develop final pitches.
• Discern “meaning” and “usability” and reflect it back to the teams so they can see them more clearly.
• Encourage modularity, especially with regard to data sources.
• Center the end-user and take into account all stakeholders.

3rd rule of mentoring: don't moonlight for a team

• Contributing to the team’s actual work product is not the role of a mentor.
  • Tempting as it might be to dash off a few lines of code, or a couple of paragraphs for a team’s web site About page, rearrange a design…please curb your enthusiasm!
• Pointers, reference to examples, advice about design are all in-bounds.
• Summarize your guidance on the Slack #ask-a-mentor channel.
  • To the degree possible, we would like all teams to benefit from questions asked and answered in team/mentor interactions.