We are 13 days into the SEED mentor matching cycle for the two
January-June 2009 terms. So far, 61 program participants are matched
(that’s 56% of the 109 total participants). The remaining 48 are
under consideration by potential mentors from their Mentor Wish Lists.
My December email file for SEED already has 1,235 emails in it.
Matching has been slower than for a usual term. By the second week
of a normal SEED mentor matching cycle, we usually have 75% of
participants matched. This slowed matching is probably due to
two causes: 1) We have about double the number of participants
than are usually matched at this time of year; 2) I decided
to ask all but the most senior and experienced mentors
to have a pre-match discussion with their potential mentee before I
declare the match. The restructuring that Sun announced last
month will be starting soon. In these stressful times, I want to
be sure that these mentoring pairs are a particularly good fit for
each other. Only about 1/3 of the participants in these terms are
based in the USA, so pre-match discussions take a while to set up.
Yesterday, I started an experiment which I hope will improve
SEED communications. I set up a group for SEED
Engineering Mentoring mentees, mentors, and managers on
LinkedIn. I announced
the group to the SEEDs last night and in less than a day, I
have approved 163 requests to join.
Why do this? Year after year, the most frequent request from SEED applicants and participants is for more information about potential
SEED mentors. Keeping good records on the 445 SEED potential mentors
is time-consuming, and the resulting list is always incomplete
and a little out of date, despite our best efforts.
LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking
site which can be used as a self-updating professional address book.
By creating the new SEED group on LinkedIn, SEED and PreSEED
mentees, mentors, and managers can link to each other, find out about,
and keep track of each other more easily. The new SEED
Engineering Mentoring group is open to current and alumni
SEED program mentees, mentors, and managers. That is, staff
who are current and former Sun employees associated with the
SEED Engineering Mentoring program.
More?
More information on the SEED worldwide Engineering mentoring program
is available at
http://research.sun.com/SEED/
KatysBlog 