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Date: Thu, 13 Jul 2006 16:40:20 -0400
From: Sam Ruby <rubys@apache.org>
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Subject: Re: Mentors - the more, the merrier? [WAS Re: [VOTE] Accept Heraldry
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Cliff Schmidt wrote:
> On 7/13/06, David Blevins <david.blevins@visi.com> wrote:
>> Maybe you'd start with one of the mentors as chair then, maybe half way
>> through incubation, start grooming a new ppmc chair from within the 
>> project.
> 
> +1
> This addresses my concern about formally identifying the mentor who is
> taking the key responsibility for the podling (rather than three
> rarely available mentors with no one of them taking responsibility).
> It also allows this mentor to demonstrate the role of a chair,
> particularly during the beginning of the project when the project
> could use help with both community processes and logistics.  And I
> definitely agree with the idea of handing off that role during
> incubation to one of the committers as soon as one of them as got the
> idea.

I just want to note that we don't have a requirement that chairs be 
members.  I thought I recalled a rule that mentors had to be members, 
but I can't quickly find confirmation of that.

In any case, I don't have a problem with us ENDING UP at the point where 
a successfully incubated project has a non-member chair, but STARTING 
OUT at a point where somebody potentially new to the ASF is handed the 
role and basically told "go mentor yourself" seems kinda odd.

A more concrete example to nail this down: Dims and I are listed as 
mentors of Tuscany, but I doubt either of us expect to be the ultimate 
chair (I certainly don't!), and I wouldn't want to make any of the 
current participants into a chair or chair like role just yet.  The fact 
that role of ASF chair is not one of technical leadership is something 
that takes many people time to appreciate, and interjecting that 
confusion into the incubation process at this point would make things 
more difficult.

Now each project is different.  I can imagine other cases where this 
could work.  And even with Tuscany, I can imagine handing off the chair 
role to somebody during incubation and letting them take ownership (with 
Dims and I as monitors/meta-mentors/safety-nets).

- Sam Ruby

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