Mentoring is a great way to learn from those with more experience or to pass down your experience to others, but the interaction usually ends up helping everyone and creating a better Waze community for all.
Overview
Typically a Mentor is much more experienced than a Mentee. In some cases a Mentor may have less general experience, but significant specialty knowledge in one or more topics. For instance, such a Mentor may know a lot about a regional issue, city, or state, or type of road system. For convenience, we divide mentoring into two types: Informal and Formal. One is not intended to replace the other, but instead are designed to coexist.
Informal Mentoring goes on all the time when one Wazer asks a question of another and when one Wazer helps another. We encourage you to engage in such interaction regularly and have some ideas for you here. Examples include the Waze Forum, WME Chat, dialog through Private Messages, and much more. Becoming a regular Informal Mentor is a great way to see if you're good at teaching various editing skills, and might be interested in Formal Mentoring.
Formal Mentoring is a one-on-one interaction between a Mentee and an officially approved Waze Mentor with a defined objective, duration, and under a common set of rules, with the purpose of accelerating advancement of editor rank and roles while maintaining quality of editing and Waze Community interaction. Mentors may have multiple separate Mentees at one time. Mentors may also suggest group or team mentoring activities for their Mentees.
| Informal Mentoring | Formal Mentoring |
|---|---|
| Editors asking and answering questions in the forums and live chat. | A controlled one-on-one interaction geared to educate a mentee on particular Waze editing skills. |
| Can take place anytime, without any special process to set up the interaction. | Must come to a formal agreement to start the mentorship, after careful selection of partners. |
| There is no approval process to be an informal mentor. | Only Waze can approve formal mentors. |
| Advice can range from exceptionally good to highly questionable depending upon the provider | Provided education is more predictable and controlled with high certainty for a positive outcome |
| Task oriented: solve a current problem in editing and nothing more (e.g., how to fix a particular junction that is giving bad directions or bad map appearance). | Goal oriented: intended to improve a particular mentee skill, not a particular feature on the map. |
| Generally lasts a few minutes or a few hours, with little to no recurring communication expected. | Repeated interaction, in a defined range of time on a specific range of topics, to improve a particular skill. |
| Provides instant answers to questions, but cannot track the quality of the information provided. | Helps ensure quality map edits over time as editors advance in rank. |
| Not expected to significantly change the abilities of the Mentee and no expectation for change in rank during or after the mentorship. | Expectation is to upgrade the mentee skills, allowing the mentee to rise in rank or at least close the gap toward a rise in rank. At mentor discretion, mentee may receive a (temporary) rank change to facilitate the mentorship. |
Informal mentoring
Informal mentoring helps everyone involved and happens all the time. It is not tracked or managed. Keep doing what you do and have fun! The following ideas and resources might be useful as you think about your need for training and mentoring or your desire to help others.
Informal mentoring ideas
- Ask a question in a Waze Forum.
- Ask for help in WME chat.
- Send a PM to a higher-level editor you have seen around Waze.
- Utilize web conferencing/screen sharing to communicate with one or more editors while learning and editing on a project (there are many free tools for this, such as Google Hangouts).
- Establish a Google+ Communities area to help local or regional editors. For example, see Waze Arizona.
- Organize a local Meet-up of editors in your region for a Waze conversation over lunch.
Informal mentoring resources
The following resources may be useful for the Mentee to review alone or for the Mentor to suggest specific items to review or to use.
- See the Waze Wiki
- Static Tutorials
- Live Tutorials
- Waze Map Editor (WME) Practice Mode
- Webinars USA
Formal mentoring
Formal Mentoring is a one-on-one interaction between a Mentee and Mentor with specific objectives of increasing skill, editor level, and Waze Community participation. With a specific Mentee-Mentor pair, agreed upon objective, start, and end, this process needs a bit more coordination. It also requires commitment from both the Mentee and Mentor to complete the objective. Mentoring could last a week to months - the Mentee and Mentor decide.
Formal Mentoring is conducted by a Waze-approved group of Mentors. If you wish to become a Mentor or Mentee, look on the Waze Forum about mentoring (below).
Formal mentoring summary
- Decide if Formal Mentoring is right for you.
- Look at the Formal mentoring guidelines to see if you want to be a Mentee or Mentor in Formal Mentoring.
- Please fill in this form Mentoring Form
- If you want to be a Mentee:
- Make a request on the Forum.
- Do you want to pick your own mentor? If you don't know one, look here:
- If you're not sure, you will be matched with a potential Mentor.
- Work with that Mentor to reach an agreement.
- If the Mentor is a match - Begin and complete mentoring.
- If the Mentor is not a match - Request assistance in terminating the mentorship as peacefully as possible; you may try again with a different Mentor.
- If you want to be a Mentor:
- Read and agree to the Formal mentor training
- Request to be granted the Mentor role (form under development)
- Suggest those to whom you'd like to Mentor.
- Survey the pool of Mentee requests and volunteer to help.
The last two suggestions are more appropriate after you receive sponsorship by a Waze Champ to be granted Mentor status.
Resources for formal mentoring
The following is a list of online resources available for the Formal Mentoring Process.
- Forum discussion is currently in a "Trial" stage and is held on this forum.
Formal Mentoring Badges
Those that have been accepted as Formal Mentors may have one of three badges that will appear in the Forum and other locations. All are Formal Mentors but with different Rank in the Waze Community.
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| Formal Mentor | Formal Mentor Local Champ |
Formal Mentor Global Champ |