Cloud Native Mentorship - Tips for Being a Great Mentor to CNCF Students

Based on two years of mentoring contributors to Thanos, this talk offers maintainers practical approaches to helping student projects succeed. It covers goal setting, feedback, retrospectives, and empathetic communication in open source communities.

Syllabus

Introduction
Who am I
Why does it matter
Set your goals
Ask yourself this question
Ask for what you want
The goal of the project
Backup plans
Feedback loops
Retrospectives
Learning
Sharing retrospectives
How to get more feedback
How can we learn faster
Meetings
Transparency
Goals
Timebox
Feedback
Merge frequently
Collaboration
Conclusion
Questions
Strategies