IxDA Toronto recently had a very successful event centred around creating a culture of mentorship in our local community. Since it went so well, we thought we'd share our experiences with everyone else... so you can host your own!
The event was based on the model of a speed dating night, except with the goal of establishing mentoring relationships instead of romantic relationships. The idea was for 15 potential mentees and 15 potential mentors to meet at a pub, where we'd reserved a private room. We set up 15 small tables around the outside of the room. Mentors each chose a table and stayed there for the rest of the night. Mentees chose a table with a mentor to start. They then had 5 minutes to talk with the mentor about their background and interests, and what they were looking for in a mentoring relationship. After 4 minutes we gave a "1 minute warning". Then at the end of 5 minutes, mentees picked up and moved to the next mentor. Aaaand... things repeated 15 times. We gave mentors checklists of mentee names and vice versa. As they met each other, they were instructed to check off anyone who they would be interested in having as their mentee / mentor. At the end of the night we collected everyone's sheets, and created a huge spreadsheet of who matched whom. Our next step is to email people to tell them the name and contact information of those they matched. >From there, they can pursue a relationship as they like. After calculating the matches, it turned out that every mentor had at least one mentee match, and every mentee but one had a mentor match. (The one without a match was looking for something very specific, so I don't think she'll be that surprised that she didn't match anyone.) Overall, the night was a huge success. People said at the end that they had a ton of fun, and really appreciated meeting so many people. We got a lot of thank you notes from attendees, which was awesome. If anyone would like to repeat this locally, GO FOR IT! It's a pretty simple event - once you get the people in the room, you can let the event run itself. The hardest thing is finding people to be mentors. Asking and explaining the value of mentorship to our community goes a long way though. We actually ended up with a surplus of mentors the night of the event... albeit after some hard recruitment work :) If you're a local leader, I posted a much more detailed summary, including some tips, on the Local Leaders' Basecamp. I'm happy to send it to anyone else who wants it too -- just mail me off-list! Meredith & Matt Co-Coordinators, IxDA Toronto P.S. One of my colleagues, who was a mentor the night of the event, recently had a friend ask her, "So I hear you were at a speed dating night the other night?" The person thought we were actually trying to hook UX people up romantically. Ooops :) ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
