I've been thinking of starting a group/list where the goal of the participants would be to follow a curious/troubled new arduinoer from the start to 'as long as wanted'
I know it would've helped me a lot in the beginning, being able to ask questions directly [not using the P.M button, but rather some sort of chat program] and having some sort of person I could refer to hven there was problems or I had questions.
How about we make a list of people that are willing to anser qestions, and help fellow arduinoers until a broblem is solved or answered?
I think a lot of threds could've been avoided this way.
Connect your favorite IRC chat client to FreeNode, and join the #Arduino channel. It's not always busy and staffed with experts, but it's a lot more interactive than a forum.
being able to ask questions directly [not using the P.M button, but rather some sort of chat program] and having some sort of person I could refer to hven there was problems or I had questions.
I think the forums should work OK for this... Perhaps a new "General Forum" called "mentorship" would be useful?
How about we make a list of people that are willing to anser qestions, and help fellow arduinoers until a broblem is solved or answered?
I can't speak for anyone else, of course, but it's very important to me that I be able to answer questions "asynchronously" - when I have the free time to be fiddling in the arduino forums instead of doing real work - rather than being committed to being in a particular place at a particular time "on demand."
I think a lot of threds could've been avoided this way.
I don't see "avoiding threads" as being important. In the worst case, the hosts "waste" a fraction of a cent worth of disk space. In the best case, information that is archived in the forums helps the next set of people to come along with similar questions (and that's a good thing.)
I agree that the need to 'avoid' threads is not a need at all. [I was talking about the typical 'how many' 'how do I' 'library for' threds that always seems to pop up. Not bothering me or anything, but would 'clean' up the forum]
How about a new general forum and a contact list of peoples willing to support 'synchronously'?
when I connect to #Arduino it's as silent as the graves.
As I write this there are nearly 70 nicks in the channel. The vocalness in the channel does depend a lot on what time of day it is but frequently people seem to get answers to their questions.
I used the #Arduino channel for the first time today (and IRC chat as it goes) and was helped out by 3 or 4 people with something that was more a Eagle CAD question then a Arduino........really nice bunch!
anything that encourages mentors can only be a good thing, some of us (well I) don't have a father, teacher or even friend who are into any form of electronics, so have had to pick everything up from scratch using just forum posts and google.....would be nice to be able to ask someone really silly questions, without the fear of them permanently recorded on a forum for prosperity and embarrassment.
Can I have a mentor please? (preferable a pipe smoker who owns at least one item of tweed)
i have been to the irc channel a couple of times. every time i could find many people willing to help me. so it only takes the willingness to learn how to use irc.
maybe the existence of the irc channel need to be promoted. i guess many newbies don't know there is one.
a mentor program asks a lot from the willing mentor, as he is somehow the only responsible person to help with a problem. i think the power of the net is that everyone can donate what he/she knows.
i think i'm far away to qualify as a mentor, but yet i can help here and there with simple questions.
If people are looking for mentors to meet face-to-face, then perhaps local Linux user groups and/or Dorkbot groups would be a place to start? I know that the Linux user group here in Bristol attracts all sorts of programming and electronics types, and the discussion is far from limited to Linux! The Arduino and similar small computer projects are usually very welcome. And just about everybody at Dorkbot Bristol has an Arduino, and we're trying to get some workshop sessions set up.
One thing that face-to-face meetings can do is bring together people with Arduinos that need to have the bootloader re-installed, with people who have an AVR in-circuit programmer! I did this a couple of times at the last Dokbot all-day meeting.
(preferable a pipe smoker who owns at least one item of tweed)