Mentoring: the Class of 2015

A couple of weeks ago I kicked off a competition of sorts, to find some people to mentor to celebrate the community voting me “Person You’d Most Like to be Mentored By” in the annual Redgate Tribal Awards.

If you remember my terms, all someone had to do to be considered is write a blog post and post a link (and the link had to work!). Below is the list of everyone who qualified, with links to their posts, in the order they were received.

  1. Garry Bargsley
  2. Dean Savović
  3. Anthony Nocentino
  4. Shawn Melton
  5. Shane Bryant
  6. Chris Bell
  7. Peter Baillie
  8. Martha Schofield
  9. Dennis Cheung
  10. Tim Moss
  11. Max Vernon
  12. Snehabandakavi
  13. Robert Bishop
  14. Peter Tran
  15. Clive Strong
  16. Marcos Galvani
  17. Sarah Falkavage
  18. Derek Czarny
  19. Siva Ramasamy
  20. Mark Sinkinson
  21. Derek Hammer
  22. Pat ? (Incessantlearner880)
  23. Steph Locke
  24. Arun ? (blobeater)
  25. Giacomo Gozzi
  26. Steve Hall
  27. Charles Olatunji
  28. Terri Champlin
  29. Sandra Gaw
  30. Todd Kleinhans
  31. Sina Hassanpour
  32. Dan Stefan
  33. Ryan Desmond
  34. Kevin Feasel
  35. Mika Sutinen
  36. Matt Bowler
  37. Kyle Hayes
  38. Paul McHenry
  39. Praveen D’sa
  40. Josh ?
  41. Gilbert Quevauvilliers
  42. John ? (logosphos16)
  43. Ognjen ?
  44. Sam Bryant
  45. Lalitha ?
  46. Tracy Boggiano
  47. Paul Popovich Jr
  48. Paulo dos Santos
  49. Priya ?
  50. JP Godoy
  51. Mark Wilkinson
  52. John Wells
  53. Travis Gan
  54. LongHairedWeirdo

I said I’d read through the blog posts and pick three men and three women to mentor over the next couple of months.

How could I figure out who to pick? Is X more worthy than Y? Would A benefit more than B? Who am I to judge that?

So…….

EVERYBODY WINS!

Yes, I cheated a bit. I had no intention of trying to arbitrarily pick someone over someone else – that would just leave people disappointed. So I told myself that I’d mentor anyone who was motivated enough to write a blog post and submit it for consideration. That was the first test.

Yup. I’m going to mentor all 54 people on the list. And I’ll spread it out over the rest of the year, rather than trying to do it all in the next two months. Yes, it’ll take a bunch of my time, but it’ll be fun.

The second test for all the people on the list is that they have to send me an email using the link in this post, from a non-work email address (as we’ll end up discussing your work probably), by the end of February. You don’t need to say anything in the email – I just need an email address to contact you to kick things off.

Congratulations to everyone on the list!

(Hopefully this will work out really well and maybe I’ll do something similar next year)

24 thoughts on “Mentoring: the Class of 2015

  1. Thanks for giving everyone a chance! It means the world to me and I am sure it does too for everyone else. Looking forward to watching the Class of 2015 learn and grow. Thanks again! –Todd Kleinhans

  2. Seriously – this is awesome – I was wondering how you would pick as I have read some of the posts already. Some very wonderful and worthy “contenders”.
    I’m so looking forward to being part of this group! Thank you Paul!

  3. Oh Paul – how cool.

    What an honor for those who submitted (and a sad trombone for those who didn’t)

    Thanks for all that you do for the community.

    Take care & good luck in this adventure,

    Tom

  4. Thanks so much Paul for the offer. Email already sent per your instructions.
    I think you have just set the mentoring bar in IT to new heights!

  5. Wow, thank you so much. What an incredibly generous offer. I came to this post braced for the disappointment of not being picked but this has really made my day.

  6. This is awesome. My congratulations go out to everyone who entered and a big thank you to Paul for deciding to mentor everyone who entered.

    I hope this proceeds well and I look forward to a repeat of this next year.

    -Robert

  7. Ecstatic doesnt even describe my feelings, Paul will you send a confirmation to the email that you want us to send? Just so we dont “miss” this chance? I know we have a deadline.

  8. Hi Paul,
    This is absolutely amazing. It’s really heart-warming to see the Tribal Awards as a factor in your decision to do this, and I’m sure everyone involved will be very grateful for your mentorship/guidance!
    From the Simple-Talk and SQLServerCentral team here at Redgate, thank you!
    Melanie

  9. I am really sad I missed the opportunity. I am sure I will get a chance one day. Optimistic! Wish you good luck everyone!

  10. Paul – I hope it doesn’t mean that you’ll be blogging less! Excellent win for everyone on the list. Such a fantastic opportunity.

  11. Paul, I can’t express how disappointed I am in myself for missing this opportunity. But I would like to congratulate the winners and emphasize how fortunate they are. (I’m sure they know, they DID some blogging!) I’d also like to say that your gesture proves again how gracious and important to the community you really are. We’re ALL lucky to have you in our field of endeavor.

  12. I am happy for all of you who will be mentored by Paul. For all you lucky ones (humble advice): Please take advantage of this opportunity and learn from Paul and from each other. Don’t just wait for Paul, be proactive, connect with each other and share your knowledge (on your blogs, …).

    Paul, really nice gesture from you.

    1. It went extremely well. A general end-of-year summary was sent to all the mentees, as well as more personal, individual endings, but it wasn’t really appropriate to do a public write-up that would have gone further than ‘done!’.

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