This week Prathamesh and I were coaching partners and we exchanged insights of the training sessions both from coach’s and coachee’s perspective.
I really feel the practice material was good and we were able to discuss the real world problem, which we are facing or have faced in our respective communities.
We started with me being coachee. I was on first level of listening, telling all my problems and expectations, in each case.
Coach tried to solve problems and suggested the following:
- Promote emerging technologies to raise interest
- Make groups, small meet ups, write blogs to create community awareness.
- When there is no community, start from college, then coordinate with friends of friends of other college.
- For dormant community, contact left over members, talk about current opportunities (which you can get from reps call, discourse). Try to get in touch with tech fest organisers and ensure community presence there.
Now it was my turn to be coach, Prathamesh gave me his problems as coachee.
- Coachee has attended event somewhere and now want in his college so that he can grow community. I suggested to form small tech groups, spend sometime to learn and once confident, reach HOD, and if needed, mark me(coach) in CC so that I can answer HODs queries.
- Community only conduct events if initiated by college like tech fest, else they remain dormant. I suggested to meet existing volunteers, show them the current awesome projects such as VR, web extensions so as to raise the interest, also to his colleagues. Once community volunteers are interested self initiation is easy.
- Coachee is VR contributor and wants to get involved in community. I suggested to join the online community telegram, mailing list. Then join local community meet ups where he/she can tell others about his/her expertise and accordingly they can have more events on VR(given case)
- Coachee is a new rep and part of slowly getting dormant community. Old members have moved out of place and team is scattered. Asked him to join meet up groups where he/she can promote the upcoming development, opportunities so as to add more enthusiast to community also approach colleges on tech fest, to spread the awareness.
Feedback - As coach, Prathamesh need to setup small mutually decided achievable goals, and set target time. Try involving other communities too - collaboration is the key to growth
Observation - Coach is already a community person, so he knows both side of the table. Hands-on experience helps him to understand the situation better.
Learnings - The power is with questions & listening. They let you to better understand the situation.
Also Prathamesh gave suggestion to attend reps call and read discourse to be updated, that is much needed.