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.
- Garry Bargsley
- Dean Savović
- Anthony Nocentino
- Shawn Melton
- Shane Bryant
- Chris Bell
- Peter Baillie
- Martha Schofield
- Dennis Cheung
- Tim Moss
- Max Vernon
- Snehabandakavi
- Robert Bishop
- Peter Tran
- Clive Strong
- Marcos Galvani
- Sarah Falkavage
- Derek Czarny
- Siva Ramasamy
- Mark Sinkinson
- Derek Hammer
- Pat ? (Incessantlearner880)
- Steph Locke
- Arun ? (blobeater)
- Giacomo Gozzi
- Steve Hall
- Charles Olatunji
- Terri Champlin
- Sandra Gaw
- Todd Kleinhans
- Sina Hassanpour
- Dan Stefan
- Ryan Desmond
- Kevin Feasel
- Mika Sutinen
- Matt Bowler
- Kyle Hayes
- Paul McHenry
- Praveen D’sa
- Josh ?
- Gilbert Quevauvilliers
- John ? (logosphos16)
- Ognjen ?
- Sam Bryant
- Lalitha ?
- Tracy Boggiano
- Paul Popovich Jr
- Paulo dos Santos
- Priya ?
- JP Godoy
- Mark Wilkinson
- John Wells
- Travis Gan
- 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”
What a fantastic opportunity for everyone on the list. Having had the pleasure of face-to-face training by Paul, I’m confident it’ll be an extraordinary experience for all. Congratulations & good luck!
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
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!
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
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!
I can only follow up on Jimmy. I agree the last word. It can only be great. Good luck to all of you! And what a great act of you, Paul.
wow, Thanks Paul, It’s an honor.
thanks very much for the opportunity.
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.
It is an honor to be a part of this group. I am so excited for the opportunity.
Thank you Mr. Randal.
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
Thanks Paul for providing us this opportunity, it means a lot for me.
I put my best effort to make this opportunity count.
I wish all the members best of luck.
What an extraordinary chance! It is an honor to be part of this great adventure.
Thank you!
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.
Very coo, sir. Very cool.
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Nicely done Paul!! Congrats to everybody!! It’s going to be fantastic journey I’m sure!
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
Very cool Paul. You guys rock…
It’s like Oprah! Everybody wins!!!
I am really sad I missed the opportunity. I am sure I will get a chance one day. Optimistic! Wish you good luck everyone!
Paul – I hope it doesn’t mean that you’ll be blogging less! Excellent win for everyone on the list. Such a fantastic opportunity.
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.
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.
How did this go in the end? No end of year write up from what I can see
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!’.