Mentor with your tech skills : here are few choices and my experience.

I have been volunteering on and off in past few years.
Here are the avenues I have had in the past,  to share my expertise and skills:-
1) Google summer of code
2) Google Code-in
3) In coppell-ISD schools for Engineering week, Sharktank, Science fair,  IBM gigawatt camp e.t.c
4) getMAGIC


I have been volunteering for many other organisations as well like Vibha, AID (Association for India's development), Systers but today I want to talk about the opportunities where I was able to share my technical skills and learn and grow in the process.

My IBM-ISD mentoring sessions have been mostly event based but I totally love to get into the class meet the students in person and get infected by their enthusiasm and innocence.

My GSOC( google summer of code)  and GCI (google code in) has been equally enjoyable but in some sense it's been a little different. I don't get to meet my students but we work together like we would in a office setting but we work towards a humanitarian open source project..which is what makes it soo cool! Not only are you mentoring .. your work is actually being used for a good cause!!!
These are time-lined volunteering assignments ( in summer vacation or winter vacation for students) and everything is do-able remotely ( which is super convenient). I love the humanitarian opensource aspect of this soo much that this year I am organizing (actually co-chairing)  the Grace Hopper Conference Open Source Day ( GHC-OSD-2016).

My Magic mentor has been a very exquisite one. I got assigned a student in bay area and I started meeting her weekly (remotely over skype or gchat) and we made a personal connection. My assumption were soon shattered since she proved out to be a very mature, tech-savvy, hands-on little lady who did not need the "get-started" links for programming. She already had done a arduino project and this time we wanted to do a more advance complex and artistic project. We went ahead on that journey and how much a learned about this new generation of technology at their tips is incredible!!
I am looking forward to meeting her and helping her with her final presentation on magic project (and I guess I will updated the post once I am done with that)

I highly encourage all of you to consider volunteering your tech skills as a mentor .. it's always an amazing experience. Choose based on the time commitments you can make and your passions and interest .. but do choose one!!

If you're also a woman in tech/STEM, and have considered volunteering, please feel free to ask me and don't hesitate to reach out to me with anything i can help you .. if we share the same passion then also lets get in touch :) would love to hear from you.

How to start managing your offering?? by understanding your product/offering

How do you go about understanding where you stand??
ANALYSIS!!!


If you are wondering on to manage your product/offering.
Here are the questions you need to ask (hope this serves as a template for you) :-
1) What all do you offer to customers in that product/offering?  lets call it offering XYZ ?
2) How easy it is for customer who has some idea that he/she is interested in XYZ ?
3) How easy it is for customer to find everything related to XYZ ?
4) What are others ( competitors) offering in the field of XYZ ?
5) What are the gaps in XYZ offering as compared to competitors?
6) Are those gaps worth chasing?
7) What is the scope of improving current offering XYZ?
8) What else do customer demand or ask for when they order XYZ?
9) What are the pain points for customers of XYZ?
10) What is the data related to customer orders ( time , location, price points, industry, motivation  e.t.c ) regarding XYZ orders
11) Return on investment on the changes you want top bring
12) Cost to company of the not doing bringing those changes or of bringing those changes (resources, time, finances, marketing, reputation, e.t.c.)
13) growth rate
14) market predictions
15) domain knowledge and data around that domain
16) adaptability of the customer
17) what could replace your offering ? any threat of becoming obsolete?
18) customers drivers(motivation) and restraints when their think about XYZ
19) are there any compliance issues regarding XYZ that you solve (can solve)
20) and probably the most important one .. User experience!!
21) Benchmark your offerings