Being a SEED mentor…

If you ever read Katy Dickinson’s blog you’ll know she manages the Sun Engineering Enrichment & Development (SEED) mentorship program.

According to the SEED website:

SEED is Sun Engineering’s world wide employee mentoring program. SEED program participants are expected to rise to the top of Sun Engineering’s individual contributor or management ranks. Greg Papadopoulos (Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development) is SEED’s executive sponsor.

I hadn’t been involved in the program previously at all, although the last two rounds I’ve considered joining the program to enjoy the experience of being mentored, however I was surprised, and flattered, to find that someone had requested that I should be their mentor this round.

And so I find that I’ve been chosen as a SEED mentor and after an introductory conversation (lasting the good part of an hour and a few emails) we’ve jointly decided that it is a good match and to go forward.

Not having been a SEED mentor before I’m hoping to learn lots more about the program and that as well as being an effective mentor I also improve as a mentor too.

The person who asked that I be their mentor specifically wants to focus on ‘Architecture’; something I’m more then happy to do, especially when it comes to genuine, real-world and implementable systems.

My ideal achievement would be improving the awareness, knowledge and experience of architecture of the person I’m mentoring; I aim to produce a body of ‘architecture’ training material which can be used to rapidly ‘onboard’ people to ‘architecture’ from experience of having been a mentor.

I’m going to try and keep an informal diary of my experiences during my time as a SEED mentor looking at ‘architecture’ and will share my experiences of the SEED programme on this blog as well.

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