The RSE community has a broad range of experience in a wide variety of disciplines. We are keen to give RSEs who are early in their career the opportunity to give talks, present posters, host panels, lead workshops, deliver walkthroughs, and to share their unique experiences with the wider community. We recognise that many early-career RSEs may not yet have experience of presenting at conferences, in particular RSE-specific rather than discipline-specific events. In order to make each of their events as successful as possible, we plan to offer the opportunity for those who feel they would benefit from it to be mentored by a more experienced member of the community. To enable this, we are looking for volunteers from the RSE community who have experience of delivering events, and who would be willing to mentor one or more RSEs in preparation for RSECon2022.

Responsibilities

The exact nature of the mentorship will depend on the needs of the mentee, but some likely activities may include:

  • Casting a constructive eye over a draft of the material and offering feedback
  • Acting as an audience for a dry run of the material and giving suggestions
  • Answering questions and sharing experience of similar events

Importantly, the mentor will not be assessing or otherwise vetting the material to be presented. All mentees’ submissions will already have gone through the same peer review process as all other RSECon2022 submissions, and have been accepted to be presented. The key responsibility of the mentor is to build the mentee’s confidence and help them feel ready to deliver their event at RSECon2022.

Time commitment

Again, the exact time requirements will vary depending on the needs of the mentee, but we would ask potential mentors to budget for at least the following:

  • Reading a draft of the presentation materials (~30 minutes)
  • A handful of emails backward and forward with suggestions, feedback, and answers to questions (~1 hour)
  • At least one meeting (likely via videoconference) to discuss in more detail (~1 hour)

(Timings may potentially be longer for workshops due to their longer format.)

The bulk of this time will need to be available between 31 May (when successful submitters are notified of the acceptance of their submission) and 9 August (when presentation materials need to be uploaded to the conference management system), although it is possible that some mentees will want to continue discussing as the conference approaches.

How to contribute

If you would like to offer your time to support a less experienced presenter in preparing for RSECon2022, please fill out the Mentoring sign up form.