My problem is the following: I have quite a bit of knowledge and I like to help, but have no idea how to start actually being a mentor. I've "mentored" quite a few programmers in reverse-engineering, but it's never been a formal thing, just helping out from time to time. I guess these are the questions I have:

  What are the responsibilities of a mentor?
  Is this relationship more like a teacher-student relationship or like a senior team member bringing on someone new?
  How long does this typically last?  (Formally, at least -- I'd imagine that if the process works out well, the relationship will likely continue past the end)
  What sort of time is dedicated to this?

This is something I'm very interested in, just don't quite have all the information I need to jump into such a commitment.

It is totally up to the Mentor to decide on the level of engagement with a given Protege. The type of engagement is usually determined by the problem the Protege is trying to solve OR a plan/goal he is trying to validate. It could be one time or a periodic affair. The end justifies the means in a Mentor-Protege relationship. A long-lasting synergistic relationship is the ideal case scenario and we would love to enable that.

I think this is an interesting concept, but man, making a mentorship match is HARD. You have to really hit it off with the person, on more of a personal level than anything at first. Then the rest works out. I'll be interested to hear some real feedback once you've made some matches. Please do give us a followup in a few months.

We agree, it is a challenging problem to solve and we find that exciting. We will share our progress with HN...

It's a nice idea; I hope it works. Dear god how I could use a business mentor.

Funny that I few days ago I was thinking about this idea of "peer mentorship". You see, in a typical mentor-protege relationship (like in this site, which is great if it works btw) there's a hierarchy: the mentor advises the protege in a one-way street.

My idea is having connections between two people on the same level, so that they both help each other. So if HN is a gym, this would be like having a personal trainer (and being a trainer for somebody).

Rather than specialized domain or expert advise, this would be more for things like getting a new and honest opinion about ideas/implementations etc, prodding the other person to action (you skipped exercising this week again?!) etc.

I see many ways why this wouldn't work (most people won't 'click' between each other etc) but for instance I would benefit from chatting once a week or a month with someone who's following what I'm doing and vice versa.

Let me mentor you in not making arbitrary text blue. It looks like a hyperlink when it's not and makes me frustrated.

In fact upon a second glance I notice that _some_ of the blue text is hyperlinked. Impossible to tell because your stylesheet overrides my browser settings which call for underlined links and the above color issue.

You should have a nice small diagram or paragraph explaining what your "smart matching solution" is. (That was the "link" which initially frustrated me.) Seems like I have to fill out a form and wait for a sales person -- wait, "Nuron" -- to call me back. Instead I just close the tab.

Can you provide more to assure us this isn't a data collection scam?

Good luck!

Good idea. Consider offering it to organisations that have mentoring programmes.

My old university has an alumni mentoring scheme, but the web app that does the matching is so broken that not many people use it.

Thanks for the idea, we have discussed this in the past and we needed more validation, this helps :)

Cool. I've always wanted a programming mentor. I work in a really small software company in which I find a lack of standardized software practices. Not that it is bad, but I would love to discover the other side of the spectrum through a mentor.

This is an interesting concept. I would like to see the quality of relationships that Nurall will be able to generate.Mentoring is a give/take relationship and is a Hard Problem to solve.

Well, yet another one of my website ideas in action. I wish I could pump them out a little faster.

Site looks alright, I'll be sure to check it out later tonight when I get home. (on the iPhone ATM)

This is a very simple site, it's all just WuFoo forms! Must've taken less than a week to design and go live. Smart.

Who's Nuron? Play on words?

Nuron (sounds like Neuron) is our Mentor/Protege Communications Manager and Yes his name is derived from Nurall (sounds like Neural) :)