Collaboration / Mentoring

[Steve W]

There has been much discussion with no clear definitions. What are your definitions of the 2 words in the title? Is there a difference between the 2?

NOTE: This is not a discussion on whether one is better than the other but just what your definition is.

[Peter Matteson]

Mentoring - teaching a young/rookie team what they need to know to compete and enjoy themselves in a FIRST competition. Also helping a young/rookie team when they work themselves into a corner. Talking them off the ledge at crunch time. Helping to make sure they have a robot that works when it ships. Can be, but is not necessarily, accomplished through colaboration.

Collaboration - co-development of a system or component for a robot between 2 or more teams

[Jack Jones]

Anyone who's reffed with me knows (have even remarked) that I'm a black-and-white kind of guy. I don't like when stuff gets made up on the spot. So, irrespective of what ever comes from this thread, I will agree with Webster:

Main Entry: 1men·tor
Pronunciation: 'men-"tor, -t&r
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from Greek MentOr
1 capitalized : a friend of Odysseus entrusted with the education of Odysseus' son Telemachus
2 a : a trusted counselor or guide b : TUTOR, COACH

Main Entry: col·lab·o·rate
Pronunciation: k&-'la-b&-"rAt
Function: intransitive verb
Inflected Form(s): -rat·ed; -rat·ing
Etymology: Late Latin collaboratus, past participle of collaborare to labor together, from Latin com- + laborare to labor
1 : to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor
2 : to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one's country and especially an occupying force
3 : to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not immediately connected

[Alan Anderson]

I do not see a productive reason to discuss personal definitions of words which are already in the dictionary. No debate should be necessary on this topic.

[Joe J.]

I would say that mentoring is when a team HELPS another team whether it be with fund raising/sponsorship, team organization, machining, design advise, giving materials, even help start the other team. The way I think mentoring works is it's sort term, by this I mean that one team helps another team for a year to a few years then hopefully that mentored team will be well enough off to mentor their own team, and hopefully both teams can continue to be friends and help each other out when and if help is needed.


As for Collaboration I would say its when two or more teams WORK TOGETHER to improve BOTH teams, whether it be co-designing & building all or part of the robots, gaining sponsors that both teams share. I see collaboration as a long term situation, where the teams work together for most of their competition years. (I know some collaborations may only last a year or two) But for the most part it would seem that teams that collaborate would continue to do so, especially if it worked well for them.

[rourke]

Originally Posted by Steve W

Is there a difference between the 2?

Steve,

This is definitely a much more insightful question than it may appear on the surface. The crafty way in which you’ve worded your question almost makes me sense that you’re warming up to expanding your collaborative outlook!

Why do I say that? Firstly, Section 8.3 of the FIRST Mentoring Guide, entitled “Transferring Ownership”, breaks the Mentoring process into 4 Steps:

I Do, You Watch
I Do, You Help
You Do, I Help
You Do, I Watch

Secondly, Collaboration is defined by Merriam-Webster as “to work jointly or together especially in an intellectual endeavour” (my dictionary uses Canadian spelling)

You can do both of these things within teams, AND you can do both of these things between teams. In both cases, you are mentoring. In both cases you are collaborating.

Nice catch Steve! (Now you can get back to your collaboration plans with a clear conscience)

[rufu5]

The most up to date dictionary on the internet says:

1. Mentor

A person who works in a call center, usually a lifer who has --for reasons unknown to the common man-- not been fired yet and has been deemed somehow superior to other call center agents. His job is either to rove or answer the mentor line. Roving mentors walk around the call center waiting for desperate agents to flag them down, sometimes involving the embarassing process of waving some sign or doing a chicken dance, in order to get help with resolving a customer issue. Mentor line mentors take calls from other call center agents and attempt to talk them through customer issues while the customer is on hold. You can't call the memtor line unless you have someone on hold, but you can get around that by dialing someone else, dialing the mentor line, then hanging up the first dialed line.
Also:
1) The illest town on the south shore of Erie
2) The home of the world's largest annual bonfire (read: marsh fire )
3) Home of Cow-Tipping Olympics

1. collaborate

To work together.

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