We are looking for industry mentors for the Imagine Cup competition!
Mentor, coach, guide, role model, advocate, mate... call it what you like. This is your chance
to team up with New Zealand's rising stars of IT. (Then snap them up!) Imagine Cup is designed
to promote networking between IT professionals, academics and students.
The involvement, guidance and networking opportunities with mentors are the highlight of the
competition from the student competitors' perspectives. It is for this very reason that mentors play an integral part in the Imagine
Cup competition.
Whatever they come up with, we want you to help them, guide them, share with
them your valuable skills, but not solve their problems. We know your time is precious too, so all we're
asking for is a 1-hour meeting with your team every fortnight. Unless you can't keep away, that is.
In return, mentors get to the chance to work with the best, young IT talent in NZ. If your
team succeeds and wins the NZ regional finals, you will accompany them to the World Wide Finals in Cairo,
Egypt in July 2009.
If you're interested or would like some more information, please
register here (https://imaginecup.com/Registration/Default.aspx)
or email icnz@microsoft.com.
If you are interested in becoming an Imagine Cup Mentor or would like more information on what mentoring involves, please email icnz@microsoft.com.
A mentor can have many roles including coach, guide, role model, advocate, and friend. In general, a mentor should help the students to work together efficiently as a team and act as a facilitator. A mentor can answer student questions, discuss issues they raise, remind students of upcoming deadlines, and suggest resources for problem solving. A mentor should be a good listener and should have a breadth of experience in the area of the invitational so that he or she can effectively discuss technical issues with students and refer students to resources. However, the mentor cannot do the student's work nor can the mentor solve the problems that confront the students.
The Imagine Cup NZ team will endeavour to find and match mentors to student teams. They will also evaluate a mentors expertise, personality and location and help with assigning them to the most suitable team.
Students will need to find an academic mentor from their own institution. As many institutions have had students participating in Imagine Cup, we have also had many academics that have been mentors and are interested in mentoring again this year.
It really depends on the mentor, the team and the type of project. For a "business" mentor, majority of the time will be spent defining the project. For a technical mentor, the design and development step will require more time. As a guideline, a mentor should spend an hour meeting with their team every fortnight. Again, it depends on the team's needs and the project progression. Planning a project effectively always means that both mentors and students get the most out of their time spent on the project.
Industry Mentors can guide only one team. Academic Mentors can guide multiple teams from their institution.
