[Caminol10n] Mentorship for new teams

[Marcello Testi]

Tonight I looked at the list of people registered to cl10n.rwx.it and  
started taking notes on a spreadsheet. Since I see a regular flow of  
new registrations, I was curious about what we could do.

Well, the good news is that there are 7 languages (that are not part  
of the current Camino ML package) with at least 2 people registered  
and not "on hiatus". That's room for improvement, I'd say!
The bad news is that these people haven't showed up at all with  
something done, even partial; that lead me to think something must be  
in the way, kind of intimidating. I can't really say; maybe localizing  
a Cocoa app isn't as trivial as one might expect, or (surely)  
something must be fixed in the documentation we provide. Digging the  
reasons is beyond my intentions and my available resources, so I had  
this weird idea...

ADOPT A NEW LANGUAGE TEAM

It's a sort of mentorship program where existing localizers (on  
voluntary basis) pick one of the enough-populated potential teams and  
guide its members through the initial tasks, on the technical and  
organizational side.
I guess the main focus in this mentorship is more social than  
technical: the tech burden can be shared using the mailing-list; what  
really makes a point is putting an act together.
New potential localizers have 2 steep disadvantages to overcome: they  
don't know each other and they don't know much of the technical stuff.  
Existing localizers can provide confidence about feasibility of all  
things technical and introduce the new people to the teamwork practice  
we're already used to.

I still haven't figured out all the details, but the thing sounds like  
it could work. I'm interested in hearing opinions and hopefully  
several applications from existing localizers.

Thanks.
Ciao.
Marcello.