Be a MENTOR — Byte Battle

Coach • Don’t Code

  • Orientation: Online, 90 min
  • Pre-hack: any 2 of Dec 1/3/5
  • Event: Dec 6–7 (full days)
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Mentor guiding a student team
Coach
Fairly

Your Role & Responsibilities

Purpose

Coach students to scope, build, and demo a minimum viable product in 2 days.

Guide thinking; don’t write their code.

Time Commitment

  • Orientation (online, 90 min).
  • Pre-hack sessions: attend at least 2 of 3 (Dec 1/3/5).
  • Event days: both full days (Dec 6–7).

Before the Event

  • Join comms groups; share a reachable phone/DM.
  • Review starter repos and test a local run.
  • Read the rubric and checkpoint criteria.
  • Declare any conflicts of interest.

Pre-Hack Sessions (your role)

  • Run a 10-min stand-up per team: user, success metric, done, blockers, next 2 tasks.
  • Check a small “hello stack” demo runs.
  • Help teams cut scope to an MVP (one core workflow).

Event-Day Duties

  • Keep teams on timeboxes (90–120 min) and end each with a demo.
  • Checkpoint-1 (Day-1): core flow works; risks noted.
  • Checkpoint-2 (Day-2): accessibility basics + README ready; video plan set.
  • Be nearby during judging; stay neutral and silent unless asked.

Do ✅

  • Ask questions, break work into tasks, insist on demos and docs.
  • Encourage accessibility (labels, keyboard nav, contrast).

Don’t ❌

  • No hands on student keyboards/repos; no pasting your snippets.
  • No prebuilt projects or paid/private APIs.
  • Don’t over-focus on one team; be fair.

AI & Integrity

  • Students may use AI with disclosure and must explain kept code.
  • Mentors must not supply AI-generated code blocks for copy-paste.

Escalation & Safety

  • If blocked >15–20 min, post in the help channel and tag the Track Lead.
  • Report conduct/safety issues to the Ops Lead immediately; log the incident.

Coaching Tips (quick)

  • “Who is the user? What job are they doing?” (clarify purpose)
  • “Show me the smallest demo that proves it works.” (MVP first)
  • “Narrate the code line by line.” (rubber-ducking)
  • Define Done: repo clones cleanly & runs from README on another laptop.

Light Documentation

  • README (setup, run, demo steps)
  • Routes/data sketch (brief)
  • 2-min demo video (screen + voice-over)

Recognition

LoR/certificates depend on attendance, ~10+ hours, fair coaching, and positive team feedback.

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