Actually, my primary point (at least in retrospect) is about mentorring. I think it's pretty obvious that the best way to get people involved in something is through personal interaction. The problem as it stands is that there's not a strong system of mentoring for people joining the community. There's not just one or two people you can go to who will invest serious time and energy helping you "get it", whatever "it" is.

The problem is just compounded for minorities. If it's hard to find someone to mentor you when you're a member of a huge majority, imagine how much harder it is for someone in a minority.

The problem isn't that all the mentoring people are too busy mentoring to take on new students, rather it's that no one is really facilitating getting the two together. The question then is: how do we do that? How do we say, "Hey, if you have a question or concern, feel free to ask X about it."?

Thomas