The goal of Platform Agnostic is to give participants a better chance of succeeding in consumer technology. While the bulk of your time will be spent with your mentor, learning the ropes of an often insular business, you’ll also be added to a Slack community to interact with other participants and learn from mentors other than your own. For now, we have no set plans to host workshops or seminars, but when we have the right experts for relevant topics, we hope to host some when we think it will be helpful. Program directors will also be available to guide participants and share useful resources.
Mentors are expected only to commit about an hour a week, which is flexible based on their and their mentee’s schedules. This is not a rigid requirement, it will be up to mentors and their matches to work out how and when to communicate. The hour goes towards giving feedback to your mentee, being available for consultation/advice with the goal of helping your mentee learn the ropes and ultimately get published.
Successful applicants will each be matched with a mentor that’s most suitable to their career goals. The program lasts six months and we will provide mentors with guidance on how best to support and coach their mentees with the aim of getting them published in a major consumer tech outlet.
Mentees will also have access to other program participants via the Platform Agnostic Slack. Mentors have the option to join the Slack to interact with and help other mentees as well, if they have the bandwidth for it. Program directors will also be available to guide mentors and mentees throughout.
In time, we hope to host workshops and seminars on pertinent topics like how to investigate a story or write headlines, led by experts in each area. For this first iteration of the program, though, there are no firm plans for that yet.