WordCamp New Organizer Mentorship Program: Weeks 3 & 4 Update

Over the past 2 weeks we’ve made some awesome progress. Knowing that this program will be greatly organic, we’ll have numerous additions to existing systems vs. a bunch of new systems that may not ever get maintained.

By the way, here’s who’s in my rockin’ group:
Andrew Christian
Jeffrey Zinn
Ben Lobaugh
Dre Armeda

We noted that the main target of our program is a person that’s new to organizing events but already love WordPress. This fits the majority of new organizers.

Andrea joined our call and provided some guidance during week 3. She approved making some additions to the new organizer application form, which would include some prompts for the new organizer to seek out their mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues., and also to see if the new organizer will be one that may also become a mentor in the future. She’s also going to include some new questions and prompts during her first chat with a new organizer, making sure they know where to find a mentor.

We also discussed having a P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. set up for each WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. to provide a venue to officially communicate with one another and let the team or other organizers and mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. chime in. This could also house the cheat sheets per location (venue info, t-shirt vendors, sticker vendors, catering, maps, hotels, etc.).

Andrea created a P2 for WordCamp mentors already. We will share more about this and how it can be used in the future (we don’t have it quite flushed out yet, but know if will be really cool, fun, and useful).

In week 4 we started to put together the mentor guidelines, which include things like:

  • mentors must have organized at least 1 WordCamp before
  • 1-3 hours per week will be dedicated to supporting your mentee
  • willing to be rated by the mentee and to rate their mentee after the WordCamp
  • show the mentee where the top resources for planning reside
  • respecting that it’s the organizer’s camp, not the mentor’s
  • more coming…

And some mentee guidelines too, like:

  • make time to get some advice
  • still have your own ideas
  • and more…

We’re creating a bunch of docs like:

  • Organizer exit interview (will you be a mentor? how did your mentor do?)
  • Mentor application (Will Andrea review this? We’ll have to make sure this is ok with her.)
  • Mentor rating poll
  • Mentee rating poll

In the near future we’ll begin curating the list of resources for new organizers, so that mentors can share this with their mentees.

All for now – thanks for listening 🙂

#organizer-mentorship-program