Diversity Outreach, Existing Groups

We talked awhile back about reaching out to existing groups working in this area to see where we could partner in an effort to increase diversity in the wp community (and esp in the contributor community). I’ve started putting out feelers/emailing organizations and setting up calls to discuss possibilities like workshops, support, etc. This past week I contacted a handful, but would like to officially take suggestions of groups that you know of that are working to bring more underrepresented groups (re gender, age, dis/ability, race, you name it) into tech, open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL., blogging, dev, or any related area. Don’t be afraid to think outside these areas, too — I contacted a girls rock band program, for example, because posting their songwriting efforts and having a revision history, having a musician’s website, and having audio and video playlists could all enhance the existing program.

Post your suggestions in the comments (with links, please, and if you happen to know someone there, mention that and I’ll pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” you for contact info), and I’ll add them to this to-do list to contact to see if they’d be interested in working with us on anything. I’ll also create a page with a status table so we can keep track of them on an ongoing basis. If you’re interested in acting as the liaison with a specific project, mention that as well. Suggestions can be for groups that work locally, nationally, internationally, whatever, but should be non-profits, not private businesses.

I’ll start the list:

Let’s hear some suggestions!

#diversity, #partnerships

Team Chat, April 24, 2014

Topic: Contributor recognition, .org sites

Agenda: Updates re activity in this area.

  • Profiles
  • Survey
  • Theme directory Featured page
  • Other? Add it in comments.

#agenda

Contributor Experience Survey

It’s short, and none of the questions are mandatory. Please post, tweet, tell your co-contributors/community members via any/all communication methods. Thanks. Here’s the link: http://wordpressdotorg.polldaddy.com/s/wordpress-contributor-experience-poll

#community-management

Meetup.com Update — April 24, 2014

Good news on the meetup.com front: the personnel change that had us in flux has turned out to be a good thing. Now that Laura at Meetup.com is handling the chapter program, she has agreed to let us do existing group roll-ins monthly rather than quarterly. This is great news, because the once-every-3-months thing was a pain in butt logistically, and sometimes meant that dues came up for renewal before the next roll-in (though meetup.com has generally been good about prioritizing people in that situation). With this new schedule, we can keep forward momentum going a lot easier from the moment someone applies to join the program.

Emails were sent from meetup.com to everyone on the current quarterly roll-in list. So far in this round, these meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. groups have been added to the WordPress account:

These groups were sent the opt-in form at the same time by meetup.com on 4/21 but have not yet responded.

#meetup-com, #meetups-2

GSoC Students Accepted

I’m very pleased to announce this year’s cohort of Google Summer of Code students. We’ll be working with 5 students for the summer, spanning several areas of the project. Please join me in congratulating the following students on their acceptance into the program:

  • Arian Allenson M. Valdez (secretmapper) — Working on GlotPress UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. and profiles with Yoav Farhi and Marko Heijnen as 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.
  • Gautam Gupta (gautamgupta) — Working on bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org. improvements with John James Jacoby and Stephen Edgar as mentors
  • Janneke Van Dorpe (avryl) — Working on front-end editing/content blocks with Gregory Cornelius and Aaron Jorbin as mentors
  • Nick Halsey (celloexpressions) — Working on adding custom menus to the customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. with Erick Hitter and Konstantin Obenland as mentors
  • Varun Agrawal (VarunAgw) — Working on SupportPress as a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party with Ian Dunn, Aaron Campbell, and Alex Mills as mentors

Once we’ve had a meeting with each of the students and their mentoring teams, a revised scope will be published so the community can check out the proposed projects. Each student will post weekly updates to an appropriate team blog to keep everyone up to date and to get feedback:

  • Janneke and Nick will post their updates on /coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
  • Varun will post updates here on /community
  • Secretmapper will post updates to http://blog.glotpress.org/
  • Gautam will post updates to http://bbpdevel.wordpress.com/

We’ll set up some livestreamed prototype demos at midterm so everyone can see the projects in action. In the meantime, congratulations to all the students!

#gsoc, #gsoc2014

Meetup.com Status Update

The quarterly roll-in is a little behind. For some reason we didn’t get confirmation of our payment until April 8 (about a week later than expected), and the person who does the roll-ins of existing groups hasn’t been in touch (normally that happens immediately upon payment of the quarterly bill). I contacted that person and the person who runs the chapter program yesterday expressing my nervousness about the timing, especially since a couple of the groups joining the program had expiring dues and were marked in red on the spreadsheet. I’ll do everything I can to make sure no group has $$ trouble because of this delay.

There are 18 existing meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. waiting to be rolled in (some were from the last time who filled in the application so close to the end that they didn’t make it in that round). There are about half a dozen new meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. (no existing group) applications in process.

#meetup-com, #meetups-2

Meetup Orientation Hangouts Schedule

We’ll try a few different topics and time slots over the next couple of weeks to see what works best.

For organizers of existing groups who want to join the chapter account (or have questions because they’re not sure):

  • Wednesday, April 23, 2014 at 23:00 UTC (4pm Pacific, 7pm Eastern) Event page

For people who want to start a new group on the chapter account:

  • Tuesday, April 29, 2014 at 17:00 UTC (10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern) Event page

#hangouts, #meetups-2, #orientations

Putting More Community in WCSF

Back in December, I proposed that instead of trying to recreate the 2012 community summit event, we try something different, and combine it with the official annual conference, 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. San Francisco (WCSF), for a variety of reasons (rather than restate those reasons now, I suggest re-reading that post). For the most part, people seemed to like the idea (as seen in comments), but there were a few people who did not like the idea, citing various concerns, so I tabled the discussion rather than start a big debate right before the holidays. Un-tabling!

The community summit in 2012 was an experiment on my part as to what an annual event could look like that centered on discussions rather than lectures (which fill the annual WCSF program). There were a lot of positive aspects to the event, in line with what was expected. However, there were some negative effects as well:

  • It was not intended to split the community into having to choose which annual event they attended, but that was an unexpected —and undesirable — outcome.
  • The invite-only-based-on-somewhat-subjective-factors and private nature of the event, while kind of awesome for those who were there and necessary given some of the contentious problems in the community at that time, was non-open and alienating to those who weren’t invited, the antithesis of the WordPress project’s stated values.  ← This one’s really, really important.
  • Quite a number of people who normally went to WCSF did not go after going to the summit due to the need to limit the number of trips they took.

To that end, I’m proposing that instead of organizing another retreat-based, invite-only event at a separate time/place than the annual conference, we expand the annual conference to be more than just lectures. As I handed the WCSF planning mantle off to Andrea Middleton in 2012, I’ve been talking with her and Matt Mullenweg about how we could improve the WCSF event to incorporate some of the good things from the 2012 summit to make WCSF a true annual community event. Here’s the proposal:

  • Instead of doing a full contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. at the Automattic office as we have in the past, do a contributor series in the downstairs room at Mission Bay on the 2nd programmed day (Sunday) while blogger-centric content is on stage upstairs (with a break for all to see Matt do SOTW).
  • Add an open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project community conversations day in addition to the lecture-driven days. Have a separate registration like with previous contributor days and use advance communication to make it clear this is aimed at professionals/contributors rather than casual users, but don’t use an application process with rejections. This could be either before or after the programmed days, though am leaning toward after.

With these two changes, WCSF would be the same amount of time it has been for years — 3 days — but would have more interactivity built into those days for people involved with the project than we’ve had in the past.

In addition, I would have us set up an extra 2 days for contributor teams to work together and talk about their goals, and to talk to other teams. Needless to say, this would be optional, but anyone deemed necessary to the team should be able to attend regardless of finances via the scholarship program. This brings us to 5 days. Both Andrea and Matt were amenable to this plan for WCSF this year — knowing that whatever we do this year we will learn from and iterate on in the future — so I’d like to address the concerns raised by Siobhan and others.

  • A week is too long, people will burn out. Yep, it’s a long time! We’re talking about 5 days, not 7, but even so, it is more than a weekend (though people just interested in the csummit-style conversations, not the contributor team working days, would still be at only 3 days like always). That said, I surveyed 2 dozen other open source project and industry conferences, and 5 days was actually pretty average. Events like OSCON and SXSW lasting 5 days is an overwhelming week, to be sure, but in this case, since our formats would be shaken up every day or two, and the contributor days are basically chill co-working time, I think it will be manageable. When we used to do coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook., those were always a week. Coming to a 2-3 day event for people flying from very far away is also exhausting, so either way there’ll be some people who are less comfortable based on length of event. For the record, I get overwhelmed at events myself. I try to fake it, but ask Matt the number of times I’ve texted him from an event citing anxiety, or been caught reading a book on kindle for iphone in an afterparty corner. I’m not exempt from the burnout concern, and take it seriously. Also, people can always retreat away from the events as needed to take care of themselves (as long as it’s to take care of themselves, and not just because they’re hung over. 🙂 )
  • People coming in early will feel left out. Based on feedback, the idea would most likely be to do the unconference and contrib days after the regular Mission Bay event. No one would be turned away for the unconference, so that “not welcome” thing would not be an issue. For the contributor team days, by then we’d be getting to midweek, so it would be unlikely for a lot of extra people to still be hanging around town, but in any case, we can let each team decide who should be there for that.
  • San Francisco is expensive. Yes, it truly is. The cost of SF lodging is high, but when compared to flights + airport transfers for two separate events, in most cases it’s a wash. In any case, most of the people concerned have employers foot the bill or would be eligible for a travel scholarship. The travel scholarships worked really well at the summit, and while yes, Tybee was cheap and I got us some great discounts there, we have the money to cover SF travel for those who need it.
  • We can’t discuss issues with WordCamps/WCSF if it’s at WCSF because Andrea is the organizer. I think we can all be grownups, and I know that Andrea is always up for suggestions to make the program better.
  • Using Automattic’s space is a conflict of interest. I don’t know if we’d even stick with that space for everything (renting a place with multiple rooms might be better), but I disagree with this idea. The Automattic space is used for open events all the time, and again, we’re all grownups. If we do use the space I personally guarantee that freedom of speech re Automattic would be there, no one needs to censor themselves. The people that censor themselves about that stuff do it wherever Matt is (it even happened at the summit, frankly), the room is not the real issue.
  • Time Zone not EU-traveler friendly. Would I love it if the annual conference moved each year so the burden could be better distributed? Yes, and this could be a step toward that goal if it goes well. In the meantime, skewing US isn’t about ethnocentrism, it’s about numbers (majority) of contributors and businesses based in in the western hemisphere, and the 1-trip-vs-2-trips thing.
  • USA is not visa-friendly for some countries. This is definitely true. I’m ready to start working now with people who were rejected in the past, as well as with the consulate to try and get a couple of key people here. But there will undoubtedly still be a couple who don’t make it for one reason or another. This sucks, and we’d work as hard as we could to get people here who should be. Moving the annual conference in the future to a new place each year (a la Drupalcon) would address this if we can make it happen in the future, but so does having other big events like WC Europe, which wound up functioning last year as kind of a counterpart to the SF event.
  • Ignores the things team reps cited as summit must-haves at the post-wcsf dinner last year. Yep, some of them. I was one of the people who thought those things were must-haves, too (like a cozy location that enables random conversations, a size limit, etc), but when I sat down to think about the goals of the summit (and the overall project) and what was necessary vs what was enjoyable, I had a hard time justifying  the tradeoffs. Anyone can organize an offsite retreat for an invite-only group, but unless it is just for a specific level of contributors, I don’t think it’s appropriate for the project to do so because otherwise the criteria for inclusion would necessarily be at least somewhat subjective.

At the very least, I think it is worth trying it this way; if it feels like there’s a still a big hole after the event, we can revisit. That said, this is what I think is right for the project, and where I think the energy should be focused right now re annual events. If someone else believes an invite-only retreat-style event is necessary for the project’s success, I wouldn’t stand in the way of someone else taking that on and pitching their ideas to Matt.

We can discuss this proposal in the team chat today.

#community-summit, #contributor-meetup, #events-2, #wcsf, #wcsf2014

Team chat agenda for today WordCamp conferences focused…

Team chat agenda for today, 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./conferences-focused meeting.

  • WCSF/contributor meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook.

@andreamiddleton: What else do you want on the agenda for today? Does anyone else have things related to WordCamps/conferences to discuss with the team?

#agenda

GSoC Update — De-duplication Period

We are now in the de-duplication period of the GSoC application process. This means we’ve submitted to Google our choices for which students we’d like to work with over the summer, as have the other 189 mentoring organizations, and now we’re in the process of figuring out which students should work where, in cases where a student was accepted by more than one project. We are not allowed to say anything about whom we’ve chosen until Google announces the accepted students, as the de-duprication period often shakes up those lists.

As each organization contacts other organizations and the students in question and choices are made, organizations that “lose” a student get to choose another to fill the slot. This can lead to a new duplication, which is why nothing gets announced until there are no remaining duplications. This process will last until Friday, April 18th, when the final de-duplication meeting will happen in IRC at #gsoc at 19:00 UTC.

Based on the outcome of that meeting, the official student list will be announced by Google on Monday, April 21, and at that point the community bonding period begins. If we don’t have any duplication issues, we’ll be accepting six GSoC students this year, but the final number won’t be set until that last de-duplication. When Google announces, we’ll announce our student/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. matchups on our own team blogs as well.

#gsoc2014