Tuesday #daily updates

Tuesday #daily-updates

Budget Bottlenecks

One of the bottlenecks that has been mentioned repeatedly by both deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. and organizers is the process around WC budgets. The biggest issues as I’ve heard them:

  • Only Cami/Josepha can create/share a new budget doc, deputies can’t.
  • Only Cami/Josepha have access to old budgets, deputies don’t and neither do new organizers unless the previous year organizer shared it to the new people.
  • Having to complete all financial planning (budget review/approval) before announcing a WC date slows things down and reduces the amount of time there is to recruit speakers, volunteers, sponsors, etc.

To address these issues, we’re going to change a few things.

First: Increased DeputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. Access & Authority

  • Cami is collecting all the old budgets we have into a folder. All deputies will have access to this folder, so they can pull up previous year budgets as needed.
  • Deputies should go ahead and create and share budget docs using the existing templates, and then save the budget docs to the new folder once you’ve been added to it.
  • Deputies do not need to have their budget approvals rubber-stamped by Cami/Josepha/etc. If you have been told you can be responsible for budget review, you can make that call. If there is a budget issue with a WC that you’re not sure about, you can get a 2nd opinion from other deputies in the #outreach channel. If it’s a really big budget issue that all deputies should weigh in on/be aware of, go ahead and post about it to this blog to start a discussion that’s not time-zone dependent.

Second: Public Budgets for All!

  • We want to have alllllll the old budgets publicly available, both from here and from individual WC sites. However, before we can embed them, we need to do a scrub to make sure old budgets don’t contain protected info (like email addresses, phone numbers, etc). We’ll work out a system for deputies to start scrubbing asap so we can make things public sooner rather than later. Once we’ve scrubbed the backlog, all budget docs in the new folder should be public by default (publicly viewable, not editable, of course).

Third: Change the Rules
This one is a proposal to change the current policy, not a task list. This would be a change from the current policy that requires all budgets to be approved before a WC can be announced.

  • For a 1st time organizer in a city that hasn’t had a WC before, or that had a WC that didn’t do well sticking to the budget in the previous year, keep the current process and get a definite signoff on the budget, making sure the organizer (and key members of their team who touch money — budget wranglerWrangler Someone, usually a person part of event organizing team, who looks after certain things like budget or sponsors., sponsor wrangler, etc) are informed and in a good place to pull off an event with a reasonable budget.
  • For a repeat organizer that did a good job in the previous year with the budget, or a new organizer in a city that had a WC with a good budget the previous year, remove the “approve budget” requirement to announce the event, and instead make “sign venue contract” the trigger milestone if the organizer agrees to stay within 10% of previous budget, or to ask for approval of expenses that would radically change the budget. Work out a system where deputies check in with WC organizers every week or two to see how things are going (previously called the 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. program), and include looking at the budget in those check-ins to catch such changes.

This basically boils down to: if there’s a budget from last year and they can keep costs about the same, don’t slow down announcing the event while collecting bids from caterers, etc. We’ll need to discuss this a bit more and come up with what we want the new policy to be officially.

Fourth: Better Budgets

  • We need a better budget template that has columns for estimated vs actual expenses so we can track how well WCs are sticking to their budgets (vs just overwriting numbers).

What do y’all think about these shifts and/or the policy change proposal? Weigh in in the comments!

cc @brandondove @kcristiano @karenalma @adityakane @camikaos @andreamiddleton @chanthaboune @mayukojpn @mario to weigh in on this, please. 🙂 Note: this is pinging existing WC deputies who’ve experienced the noted issues; not trying to exclude new deputies, just want to be sure to get input from the people who’ve been using the old processes.

#budgets, #wordcamps

Deputy Chats

The weekly team meeting on Thursdays (vs the office hoursOffice Hours Defined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time. for organizers to pop in and ask for stuff) is intended to be when all the deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. can get together and discuss issues real-time. As we expand the team, it seems that the percentage of deputies in the chat gets lower due to schedules and time zones. I’d like us to figure out a way for more deputies to be able to participate this way. Some possibilities:

  • Alternate meeting times so that one week is a good (or good enough) time for one side of the world, and the alternating week is a good time for the other side of the world. Pros: not so US-centric. Cons: Will still be inconvenient for a lot of people, and may be hard to remember which time meeting is happening (though you can set every other week gcal reminders).
  • Keep meeting as is (or another time that works for the majority), but post detailed notes immediately after, and consider the meeting to go on for another 24 hours in the comments before making any decisions. Pros: Easy to remember when meeting is, can probably get a quorum of deputies to attend. Cons: Will be biased toward the people whose schedules allow them to attend at that time in terms of real-time chat/connection, and decisions will be made by a subset rather than the whole group.
  • Continue weekly chats as is, but add a second chat at a time that is convenient for the opposite time zones, and have the people who missed the 1st chat get together and discuss the notes from it, and weigh in as a group on the summary thread. Pros: more opportunities for connection and discussion, more group opinions on decisions rather than individual one-offs. Cons: likely still weighted toward US because of where people live.
  • Continue weekly chats as is, but add a monthly chat that all deputies should attend, and rotate the time on the monthly chat so that it’s at a sucky time for different people each month. Pros: would get us at least a once per month group chat with everyone, and the inconvenience factor would be equal. Cons: saving things up for a once a month chat is not efficient, and having anyone do a meeting at 2 am is pretty terrible.

What do y’all think? Anyone have any good ideas?

#deputies, #agenda, #community-management, #meeting, #team-chat

Monday #daily updates

Monday #daily-updates

Sunday #daily updates

Sunday #daily-updates

Saturday #daily updates

Saturday #daily-updates

Friday #daily updates

Friday #daily-updates

Meeting notes for Community team chat on June 25, 2015

Link to meeting in Slack: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/outreach/p1435258867000006

Ian Dunn shared that the follow-up survey on WordCamp.org themes/templates is closed now, with a really good response rate, and he’ll be publishing the results in the next few days. The CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. importer is getting closer to a minimal viable product, and he hopes to launch it next week.

WordPress stickers have finally been ordered, and we’ll be shipping some stickers directly to WordCamps during the end of June/early July.

We discussed a standardized system of tagging for the Community SupportPress queue. There were no objections to the proposed component/priority/keyword structure. It was agreed that we shouldn’t be assigning tickets to people via tags; people should be assigning tickets to themselves and then following through.

If a ticket is labeled “Urgent” then that should mean that anyone who can answer it, should do so asap — before addressing the older tickets in that bucket.

We got hung up on how to handle location tags, though. Among the options:

  • hashtags (troublesome for 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.)
  • city name (variations on city name like Vegas/Las Vegas or Rio/Rio de Janeiro make this tricky)
  • unique ID in a meetup.com or FB URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org (these can be changed easily)
  • 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. subdomain (doesn’t really apply if there hasn’t been a wordcamp there yet)

We still need to come up with a solution for location tagging, as we did come even come close to finding consensus on this one. Jen aptly pointed out that we need a geo tag that references the overall community not just the 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. or WordCamp.

Suggested keywords (these are the actions that need to be taken):

needs-review
needs-vetting
needs-meeting
needs-payment
needs-signature
needs-site
needs-advice
escalate

Please weigh in on the question of location tags, if you have a solution you think will work. 🙂

#agenda, #community-management, #meeting, #meeting-notes

Swag Packs

Currently, Cami and Josepha have the ability to send swag packs to WCs and 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.: 100 or 200-count packs of mixed stickers and buttons, or 100-packs of lanyards. I’d like to propose some changes.

First! all the superdeputies will now be able to ship swag and lanyards to the WordCamps and meetups they are supporting. That’s @brandondove, @kcristiano, @adityakane, @karenalma, @mayukojpn (plus Cami, Josepha, Andrea, and me). Yay for speedier swag.

Second! Right now stuff is packed like this:

  • 200 buttons and stickers (each, in one shipment)
  • 100 buttons and stickers (each, in one shipment)
  • 100 lanyards

I propose that we change our swag options to be packs of 250 and 500 rather than 100 and 200. Even a small 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. or a 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. will go through 250 pretty easily. Since lanyards aren’t likely to get used up or distributed over the year at meetups, there’s no reason to send more than they need, so sticking with 100-packs makes sense.

What do y’all think?

(This is purely about packaging. What designs should be included will be coming up in the near future.)

#hellomerch, #swag, #wordcamps

Team Chat Agenda

In Thursday’s meeting, I hoped to:

  • get to a decision on a tagging scheme for supportpress
  • discuss any issues that have come up this week in the attempts to reduce the queue

.. but now I’m going to be helping to lead a workshop on diversity outreach at 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. Bridge at the same time as the chat. Hopefully, y’all can come to some general opinions on tagging, and then we can start training he new deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. on triage.

@andreamiddleton: can you lead the chat tomorrow and try to hit those two things (tags, new issues) among whatever else people want/need to discuss?

Everyone: if you want to add something to the agenda, drop a note in the comments.
Thanks!

#agenda, #community-management, #meeting