Andrea Middleton 8:14 pm on January 12, 2017
Tags: community-mentors ( 4 ), community-team ( 173 )

Support for Community Team Mentors

According to @brandondove‘s excellent mentorship program report at today’s meeting, we have 27 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. volunteering 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. in total, with 19 people actively mentoring WordCamps. We hope to have a crowd of new deputies join the ranks once we launch the new 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. training materials early this year.

Both now and in the future, it’s been suggested that deputies could benefit from more peer support and communication with other deputies. Some suggestions for ways to put deputies more closely in touch with each other have included:

weekly meetings in #community-team slackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.
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. hangouts
a private slack channel for deputies on wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ slack
a public #community-mentors channel on wordpress.org slack
DM groups on wordpress.org slack

Do you have a suggestion, preference, comment, or concern? Let’s discuss!

Andrea Middleton 8:19 pm on January 12, 2017

In case you didn’t scroll all the way down in the last SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. link, here’s more of that discussion which is pertinent to this topic: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/community-team/p1484251956001136
Jenny 8:36 pm on January 12, 2017

I’m very against private channels, but understand peopel need to feel safe to speak up and say what’s on their mind.

I would prefer a public #community-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. channel on wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ slackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. + weekly support hours inside the same channel.

This would help in reducing the backlog noise that. a 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. has to go through to see things they truely want to read.

Intentionally not calling it meetings because it seems too formal and it makes it feel like you *have* to attend the meeting.
Francesca Marano 9:40 pm on January 12, 2017

weekly meetings in #community-team slackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..

Yes please. And I agree with @miss_jwo on not calling them Meetings. Let’s call them chat like other teams!

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. hangouts.

Yes please. We have new 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., experienced mentors, retired mentors, candidate mentors. Let’s hangout and help each others out 🙂

a private slack channel for 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 wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ slack

I agree that public is always better, but I also think that there are some issues that need to be discussed discretely and as a group. Instead of just writing in private to one more experienced mentor we could brainstorm solutions together: this would also create a knowledge base for all the mentors how to reactReact React is a JavaScript library that makes it easy to reason about, construct, and maintain stateless and stateful user interfaces. https://reactjs.org/. if some situations presents themselves in their Camps.

0.2 cents
The idea of having a weekly chat is mostly to get into the habit of having one 🙂
No one needs to attend all the chats, no one is expected to. But having a time, a place and an agenda makes people feel responsible to show up and do stuff. It is easier to check in on projects, streamline procedures, etc… We are a global, remote team and having weekly stand-ups could be a way to be more aware of what we are working on as a team.

My feeling is that it worked great for the Polyglots: the weekly chat, the global translation day, both helped with the team building and the general project management.

A global team
As you all pointed out, we are a global team, spread on I don’t know how many time-zones. It’s basically impossible to find a time slot that can work for everyone. I think rotation, as proposed on the chat, is definitely worth a try for a couple of months. Then we will probably could have 2 different chats for US/EU and Asia/EU.
Francesca Marano 1:56 pm on July 4, 2018

@andreamiddleton I would like to revive this discussion.
The group of 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. 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. is getting bigger also thanks to some active outreach, and we could all benefit from sharing more information.

I would like to move on with the following:
1. Create a private #wordcamp-mentors channel. Although I agree doing things in public is always the best, I think we need a safe space to discuss delicate issues. The issues that don’t need a private discussion can still be discussed in #community-team
2. Hold a monthly chat in the #community-events channel to encourage existing and potential WordCamp organisers to benefit from mentorship even if they don’t have a 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. assigned. I am available to host those chats

It’s very important that we communicate the second point to all the WordCamps that are underway and all those that were held in 2017 and 2018. Maybe some of them are hesitant about repeating the event for reasons and brainstorming with other organisers might help them decide.
- Andrea Middleton 7:15 pm on July 16, 2018
  
  @francina I’m going to take these in reverse order:
  
  2. I’m fully on board with trying out a monthly chat to help organizers who don’t have a 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. — thanks for suggesting it AND offering to host! 🙂 If it’s not well-attended after 2-3 months, we can always try another approach.
  
  1. I agree that private channels can create a safe space for 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. to discuss delicate issues. In the past when we’ve tried this (I’ll admit it was back in 2014, and using Skype), it turned into a high-volume chat room with very little real content (sensitive or otherwise). In the end, I think engagement went *down* — and it was awkward to take people out of the chat if they became inactive. :/ Do you think that communication in public is the actual blocker, or is it possible the blocker is something else?

Welcome!

Get Involved

Let’s Talk

Learn More

Support for Community Team Mentors

Welcome!

Get Involved

Let’s Talk

Learn More

Share this: