Recap written by @sheilagomes
This is the recap of the the first Diversity Outreach Speaker Training meeting, which took place in the Slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. #community-team channel on Nov 29.
The link for the whole meeting is here: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1511974875000240
These people were present:
- Jill from Vancouver, Canada
- Chandrika from Cupertino, CA, USA
- Simona from Milan, Italy
- Kathy from Atlanta, USA
- Diya from Bangladesh
- Hardeep from Kanpur, India
- Sheila from Brazil
- Mahesh from Ahmedabad, India
- Meher, From Mumbai India
@jillbinder said she would explain the project and the general proposed planning, then open for:
- First questions people had
- Talking about when the first online training would be (1.5 hours for the first one, then half an hour for a follow up a couple of weeks later)
- Thinking together how to promote this to get at least 27 communities running it this year
Up to this point there are thirteen people who said they could make this time work for the Slack meetings. A few of them wouldn’t start until after WCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event..
Quite a few men volunteered for this project. The men can help promote and support the women running it. Ideally workshops for women should be run by women. If it’s just not possible to have a women run it for some reason, then the men can run it too.
This workshop doesn’t have to be for women, it can be for any underrepresented group.
Jill explained what the workshop is: it started as a 3 or 4 hour session in Vancouver which later evolved into 5 modules with help from other cities.
The modules can be run all together or separately.
- The first module covers things like: why we want more women (or other underrepresented groups), the myths of what it is to be the expert at the front of the room, the types of talks, an exercise where people generate about 50 different talk ideas, choosing a talk.
- The second module gets into writing a pitch, choosing a title, writing a bio.
- In the third module they use that pitch to generate an outline for a talk (but it can also be run alone).
- The fourth module is about creating great slides, and one on tips to becoming a better speaker.
- The fifth module hasn’t been created yet. It’s on Impostor Syndrome.
The goal of this working group is to get lots of WordPress communities around the world running this.
If we aim for 5% of all meetups 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. in the first year, that is about 27 cities.
That would be the first year’s goal. So far as it’s only been run in person, but we are going to start running it online too when running it in person isn’t possible.
Jill will start by running a session online for this team, where people will go through the material as a regular participant would, and she’ll show things they want to know when running it themselves.
There will be a first 1.5-hour online training for the same time of day as this first meeting.
That will be on a webcam Zoom call, on Wednesday, December 20th.
For the people who can’t make this time work, if the first one goes well a second training can be held for them at another time.
In the last part of the meeting the discussion turned to how the participants can promote this initiative to get 27 or more communities running it.
- AfshanaDiya suggested reaching out to the meetup 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. organisers from different places.
- Sheila said she could talk about it in the slack Brazilian group, and in the next local meet up. She also suggested writing articles.
- Simona said their next WordCamp 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. in Italy would be on the 15th of December, and she would talk to people there. She would like to run the workshop in April during WordCamp Turin.
- Sheila asked about using WordPress.tv and Jill said she has a talk about this that she did at WordCamp Seattle about this that will be going up on WordPress.tv sometime soon.
The meeting finished with:
- The proposal to think of more ideas
- Jill would send out a poll to figure out the time for the December training
- Jill said that in the next Slack meeting in 2 weeks we would come up with an official promotion plan with action items assigned to people.
#wpwomenspeak
