Summary: We talked about the November intermediate workshops next week, needs for volunteers (creating comprehension questions, discussion facilitators, someone to keep an eye out for social media posts about our workshops on a few accounts), reaching out to 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. to invite to our workshops, and brainstorming ideas for new direction 2021.
Attending: @wpfangirl @oneal @cguntur @webcommsat @nalininonstopnewsuk @tantienhime @danilong
Start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1605114004098100
Agenda
1. November workshops
2. Volunteer needed for creating comprehension questions for our Learn WordPress workshop videos + Discussion Facilitators
3. Volunteer needed for coordinating with the #marketing team
4. Dani talking about a new project: reaching out to meetups directly to invite to our workshops
5. Brainstorming ideas for new direction 2021
1. November workshops
We are in good shape for the workshops next week.
It is the second time we are running an Intermediate series.
Tues, Nov 17: Improving your pitch
Wed, Nov 18: Speaking online
Thurs, Nov 19: Story-telling: How to make a story out of a tech topic
It is the last workshops I am running this year. But great news, more people are running Discussion groups! More on that next.
We have between 1 & 3 mentors 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. signed up to help us out each day.
I will talk more in #3 Marketing about help with promoting the workshops.
We have a good number signed up right now, but of course, we would always like more.
2. Volunteer needed for creating comprehension questions for our Learn WordPress workshop videos + Discussion Facilitators
I’m going to combine talking about Learning WordPress and holding discussion groups.
I am looking for someone who either already knows our workshop material, or who is willing to watch the videos this week to get familiar with it.
@angelasjin would like to partner with someone — preferably this week (or soon) — to write multiple choice quiz comprehension questions.
We have some questions written now that were designed to be for the Discussion groups…
Quick aside, as a reminder, Discussion groups are to talk about the workshop videos, which people watch on their own.
Angela wrote reflection questions for those, and in practise, we found that they felt more like “pop quiz” questions. So they are probably great for comprehension questions more than starting a discussion.
@danilong: I’d like to help with that, but not be the sole person.
@cguntur: I would love to get involved with the reflection questions, but not sure if I can spare the time. I can help with proofreading if that is required at all…
@jillbinder: Thanks for that offer, @cguntur! We can let you know if that is needed.
@webcommsat: Nalini and I are able to help with the questions with Angela if you still need this.
3. Volunteer needed for coordinating with the #marketing team
I am looking for someone who can monitor these accounts about a week before our workshops, and a day before our workshops:
https://twitter.com/wordcamp
https://www.facebook.com/WordCamp/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/make-wordpress-marketing-team
Looking for posts about our upcoming workshops, and then letting the rest of our team know that there is/are post(s) for us to share.
The Marketing team is doing a great job of promoting our workshops, and it will go a long way if our team can reshare their posts about it. So we just need to know!
4. Dani talking about a new project: reaching out to meetups directly to invite to our workshops
Dani talked about how she reached out to meetups privately for our training for women in Latin America that we held in July, and how effective that was.
@danilong:
It didn’t take a lot of time but the personal contact was appreciated, I think.
I think there’s something about this topic – trying to encourage new speakers who maybe haven’t seen themselves as public speakers, or seen others like themselves as public speakers – that lends itself to actually reaching out and encouraging local leadership to contact individuals and recommend them.
It also opens the minds of leadership that there people within their own ranks who could contribute but might need encouragement.
@webcommsat: brought up privacy and spam issues
@danilong: The messages I wrote to each leader were individualized and personal. Some people I could contact through 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., some I tracked down on Twitter. It was just a personal contact to break the ice.
@webcommsat: I agree @danilong individual invitation like that is very effective especially when you have a geographic target area, and we do that with the marketing targeting to influencers in the community.
@danilong: If anyone would like to work on this with me, we could plan a small schedule to rotate contacting different world regions for the workshops. Latin America took all of about 2 hours.
@jillbinder: Lovely! I love this so much. Please reach out to Dani if you can help with this between now and Tuesday.
@tantienhime: I could have Canada covered. @jillbinder and I are on the WP Canada 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/. team and I know a bunch of the organizers. Guide me and I’ll look after that.
@nalininonstopnewsuk: What would you need @danilong, one of our colleagues who has accessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) challenges says she might be able to help.
Nalini and Dani worked out a system to communicate with the colleague.
5. Brainstorming ideas for new direction 2021
So, we won’t have the time for brainstorming today…. thus this is more of a notice to watch for a post coming on the Community P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. blog. Possibly this week, even…
@angelasjin, @andreamiddleton, and I are starting to work on re-thinking how we do things for next year.
We changed things for covid 2020, and now we are looking forward to how we can best do things in 2021:
- What would be the most impactful way to help organizers get more diversity in WordPress speaker lineups? (not just gender, but also race, class, sexuality, ability, age, etc.)
- What new barriers do you see coming out of 2020 that are likely to be factors in 2021?
It’ll be great to start generating ideas in the comments of the upcoming post, and we will likely be chatting about it again in our meeting in 2 weeks. The deadline for this conversation will be end of November.
End: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1605117716192300
#wpdiversity
