Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on December 9, 2020

Summary: We welcomed new volunteers, had a Gratitude Party for our 2020 work, asked for volunteer(s) for cleaning up English captions on our videos, talked further about our post “Re-imagining the work of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity)”, and talked about WP Philippine this weekend.

Attending: @jillbinder @sparklingrobots @ggmoyo @tantienhime @cguntur @wpfangirl @oneal @volkswagenchick

Start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1607533264178700

Today was our last meeting of the year, as our next meeting would have been during the holiday season.

1. Welcome new volunteers

We did a quick recap of what our team does.

2. Gratitude party for each other for 2020!

We thanked each other for our contributions to this group this year. I did my best to try to remember everyone, but it’s 2020 and my brain is fuzzy. If I missed anyone, please reach out and I will thank you properly. 🙂

3. We need volunteers for English captions on our Learn WordPress videos

This is a bigger ask, but can be broken down amongst several people.

We are looking for someone(s) to clean up some captions for our four Learn WordPress videos that were AI automatically generated.

We have the full script written out, keeping in mind that there is some improv off the script as well…

This is a great task for someone who would like to get to know our workshop material!

It is very meaningful work as this is the gateway to get our work out into many languages. Once it is captioned in English, it will be able to be easily translated.

@cguntur volunteered to learn more about what’s needed. Anyone else? Please get in touch with @angelasjin for this. I will be away for the rest of December.

4. Thoughts on the comments on the Impact post? What was most important that has come up so far? New thoughts to add to the Impact post?

Please have a re-read through the post:

[Input Requested] Re-imagining the work of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity)

And take a look at the comments so far.

Does anything jump out at you as being the most important in the comments so far?

@tantienhime: Since WordCamps really are not happening as much, the next best outreach (IMHO) is the 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. themselves. Not just advertising to those meetups (which is a good start), but actually making presentations at those meetups, say from one of the mentorsMentor 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. on the Diversity team, live, to gain interest and draw people into the workshops themselves. Maybe an “intro” level or an informational session that makes people more aware of the need and lack of diversity. I would call this Outreach.

@cguntur: I agree with the other comments. I think new meetups running the workshop for the first time teaming up with someone who has experience might make it better. Like if they have questions, they will have someone who can answer right away.

@wpfangirl: Just reading over the comments and I want to reiterate what I said: I believe there are other 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. organizers out there doing what I did before I got involved here: waiting for people to volunteer to speak, and being influenced by that unconscious human instinct to hang out with people like me. So we had lots of women but pretty much everyone was white.Once you realize what’s happened, if your meetup has a diverse membership but not a diverse speaker roster, you then realize you have to ASK under-represented people to speak. And you have to figure out HOW to ask them.

@tantienhime And I would say that having one of the diversity team AS a speaker, fills a slot for us meetup organizers too!

5. Open Discussion

@oneal: I’ll be attending a big online meetup this weekend for all the Philippine WP groups. Is there anything I should do or say to reach out?

@jillbinder: It would be great to let them know that our team is available to help with building more diverse speaker lineups. They can sign up here to find out what our new plans are in the new year: https://tiny.cc/wpdiversity

@jillbinder: Thank you everyone for your help in this meeting today and for everything you’d done this year. Please do an extra cheers this holiday season with your beverage of choice for our group!

End: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1607538190256300