Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on February 24, 2021

Attending: @jillbinder @tantienhime @oneal @katiejrichards

Summary:

  • The Interactive, Transformational Watch party last week seemed to be was a great format for our Learn WordPress workshops.
  • What was missing was having more time for participants to discuss pitches. We came up with a few solutions and would love your feedback on which one
  • We need to make the messaging to 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./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. organizers about our workshops much simpler. Even create a very simple “package” that is easy to copy/paste to their communities. We will try this out for the Great Lakes workshop next week and our next global workshop on March 18 (or March 17 and 18).

Agenda!

  1. Updates on what you’re working on (Green: On plan. No help needed; Yellow: Not on plan but I have a strategy to get there; Red: Not on plan, no plan to get there, I’m lost!)
  2. How the workshop went last week
  3. Changes we discussed in this meeting
  4. @tantienhime’s Great Lakes / Ontario workshop next week

1. Updates on what you’re working on

How are things going with your items for our group? Any obstacles?
Green: On plan. No help needed;
Yellow: Not on plan but I have a strategy to get there;
Red: Not on plan, no plan to get there, I’m lost!

@tantienhime
Green: I think we’ve put everything in place we need to for next week’s workshop (Item 4). Actually, I have to reach out to one or two groups, so I should be yellow…

@katiejrichards
Green: I’m about 2/3 done with editing the transcript for Part 1 of Creating a Welcoming and Diverse Space, which is the longer of the two. Part 2 should go quickly as well

@oneal
I hit a roadblock but I should be back on top of it by the weekend, its also a holiday today so I might have some free time to work on it.

2. Last week’s workshop

Thank you so much @oneal and @wpfangirl for attending and helping out. You both made a big difference!

63% of registrants attended!

We had:
4 event organizers (4 cities in 2 countries – USA & Philippines)
3 participants (3 cities in 2 countries – USA & Italy)

Two people sent in their follow-up questionnaires, so we have 2 public speaking confidence scores.

One had no increase, and the other had 100% increase.

I feel good about how it went:

I think it’s important that we did ice breakers out loud, so the room felt cohesive before we started playing the video. My own energy was pumped from hearing people’s reasons for doing the workshop today, which also helped.

I think it also helped that the 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. watched the video along with the participants and participated fully.

I also added some discussion questions in the chat while we were watching the video, and those went very well.

The out loud exercises were very active. Everyone participated fully!

@oneal: I think it helped that some of the participants were actually preparing to do talks at their local 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. but didn’t push through because of the pandemic. they were ready and willing to talk and share. During the breakout, that was what we talked about, they were both ready to do lightning talks. Now they are thinking of more stuff to talk about. I said that’s okay, especially if it’s just a lightning talk, once they get more experience, then they can do longer lectures.

@jillbinder: That is a perfect response, @oneal. Thank you for giving them that encouragement and advice!

There was interest in the next workshop. I let them know where to find all of our workshops on Learn, and said that if there is enough interest, we can watch some together.

3. Changes we discussed in this meeting

I really noticed how effective it was for @wpfangirl to be there, along with members of her community. And then having her there also gave a doorway for people to speak at her meetup, too. It was so great.

Should we find a way to give participants more discussion time?

@oneal who was at the workshop said yes

Our ideas:

  • Hold a discussion the next day
  • Have “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.” another day soon
  • Shorten previous sections so we have more time on the pitches
  • Allow for more discussion that spills overtime on the workshop (like we had in past workshops)
  • Follow up with text chat rather than another Zoom call

We like all of these. I will discuss with more people. (Community, feel free to chime in!)

How to get more meetup/WordCamp orgs involved, and bring their underrepresented communities with them

I think I overcomplicated all of the messaging for our Feb workshop and the Great Lakes workshop on March 4.

This is what I am considering now:

Give meetup/event orgs one simple reason for being there. Something like:

  • Come to the workshop and work with underrepresented members of your meetup group to create content for your meetup

And also make it much simpler to invite their communities. We had 3 ways for them to invite their communities last time. @tacoverdo had a lovely idea that is the thing I’m leaning towards now, and would love your thoughts:

We write up a message that the orgs can send to the communities. Copy and paste! Something that will say:

  • Come to this workshop with me (the org who is sending it out)!
  • Who it is for
  • Why they should want to come

4. Shanta’s Great Lakes / Ontario workshop next week

Do you think if I put together the simplified messaging to the meetup orgs and how they can invite their communities, Shanta, that might work to get more of the interest? Let’s say you wrote to all of the city organizers again with this simplified info?

@tantienhime: I think so. I’m of the mind “package this workshop offering” in such a way that the organizers don’t have to do much thinking. Like “sample tweets” or “places to share this information and sample announcements”.

#wpdiversity