Tuesday Training: How mentors and deputies are chosen

Earlier in the Tuesday Trainings series, Angela has told everything about Community Deputies and Courtney has explained what the WordCamp Mentorship program is about. This week I thought to share how 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. and 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. are chosen.

It’s actually a lot easier than you might think! Like all other roles in the Community Team, becoming 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. or 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. is not an invitation-based thing. It’s usually a natural part of someone climbing the leadership ladders of the Community Team from connecting and understanding to engaging.

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. Mentors

If you have experience in organising WordCamps, you are most probably a good fit to be a WordCamp mentor and can apply for that role!

Mentors are not some super WordCamp organisers, they are just like almost everyone else in the WordPress community – individuals who have gained some experience and want to share it and help others. At the same time, the mentors are also themselves WordCamp organisers learning and evolving.

When someone applies to be a WordCamp mentor, the main thing we look for is how involved they have been in organising WordCamps. You don’t have to have multiple years of being a lead organiser in your belt – few years with experience in the team and usually at least one year being a lead organiser is enough. What matters most, is how active you have been in WordCamps and how diverse your knowledge is.

Do you have experience in WordCamp organising and want to help other WordCamp organisers? Take the WordCamp Mentor Self training to get started and then submit an application!

Community 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.

Like mentors, Community Deputies are fundamentally like any other community members – 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. attendees, event organisers and WordPress enthusiasts themselves. There’s no requirement that you should be a community professional.

If you have experience in WordPress event organising, you are active in your local community and you find yourself being a people-oriented person, there’s a good possibility that you would be a good fit in the group of deputies!

Deputies tend to have a little deeper knowledge of the WordPress community, but it’s not necessary to know all aspects of it or the Community Team. The most valuable skill of every deputy, that the team is looking for, is to be very keen on helping community contributors. Other things the team is looking for are passion to develop Community Teams various event programs and to be good in different situations as well as with people. A deputy role is something where everyone grows while carrying out the responsibilities, there’s no set skillset that is required – the most important thing is the mindset and that’s what we are looking for.

If you have a passion for not just helping other WordCamp organisers, but all local communities, apply to become a Community Deputy!


After submitting a WordCamp Mentor or Community 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. application, few existing deputies will review it. If they find you would be a good fit, they’ll send you an email with a request to have an orientation to tell the essential details before starting to help the community. Sometimes they might ask to take a self-training to exercise your skills a little further before the orientation.

In case your application is rejected, that does not mean that you couldn’t apply again after gaining some more experience in the WordPress community!

Have some questions about becoming a WordCamp Mentor or Community Deputy? Not quite sure if you should or can apply? Do you want to prepare before applying? Come and join us in the #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/. channel!

#community-deputies, #community-mentors, #mentors, #tuesdaytrainings

Community Team Meeting agenda for 2021-03-18

The Community Team bi-weekly meeting is happening tomorrow. The meeting is meant for all contributors on the team and everyone who is interested in taking part in some of the things our team does. Feel free to join us, even if you are not currently active in the team!

Asia-Pacific / EMEA friendly meeting: 2021-03-18 12:00 UTC
Americas friendly meeting:
2021-03-18 21:00 UTC

Below is a preliminary agenda for the meeting. If you wish to add things you’d like bring to into discussion, comment below or reach out to team reps @sippis or @kcristiano. It does not need to be a blog post yet, the topic can be discussed during the meeting nevertheless. We use the same agenda for both meetings.

Preliminary agenda

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. / 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. / Contributor check-ins

What have you been doing and how is it going? What you got accomplished after the last meeting? Are there any blockers? Can other team members help you in some way?

Highlights

Tuesday Trainings
Two new episodes are out, go read ’em! Escpecially the one that Kevin wrote, I just found out that my speaker/sponsor has a plugin that is not 100% GPL. What do I do? is hugely valuable reinder to everyone.

2021 Financial Update for the WordPress Community
Harmony provided an update on our financial health after we gracefully weathered the storm that was 2020. In summary, WPCSWPCS The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the WordPress Coding Standards. May also be an acronym referring to the Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook. began the 2021 year with just over US$1.3M on hand from which approximately US$465K is owed to the Global Sponsors for their future sponsorships. WPCS also has approximately US$305K in prepaid expenses to various vendors. Cautious spending of WPCS money will still be necessary for the foreseeable future.

Proposal: A WordPress Project Contributor Handbook
Josepha posted a proposal about creating a big “WordPress Project Handbook”.

New and ongoing discussions

Daylight Savings Time adjustment
DST is here soon again and some parts of the world are moving their clocks. In previous years, we have moved the meeting times accordingly one hour forward after EU/UK has started the DST on 2021-03-29. What we should do this year, move the meeting times like we have done in the past or stick with the same UTC times regardless of DST?

Proposal to improve the organizing experience for online WordCamps
Over the past year, WordPress event organizers around the globe have learned so much about the process of organizing WordCamps, 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., and other events online because we had to do that to keep going. Now that we’ve had a year to come together in this new way several of us have seen common obstacles. We want to tackle the three most common ones; tools, documentation and money. Please leave your feedback and share this post with everyone who organised online 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. during 2020, their feedback would help a lot!

Request for Feedback: Community Team Stats Dashboard
MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team posted an idea about team-specific dashboards asking would help us with our job and what kind of metrics would be helpful. Instead of figuring out the ideas metrics for our team in the comments of the original post and making the comments threads long over there, let’s have the initial discussion in our own P2P2 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.

Request for feedback: Review for the dedicated deputy communication channel
The private #community-deputies 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/. channel was created in December, so it’s time for the first review as we agreed. If you are active deputy, please share your thoughts. The post is also an open invitation for all community members to ask questions about the channel, which could help us with the review. If the result of the review looks like there’s no justification for private working space 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., the channel will be shut off at the beginning of April. In case the experiment continues, we will do another public review in three months.

Open floor

Opportunity to bring things into discussions that weren’t on the meeting agenda and if anyone has something they would like to share with the team. If you have a topic in mind before the meeting, please add it into the comments of this post.

Hope to see you on Thursday, either on Asia-Pacific / EMEA or Americas friendly version of the meeting!

Preliminary agenda was put together in collaboration of @sippis and @kcristiano.

#meeting-agenda, #team-chat, #team-meeting

Request for feedback: Review for the dedicated deputy communication channel

After the discussion on my proposal about a dedicated communication place for deputies, we agreed to experiment with a private #community-deputies channel in 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/.. In the discussion, we also agreed to do a public review after three and six months to see how the channel has worked and decide its continuation. The channel was created in December, so it’s time for the first review.

The purpose of the channel is to be a safe place for all 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. to discuss sensitive and private aspects of our work, get peer-support when needed and ask second opinions for event applications. It’s not meant for discussions that could take place in public forums like this blog, #community-team or #community-events channel.

Guidelines for the channel are:

  • As we all are busy and have an abundance of unread notifications, please avoid irrelevant chatter.
  • Help to create a safe and welcoming space for all deputies. Be empathetic and help answer questions when you can!
  • If you feel that the discussion should take place in a public forum, say it and help to move the discussion to the #community-team channel or Community Team blog.
  • Any decision making that will affect the broader community will be made in public. Help others be aware of when they might be making a decision that should happen after public discussion.

As this year has continued being really strange, I think we really can’t use many numeric metrics while reviewing the channel. That’s why I’d like us to have an open, free form, discussion. Here are some questions to help start that discussion:

  1. Has there been discussion about topics that should have been taken place in public forums instead?
  2. Have you got help with some issue in the channel, which you’d normally handled by yourself or asked help from another 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. in a private message?
  3. Has the channel helped you feel more connected to the team?
  4. In general, what is your feeling about the discussion that has taken place on the channel?
  5. Should we continue to keep using a private deputy channel?

Active deputies, please share your thoughts and raise new important questions to the discussion. This is also an open invitation for all community members to ask questions about the channel, which could help us with the review.

Discussion is open until 2021-03-29. If the result of the review looks like there’s no justification for private working space for deputies, the channel will be shut off at the beginning of April. In case the experiment continues, we will do another public review in three months.

Thanks to @angelasjin, @andreamiddleton and @kcristiano who helped with this post.

#slack

Community Deputy check-in results and sum-up

In recent weeks, all Community Team 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. were contacted personally through 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/., and asked to provide feedback on contributions to the Community Team in 2020. Deputies were also asked about their plans for contribution in 2021, and how team reps and fellow deputies could provide better support.

The check-in was done with three things in mind: to know how many active Community 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. will continue in 2021, if and where there is need for more training, and to get feedback on how to improve the 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. experience. The number side of results is also meant for tracking deputy engagement long term, as the Community Team expressed interest in regular check-ins.

In this post, I’ll be sharing a summary of results and general conclusions.

Response rate and deputy balance

All 35 active deputies were contacted, and 25 (71%) of them answered in a given time (one week). From those 25 deputies, 24% (6) are fully sponsored, 32% (8) are partially sponsored and 44% (11) are contributing on a  voluntary basis.

Time contributed

It’s worth noticing that deputies are very active contributors on the wider WordPress project. From all who responded, 60% (15) answered that they contribute to other teams. Over half of deputies contributing to other teams also contribute to more than one team outside of Community.

The year 2020

Deputies estimated that during the year 2020 they have contributed a total of 1051 hours monthly to the Community Team.

Number of deputiesTotal hours estimatedOn average per deputy
Fully sponsored6650108
Partially sponsored816421
Fully volunteer1123722
All25105142

The year 2021

Deputies were also asked to estimate how much time they plan on contributing to the Community Team per month in 2021.

They estimated that they would contribute 906 hours per month in total, around 36 hours on average per deputy. The estimates predict an approximately 14% decrease in contributed time when compared to this year. 

Total hoursOn average per deputyDifference in hours from 2020(% change)
Fully sponsored600100-50 (-7%)
Partially sponsored164210 (+/-0%)
Fully volunteer14213-95 (-40%)
All90636-145 (-14%)

Ways to contribute

Deputies were asked to tell how they have contributed to the Community team during 2020 and in which way they would like to contribute during next year. Deputies had a pre-formed list of options to choose from and a free field to list other ways that were missing from the list. Options were the same for both years and deputies were allowed to select as many options as they liked.

20202021
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. application vetting1816
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. application vetting1318
WordCamp mentoring1218
Local community mentoring1619
Financial aspects (Sponsorship wrangling, WPCSWPCS The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the WordPress Coding Standards. May also be an acronym referring to the Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook., payments)913
Triaging HelpScout1013
Developing Community Team (Writing proposals or comments on the P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/., etc)1614
Participation on a working group1013

The following observations were made from the answers:

  • 56% of deputies wish to contribute in more ways than they had this year
  • 16% of deputies want to contribute in fewer ways than they have this year
  • Routine, administrative tasks, like triaging HelpScout, are not popular ways to contribute amongst fully volunteer deputies. Instead, they prefer to contribute to local communities.
  • More deputies wish to work with local communities and events during 2021
  • Partially volunteered deputies expressed interest in routine, administrative tasks during 2021

Estimates on tools

Deputies were asked to estimate when they last participated in a discussion or used tools that are specific to deputy work. This part of the results is for historical analysis, rather than measuring how the team or individuals did in 2020.

This monthLast monthIn the last 3 monthsIn the last 6 monthsThis yearNot this year
Attended a Community Team bi-weekly meeting1432123
Posted or commented on the Community Team blog1432312
Logged in to HelpScout1350232
Logged in to WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each.1712320

Observations from open questions

Deputies were asked to answer a few open questions: where they feel their contribution is most impactful, what team reps could do to better support deputy work, and if there are any blockers in contributions to the team.

Some observations can be made from responses to these questions:

  • Almost all of the deputies feel that their contribution is most impactful when mentoring event organisers and local communities.
  • Only a handful and mostly experienced deputies mentioned things related to Community Team management (proposals, team development, mentoring others, documentation etc.) as contributions that they feel are impactful.
  • Nearly half of the deputies felt that they had received enough support from team reps and fellow deputies.
  • Some deputies felt that the Community Team should do more outreach, frequent updates on what the team is doing, and highlight project-wide updates with the team more often.
  • Some things in the team are moving too fast or too much information is put out in a short period, making it challenging to follow with everything happening, especially for fully volunteer deputies.
  • There were suggestions for how tools and work procedures could be improved. For example, having shifts could help deputies maintain a regular cadence for routine tasks.
  • Deputies that found writing proposals most impactful wished for more active engagement from other deputies on Community Team blog posts, and help in getting more voices heard from the wider community.
  • Almost all full volunteer deputies have had time allocation challenges, because of COVID-19 implications or other things happening in their personal life.

Any follow up thoughts?

Did these results raise some questions, thoughts, additional observations or interpretations? Was there anything that came up in these results that you think we need to discuss in greater detail? Please share your mind freely on the comments! Please share your thoughts before 2021-01-07.

Big thanks to @angelasjin and @courtneypk who did the deputy check-ins with me and helped with this post!

I’d also like to use this opportunity to thank a few fellow deputies that are going to take a break from deputy duties. @francina and @bph have been long-term deputies developing the team, a great inspiration to others and really valued members of the team. Thank you for all your contributions! Luckily we still get to collaborate on other aspects of the Community Team and wider WordPress project.

#deputies, #community-deputies, #community-team, #deputy-check-in

Community Team Chat Agenda | November 5 2020

Hello Team!

Our bi-monthly Community Team chat is happening this Thursday, 05 November 2020. Meeting times are detailed below. We use the same agenda for both meetings in order to include all time zones.

Asia-Pacific / EMEA friendly: Thursday, November 05, 2020, 11:00 UTC

Americas friendly: Thursday, November 05, 2020, 20:00 UTC

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./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. check-in

What have you been doing and how is it going?

P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. posts needing review/feedback

  • Call for participants: Diverse Speaker Workshops October & November 2020 – Jillbinder – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/16/call-for-participants-diverse-speaker-workshops-october-november-2020/
  • Addressing Mailchimp and Newsletter service privacy concerns – Hari Shanker R – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/19/addressing-mailchimp-and-newsletter-service-privacy-concerns/
  • Meetup Organizer Newsletter: October 2020 – Hari Shanker R – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/20/meetup-organizer-newsletter-october-2020/
  • WordCamp.org URL Migration Complete – Ian Dunn – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/27/wordcamp-org-url-migration-complete/
  • Tuesday Trainings: Organizing WordPress Meetups Part 1: Getting Started – Cami Kaos – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/27/tuesday-trainings-organizing-wordpress-meetups-part-1-getting-started/
  • Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on October 28, 2020 – Jillbinder – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/29/recap-of-the-diverse-speaker-training-group-wpdiversity-on-october-28-2020/
  • Proposal: Event Schema for WordCamp.org – Joost de Valk – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/30/proposal-event-schema-for-wordcamp-org/
  • Getting more Learn WordPress Discussion Group leaders and attendees – Timi Wahalahti – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/30/getting-more-learn-wordpress-discussion-group-leaders-and-attendees/
  • Recap of Contributor Working Group Meeting (#WPContributors) for Oct. 21, 2020 – Christina Workman – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/30/recap-of-contributor-working-group-meeting-wpcontributors-for-oct-21-2020/
  • Proposal follow-up: Dedicated communication place for deputies – forming the guidelines – Timi Wahalahti – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/11/02/proposal-follow-up-dedicated-communication-place-for-deputies-forming-the-guidelines/
  • Tuesday Trainings: Organizing WordPress Meetups Part 2: Supporting an Online Meetup – Cami Kaos – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/11/03/tuesday-trainings-organizing-wordpress-meetups-part-2-supporting-an-online-meetup/

Highlighted P2 posts

Please add any additional items to this agenda by commenting on this post as needed.

#community-deputies, #meeting-agenda, #team-chat

Proposal follow-up: Dedicated communication place for deputies – forming the guidelines

Months ago, I posted a proposal on creating a new dedicated 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/. 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.. After a long and really good discussion, the deputies reached a consensus and would like to give the channel a try, after a set of guidelines have been formed. If you don’t have an idea what I’m talking about, and the idea of a private channel sounds bad to you, I suggest reading the original proposal and discussion that followed that.

It’s now (finally) time to form those guidelines and embark on this experiment together!

These guidelines aspire to be encouraging and not discouraging. These are more to give an idea on the purpose of the channel, rather than creating an uncertain feeling around whether something can be raised to the discussion in the channel. My hope is to keep these as short and clear as possible.

To provide extra clarity on who will be in the channel, and how it will be used:

  • All deputies with “Active” status in this sheet will be invited to the channel.
  • The main purpose of the channel is to provide a safe space, and to improve peer support for all deputies, especially those new to the role. In this channel, deputies who are uncertain or hesitant can raise issues or ask questions with a smaller group first before doing so publicly. The channel can also be a place to discuss applications that need a second opinion, or for discussions about financial issues that require confidentiality. If some discussion that takes place could be public, it will be moved to a public forum (#community-team channel or this team blog).
  • No decisions that affect Community Team, event organisers or the greater WordPress project will be made in the private channel.
  • We’ll do a public review on the Community Team’s blog on how the channel has worked after three and six months

My proposal for the 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. channel guidelines are:

  • As we all are busy and have an abundance of unread notifications, please avoid irrelevant chatter.
  • Help to create a safe and welcoming space for all deputies. Be empathetic and help answer questions when you can!
  • If you feel that the discussion should take place in a public forum, say it and help to move the discussion to the #community-team channel or Community Team blog.
  • Any decision making that will affect the broader community will be made in public. Help others be aware when they might be making a decision that should happen after public discussion.

Feel free to share your ideas, thoughts, additions and changes to these proposed guidelines before 2020-11-19. After that, I’ll move forward and ask Slack admins to create the new channel for us.

Thank you @angelasjin, @harishanker, @andreamiddleton and @courtneypk for helping with this post!

#community-deputies, #slack

Proposal: Monthly Virtual Video Calls for Deputies

During the just concluded 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. Europe, each team had to organize an onboarding call before the d-day (contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.). We had ours in the Community for an hour, and it was great to be able to put a face to each names we see all the time on 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/. and hear each other.

Hence, we (all present at the community team onboarding call for WCEU2020) propose we host one video call monthly for 20-30 minutes to check on each other and possibly learn something new about the other, or offer support where we can!

Next Steps – Picking a day and time to begin this in July 2020.

We would all like to hear your feedback on this proposal! We feel this would go a long way in bridging the gap and boundaries that exists in our world today! Please share any thoughts you may have including possible date and time of the month this may hold 💥💥

#community-deputies, #community-team, #deputy-chat

Scheduled WordCamps in need of feature image/description

We have 36 WordCamps currently on the schedule (yay) but 20 of those events don’t have featured images set so the default is showing on the 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. Schedule.

It would be great to have 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. pitch in and email each event to ask them for the updated image. Here’s a spreadsheet with camps in need of feature images and/or descriptions and email addresses to contact.

We have a saved reply ready to go in HelpScout named: WORDCAMP: Banner and “About” text request

If you have a few moments to send out a reminder please sign off on the spreadsheet so we don’t have duplicates sent out. Ideally all WordCamps should be notified by Wednesday, December 11, 2019 with the goal of having all images updated by the end of the year.

Once organizers respond with an image, deputies with admin access to Central.WordCamp.org can update the files.

Let me know if you have any questions!

#community-deputies #wordcamps

Community Team Slack Channels

Hi all,

I want to propose that we rename #outreach to #community-team and follow CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. in their sub team channel naming convention which for the Community team would be #community-usage.

For example, the events room would be renamed to #community-events. The way 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/. works means that any channel name changes will not effect or kick anyone out of any room they are currently a part of, just that they will see the name has changed.

Part of the reason why is because many people who are looking for the community team do not look or realise we are in #outreach. This includes a core committer who i would label as an advance Slack user. In fact, when I told them the community team uses #outreach for our community channel their response was

Oh, that’s what that channel is
Weird
I’d expect #community and #community-usage
#events I can see potentially being different
But #outreach I always thought was like for engagement with the wider community
Kinda like #marketing

They also pointed out that when searching for a channel, people automatically search for community and get a response of No match found. Did you spell it correctly?

Screenshot of the result when you type Community into the Slack channel search. It responds with No match found. Did you spell it correctly?

I have also noticed that the #outreach gets messages regarding people doing outreach for their products. Although not often, the mistake is understandable considering what the channel is called. Back when 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/ took to Slack, we were called #community – but many people thought it was a water-cooler location for anyone to have a natter. This was the reasoning behind the switch to #outreach. Instead, I would like to propose we call it #community-team which makes it clear that the channel is for the Community team.

The other reason why I would like to propose these changes is because I’ve been trying to get into updating the handbook, but it’s a really boring process to do on your own and talking about it in #events or #outreach, the conversation gets lost in all the other conversations that are happening in there.

I think that the Core team and the Meta team’s use of #team-thing has meant that conversations are kept focused on the channel topic. It allows for people to only follow conversations that they are interested in and helps with the timezone issue where we have people across the world wanting to follow one particular topic.

At a minimum i can in vision the following channels

It could be extended to – if people feel like it could be helpful to 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. #community-mentors – a support location for people mentoring WordCamps in a similar vein to the forum support for the moderators.

And later maybe #community-deputies – a support location for people who are doing 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. work in a similar vein to #community-mentors. It would also give a clearer view of what it is that 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. do for anyone wanting to join the deputy program as they can see the things deputies discuss and talk about.

All these channels will still be accessible to everyone so there is no issue with transparency.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this.

Jenny

#deputies