Tag Archives: community management

Angela Jin 10:19 am on June 23, 2020
Tags: community management, , trainingtuesday,   

Tuesday Trainings: Encouraging Diversity in Meetups and WordCamps

For this #trainingtuesday, I’m joined by @alliennimmons, @jillbinder, @khleomix, and @mariaojob in a panel discussion on how we can better encourage and support diversity in 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 WordCamps, and in the broader WordPress community. Watch and learn with us, and continue the important conversation on diversity and inclusion in WordPress!

Participants in this panel also referenced a few resources that they hope you will find useful when it comes to thinking about and supporting diversity in your WordPress community.

Transcript available here.

Looking for more great Trainings?

@jillbinder has some great content coming up soon!

Meetups: Would you like to have more diverse representation in the speakers at your online (and when it’s available again, in-person) 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. events? On July 18, we will teach you how to facilitate the workshop that gives your underrepresented community members the motivation, confidence, and tools we need to start: tiny.cc/wpdiversity 

#community-management, #diversity, #tuesdaytrainings

Cami Kaos 9:02 pm on June 11, 2020
Tags: community management,   

Tuesday Trainings: Signup for the Conflict De-escalation Workshop

This coming Tuesday will be a new first for the Tuesday Trainings series, a live workshop. It’s my intent to bring a variety of formats to this series, and next week is where we start to Experiment. Please join @andreamiddleton who will be teaching a 1 hour class on conflict de-escalation.

About the conflict de-escalation workshop Have you ever found yourself in an argument with someone on the internet, and wondered how to get out? Are you interested in reducing the intensity of the conflict that crops up among people on your team or in your circles? Come to this session for a better understanding of conflict and how it intensifies, plus a step-by-step guide for responding strategically to de-escalate conflict in text communication.

The workshop will happen over video chat at 9am PST (4pm UTC). If you’d like to be a part of the online event please respond in comments. You can expect a calendar invite and an email reminder on Monday with more information on joining the call.

#tuesdaytrainings #community-management

Cami Kaos 10:10 pm on February 23, 2018
Tags: , community management,   

Proposal to Simplify Training for WordCamp Mentors

We currently have 27 folks listed internally as “active” 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.. At this time, 11 of the people on the 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. list are not mentoring any events. Earlier this week, I sent an email to all those listed on our mentor roster to determine their availability. Several folks have already asked to be pulled from the active list, and I anticipate several more will either ask to be removed or not respond. That will leave us with about 20 active mentors.

We currently have 109 WordCamps in various stages of planning, ranging from “Needs Orientation” to “Scheduled” that need or will need a mentor. Only 34 of those events have a mentor now. We need more mentors!

As WordCamp mentors, folks are asked to advise organizers, remind them about things organizers frequently forget, keep them on track in planning, and be the team’s connection 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.. We also ask that they make regular updates about their mentor sessions on this site.

At this time all mentors are 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., but not all deputies are mentors — while the work they do is related, it’s different. Our current 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. training process is for people who might triage our shared email, vet applications for both WordCamps and 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., orient organizers for both WordCamps and meetups, and review WordCamp budgets. Because of all these different tasks deputies might handle, training is time consuming for would-be deputies (and for the trainers). Including all this additional content and time commitment may be making it harder to recruit and train new mentors.

I propose a change in the training for mentors to be more in line with the work we’re asking of them. Instead of asking that they undergo the entire deputy training process we would instead follow these steps:

  • Potential mentor submits an application to be a WordCamp Mentor.
  • A deputy reviews their application to ensure they meet WordCamp mentor requirements.
  • Mentor completes the WordCamp Organizer self training to ensure they’re up to date on expectations and guidelines.
  • Mentor has a call with a deputy to talk them through the mentoring process.
  • Mentor is assigned a WordCamp to work with in their preferred region.

I also propose that, for transparency, we have a Mentors page similar to our Deputies page or that we add a separate tab for mentors to show which mentors are active and what events they are currently mentoring.

In line with these suggestions it would make sense that mentors no longer be considered deputies. While being a mentor would not prevent a community member from being a deputy or vice versa, I don’t think we should consider them the same position — or provide deputy-level access to central.wordcamp.org and Help Scout for all WordCamp mentors.

If it seems like this will work, the next steps would be:

  • Create a WordCamp mentor application
  • Post a call for new mentors
  • Create a Mentors page or update the deputies page with a mentors tab.
  • Implement new mentor process as detailed above.

If you have any concerns, ideas, or thoughts, please share them in a comment below. Let’s try to conclude our discussion by March 12, so we can begin a mentor recruitment drive on March 16, 2018.

#mentors #deputies #community-management

Andrea Middleton 6:38 pm on July 18, 2017
Tags: , community management,   

Regional Camps, Take 2

Pro-tip: this post will refer back heavily to the post on the same subject from October of last year. If you haven’t read it, you might want to. Warning: it’s a long thread!

At the Community Summit, we discussed regional WordCamps — the notes will be found here when they’re published — and I’d like to open up discussion about the expectations we should set for people who want to organize a regional 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..

EDIT: this is a discussion of the expectations we want to set for when a group of people come to us and say, “We want to have a WordCamp that represents a geographical community larger than one city/metro area.” We’re calling that kind of event a Regional WordCamp.

Goals for a Regional WordCamp

I think we all mostly agree on the goals for an event of this type: to celebrate, represent, and grow local WordPress communities in the affected region. A primary goal for the WordPress Global Community TeamGlobal Community Team A group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. is to help support a WordPress 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. group and annual WordCamp in as many cities as possible in the world. Regional WordCamps work toward that goal by connecting people who weren’t already active in their local WordPress community and/or inspiring attendees to start communities in their hometowns.

(If you would like to suggest some changes to the goals, please feel free to share your thoughts in a comment on this post!)

Here are many questions:

A) What defines a region?

We already have WordCamp US and WordCamp Europe. Different groups of people have expressed interest in organizing a country-based event (WordCamp Netherlands), a continent-based event (WordCamp Asia/Southeast Asia, final name TBD), and a group-of-countries-based event (WordCamp Nordic).

  1. How small or large a region do we want to entertain?

For example: WordCamp Bihar (states/provinces)? WordCamp Upstate New York (a region within a state/province)? WordCamp Andalucía (a region made up of many states/provinces)?

B) What level of local community development should a region have?

Regional WordCamps need a lot of local, experienced organizers and volunteers wherever the event is hosted. If there aren’t already a certain number of local communities in a region that have hosted successful WordCamps, then a regional event won’t be able to move around the region, share the organizing work, and provide new leadership opportunities.

  1. What expectation should we set for the requisite number of local communities, WordCamps, and number of consecutive WordCamps?
  2. Should we place any expectation on how active the local community is, and how successful the WordCamps were?

For example: should we expect a country like Bolivia to have 5 WordCamps in one year before they propose a WordCamp Bolivia? Or 5 WordCamps for two years straight? And what if some of those 5 WordCamps lost money or had a lot of problems?

C) What kind of oversight and support should regional WordCamps expect?

These are probably mostly going to be larger-than-usual, flagship events. Some exceptions to our normal expectations are made for this type of event already, as can be seen in the cases of WordCamp US and WordCamp Europe, which are not casual events with lean operating budgets.

Should we set higher-than-usual standards for the organizing team? For example:

  1. Is it reasonable to ask all members of a regional WordCamp organizing team to take 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. training course?
  2. Should we expect that all members of the organizing team be experienced WordCamp organizers?
  3. Should we recruit an experienced 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. work closely with a regional team to help them model our best practices and stay focused on the event goals?
  4. Is it reasonable to ask the lead organizer of a regional WordCamp to make a monthly report on this blog?

D) What questions are missing?

If you have another doubt or consideration that isn’t covered here, please share it with the team by commenting on this post!

Now what?

If you have an opinion on these topics, please share them in a comment on this post. 🙂

Based on the discussions we have here and in the upcoming team meetings, I would like to see us create a new page or section of the WordCamp Organizer Handbook for Regional WordCamps, with some clear expectations for would-be organizers.

Let’s set ourselves a goal of spending a week on this discussion, closing it on Wednesday July 26. I’ll summarize the comments by the end of next week, with the goal of having the new handbook documentation published by August 4, 2017.

#deputies, #community-management, #wordcamps

Josepha 11:13 pm on June 2, 2017
Tags: , community management   

Community Team Slack Channels

In August last year, we had a discussion about renaming our channels in Slack to be easier to find (https://make.wordpress.org/community/2016/08/05/community-team-slack-channels/).

In that conversation, we eventually decided to rename the two existing channels and then monitor the need for additional channels after we were easier to find and clearly defined (https://make.wordpress.org/community/2016/08/05/community-team-slack-channels/#comment-22449).

During this week’s community chats, the conversation resurfaced (https://make.wordpress.org/community/2017/05/25/agenda-for-community-team-chat-june-1st/#comment-23583), so it’s time to look at what we have been doing and what we can do differently.

Share your thoughts in the comments on this. Here are some starting prompts!

  • What is your understanding of The Problem we’re solving?
  • Which Sub-teams (not a term we currently use) are most active?

#community-management #deputies

Jon (Kenshino) 3:51 am on May 3, 2017
Tags: , , community management, ,   

Agenda for Community Team Chat May 4th

Our first set of meetings are as follow

Show up for whichever timezone fits you better 🙂

We have some topics that we did not manage to cover in last month’s meeting –

  • Roles & Responsibilities and naming conventions of groups within Community Team – e.g. Who’s 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.?
  • collaborate with the Polyglots on the Rosetta Outreach project.
  • have check-ins on the progress of the 2017 goals.
  • a discussion of whether we still need/want monthly reports
  • changing/modifying the language in the code of conductCode of Conduct “A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party.” - Wikipedia to reflect gender expression

Please take note that because we have 2 meetings for 2 different timezones, twice per month (for a total of 4 meetings per month), we will have to work towards having some sort of synchronisation between the two time-zone delimited meetings. See https://make.wordpress.org/community/2017/04/23/bi-monthly-meetings/ and please contribute your thoughts towards it.

Please post in the comments if you have some agenda items to add!

#deputies, #agenda, #community-management #meetings

#meeting

Josepha 9:25 pm on January 2, 2017
Tags: community management,   

2017 Goals

Many people have an annual habit of thinking about what they have accomplished in the past year and what they would like to accomplish in the next year. Whether you have great ideas about streamlining 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 or you’ve got a running list of updates you’d like in the documentation, this is the time to share!

Join in the conversation about what we want to see for the community (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., et al) in 2017 by commenting below.

This is a brainstorming thread so all ideas are welcome; grouping and prioritizing will come next! Here is the 2016 goals post in case you want to check it out: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2015/12/22/2016-goals/
#community-management, #goals

Cami Kaos 3:54 pm on July 11, 2016
Tags: community management, ,   

The Next WordPress Community Summit

We’re happy to share with you that the next WordPress Community Summit will be hosted by WordCamp Europe 2017 in Paris, France. The 2017 Community Summit is still in its early planning stages but more information will be posted here and on 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 2017 as it becomes available.

#community-management, #community-summit, #wceu

epetrashen 6:00 pm on June 21, 2016
Tags: community management, , , ,   

Outreachy week 4: WordPress Meetup Organizer Training

The last week I was working with a newly created WordPress 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. Organizer handbook. The training as it is now can be found here. As you can see, the pages were moved to the testing site and small quizzes were added. You are very welcome to try it out, and if you have any feedback regarding the way it works please feel free to let me know.

Some changes we will implement later are:

  • Replace the links to the handbook materials with the links to the equivalent training site materials – after it will be decided where exactly will this site be hosted,
  • Possibly expand the introduction and conclusion a bit.

Another alteration of the initial plan I didn’t mention last time is that we decided to have small quizzes after each lesson as opposed to larger quizzes in the end of each module, that is composed out of several lessons. The reasoning for that is that Sensei is designed in the way that if you want the “composed” quiz, all of the questions have to be linked to the module’s last lesson – which can become a disadvantage if you decide to move one of the lessons to another module or delete one of the lessons — the questions appended to this lessons will get orphaned and end up impeding the learning experience. On the other hand, having all questions based on the lesson’s content linked to exactly this lesson enables a more flexible, chunking and reuse-oriented structure.

Next week I’ll be working on questions for the WordPress 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. handbook-based training. And I will also get to go to WordCamp Europe, which I’m so excited about! I’m really looking forward to seeing community members in person and witnessing all 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. glory and bonanza in real life, not just imagining it while reading the WordCamp organization-related materials. So please expect a full report about this trip next week 🙂 Also, at WordCamp Europe the WordCamp and Meetup organizer courses will be ready for testing on 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/..

#community-management, #meetups-2, #outreachy, #training-workshops, #wordcamps

epetrashen 5:37 am on June 15, 2016
Tags: community management, , , ,   

Outreachy week 3: Down the Questions Path

The last week we continued with 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. Organizer Handbook-based questions: the second half of the question pool was composed, reviewed and corrected by @andreamiddleton and moved to the testing site we’re working on for now.

This actually raised a couple of questions on the quiz settings:

  1. What should be the passmark percentage for the quizzes included in the course?
  2. Should a learner be able to see which questions she answered incorrectly?
  3. Should a learner be given any further specific feedback based on the option she chose?

For question #1 it was decided the passing rate for all of the quizzes would be 100% because it’s really important 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./WordCamp & 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 have mastery over program materials. That might force the learner to read the lesson not once, but twice – but that way we will be sure the most important points were all covered and hopefully understood.

If some of the questions from the set are answered incorrectly, we will ask a learner to retake the quiz. Given that, I thought we should really make sure that it is clear for the learner in this case which of the questions are answered incorrectly (then she can read the lesson again paying attention to the details related to this question).  I recently had to pass a quiz myself where only the percentage of correct answers were shown, which made it hard to understand what was correct or not. It even involved some combinatorics. 🙂 The pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party we use, Sensei, unfortunately, does not allow retaking quizzes and displaying the questions answered incorrectly at the same time, so @hlashbrooke helped to add some custom functionality here. At the moment, the answer notes is pretty rough and displays overlapping text, but that’s something that we are going to remedy once we have all the content in place.

Regarding question #3, we toyed with the idea of having specific feedback to the questions options: i.e. when a learner selects a correct option there is something like “This is correct. <A rephrasing of the correct answer>”, and if not “No, this is not correct. <Explanation why not>”. The advantage of having feedback is that learner would get to understand better why they are wrong immediately, and not feel confused. There are also disadvantages: they won’t be likely to go and reread the text to try to understand why they are wrong, which may limit the understanding. And it actually turned out that with Sensei it’s only possible at the moment to have one feedback item shown no matter what the chosen option is. That lead us to leave feedback-related plans for now.

All in all, I think it’s a really nice compromise between keeping the main idea of what was originally planned and adjusting it to the way the e-learning plugin we use actually can do things.

Next week I’ll be working with @chanthaboune based on the new content added to the Meetup organizer handbook. The flow will be similar to the way the other two were/are being handled:

  • Create an outline based on the way materials will be organized
  • Move the handbook content to Sensei
  • Start creating questions

#community-management, #meetups-2, #outreachy, #training-workshops, #wordcamps