Francesca Marano 6:30 pm on July 12, 2019
Tags: community-events ( 9 ), community-team, guidelines

Announcement: guidelines for using Trello

TL;DR: The Community Team is great at managing daily operations but sometimes we lose the “big picture” and things fall between the cracks. Enter Project Management!

The topic of project management has surfaced a few times in the past couple of years.
During 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/. at 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. US 2018 a group of people (Christina Workman – @amethystanswers, Dean Burton – @burtondean, Javier Ontiveros – @javo01, Ken Mick – @kengmick, Ray Mitchell – @raym, Stacey CC DePolo) worked on a first proposal for a workflow and in the past few days @sippis and I reviewed it.

After a bit of back and forth and some trial and error, we are ready to start using the Trello board for the Community Team!

Project Management through TrelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing.

Trello is a free project management tool based on kanban boards. In its simplest form you have three columns with three status: To Do, Doing, and Done.

Each team that uses kanban boards usually comes up with different ways of leveraging them, including some very complex use cases.
We tried to keep it simple enough to be easy to use for as many people as possible, but customised it to the team’s needs.

Why Trello: a SWOT Analysis

Strengths
1) Tool
– Free
– User friendly
– Mobile apps
– Browser based
2) Processes
The Community Team is busy busy busy. Sometimes we get so busy with the daily stuff (vetting, orientations, invoicing, payments, etc…) that we don’t keep an eye on the bigger picture. Trello will help us do that.
– Team work
– Work progress
– Multiple projects under the same roof (working groups can add a board)

Weakness
1) Tool
– Browser based – you can’t use it when you are offline like Google Docs and then sync when you have a connection
– Limited in terms of functionality if you are a professional project manager
2) Processes
– People need to be added to the boards to be able to edit, comment, etc…
– New tool to learn

Opportunities
1) Tool
– Add-ons to make the worflow even more efficient
2) Processes
– It allows new contributors to pick a project and join the team that is working on it without being a deputy
– It allows existing contributors that have been out of the loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. to go back to working actively on projects

Threats
1) Tool
– Not open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL., might disappear into the void
– Might become a fully paid tool in the future.
There is nothing pointing that any of the above will happen, but you never know…
2) Processes
– Change can be met with resistance
– Not enough buy-in from senior members of the team
– Logging activity in Trello rather than on the team blog adds another level of complexity to deputy reporting

After doing this SWOT analysis it looks like it’s a good idea to try it for real. Especially since we are aware of the threats we can self-correct over time 😉

Suggestions for a smoother adoption

Define the scope

Trello is not for daily activities (vetting, orientations, payments, invoicing, mediation, quizzes, etc…) nor for Community Organisers to organise their events.

Trello is for:

time and scope defined projects
one or more people working on it

Working Groups are a great example, because they are very focused and need all the members to be updated, whether they are present during the biweekly chats or not.

Commit to the experiment

From now to December 31st, we kindly ask you to give Trello a proper chance. It means that if you are working on anything Community related you should use our public board to keep track of the project so everyone can be informed and join.

Make it part of our team chats

We should introduce the board at our meetings as the tool we use to work on projects.

This is an example how the Marketing team does it, and it’s a great way to reinforce how useful Trello is for everyone:

Right click on your mouse, Open in New Tab, so you can actually read what it says 🙂

Trial Period

We will use Trello until the end of the year. If by December 31st 2019 we see that this tool has actually slowed down projects or became a roadblock for new contributors, we will discontinue it.

What does success look like?

Everything that is non daily operation is documented in the Trello board.
We keep the board updated (even by moving projects into the Backlog column) so people that haven’t been active for a while or are looking for a way to contribute to Community can pick up a task and go with it.
Every proposal that we post in the blog and is met with enthusiasm is turned into a project card in Trello so we know that something happened after we said “What a great idea!”
100% buy-in from all the Community Team
100% buy-in from new contributors that understand that this is part of the on-boarding.

Next steps and call for feedback

To ensure adoption we need these processes to be clear, understandable, and useful.

Please check the guidelines in the Column “👇👇👇 START HERE 👇👇👇”. Do they make sense? Do you think it’s a good workflow to start with?
Explore the projects in the “To Do” and “In Progress” columns. Do they make sense when you see them in action?
Add your project, no matter how simple or complex it might be. Ask in #community-events or #community-team to be added to the board (an unfortunate feature if the software). You need a Trello account to join.
How do you think we should integrate the board in our meetings?

Thank you for reading all of this!

#guidelines

jillbinder 10:44 pm on June 11, 2019
Tags: community-team, WPDiversity ( 32 ), wpwomenspeak ( 47 )

Diverse Speakers Training Group Road Map

The Diverse Speakers Training group #WPDiversity (formerly Diversity Outreach Speaker Training #WPWomenSpeak) has created a Roadmap for the length of @jillbinder‘s first contract, May 2019 – April 2020.

We are posting it here for feedback and to interest new volunteers to join the group.

Introduction

This working group helps WordPress Meetups and WordCamps develop a more diverse speaker roster via a training (workshop) that helps folks bust through their Impostor Syndrome and develop a topic, title, pitch, bio, and outline.

Goals by the end of April 2020

Improve the training based on the feedback from the feedback questionnaires results and things Jill has learned
Promote the training and results of training to WordPress community organizers and prospective speakers (identify metrics here — number of tweets/articles/pageviews)
25 workshops held in chapter meetups or WordCamps
Train 30 people to run the speaker training workshop
Train 125 people from marginalized communities to become speakers

Roadmap

Notes

“Andrea” refers to @andreamiddleton.
* and bolded – Stretch goals

Ongoing (Daily or Monthly tasks)

[Admin] Checking Helpscout for new signups
[Trainers] Updating calendly with trainings and communicating to participants about them
[Trainers] Run 1-2 Trainings a month
[Promotion] Write monthly Meetups newsletter article by 10th of the month (ish)

May 2019

[Admin] Restart team (Done)
[Promotion] Create new hashtag and update everywhere (Done)
[Andrea and Jill or Team] Vocabulary for workshops vs trainings (Done)
Improving our offering based on the email questionnaires (and the ideas already in Jill’s head) (Done – not yet published)

May – July

[Andrea, Jill, team] Smoothing out our processes

June

[Material] Improving the training based on the feedback from email questionnaires and things Jill has learned
[Promotion] Create a shorter team name (Done)
[Team] Publish roadmap; Recruit more volunteers
[Trainers] Get us using new systems (calendly, require they’ve created a meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. for it, email questionnaire)
[Trainers] Schedule first new training(s) starting in June
[Trainers] Start giving trainings again, 1-2 times a month
[Trainers] Jill record a short video on what this is
[Andrea, Jill, Trainers / Promotion] Create new email questionnaire follow-up system and/or Zoom interviews; Send it out to previous facilitators; Start collecting case studies for marketing ?

June – July

[Translations] Translating the workshop and materials to Brazilian Portuguese and Italian
[Trainers] Contact past attendees and dormant emails (not responded in several months) to let the new speaker wranglers this year know about workshop and see if they’d like training
[Trainers] Contact past attendees to see if they’d like to take it again
[Trainers] Contact past attendees for their info for the “Past Workshops Celebration” page
[Jill] Communication and accountability system

July

[Promotion] Jill finish Build Speaker Roster essay
[Promotion] Put the workshop into the materials for 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. Speaker wranglers and the Meetups info
[Training, Promotion] Create a “Past Workshops Celebration” page on Make WordPress that shows images, stats, and maybe stories of each workshop

August

* [Workshop] Short and long version of workshop
[Trainers] Trainings in different time zones start (to confirm with @angelasjin)

August – September

[Translations] Translated the workshop and materials to another 1-2 languages

September

* [Self-guided Training] Record 10-20 minute “how to use”
* [Self-guided Training] Have team attend a training that we record for Train The Trainers
* [Languages] Start onboarding trainers who can do other languages

October

* [Self-guided Training] Record module facilitator notes

October – November

[Translations] Translated the workshop and materials to another 1-2 languages

January 2020

* [Languages] Start offering trainings in different languages
More frequent trainings start. 3-4 time a month?

Marketing

@aurooba is taking on creating a Roadmap for Promotion. These are Andrea and Jill’s suggestions before consulting with her:

Change the hashtag to #WPDiversity (Done)
Create a shorter team name (Done)
Case studies from each of the groups that ran this training last year (they can write, or we can write, or marketing can write) (by end of Aug…)
People to talk about the change the training has had on their lives, on podcasts and in blog posts.
Video series interviewing people who’ve benefited from the training program — Allies here: Marketing or WPTV team (only if it will be high leverage)
Get on multiple podcasts talking about the group and its work
Our own twitter?
Editorial calendar for the outreach effort (after a road map is outlined), plus ways to pull in the Marketing team
Finish and promote the “Build A Diverse Speaker Roster” Essay (https://make.wordpress.org/community/2018/09/13/input-requested-building-a-diverse-speaker-roster-document/)
A page somewhere in the WordPress ecosystem to show pictures, stats, and maybe stories of all the places that had our workshops. A little public visibility to encourage people to send us their info.

Visual Roadmap

This is a version of the above put in a summary form so that it could be laid out visually.

* {Curly brackets} are the stretch goals.

Feedback

Comment here with your feedback, or write to @jillbinder on the WordPress 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/..

How To Get Involved

We are always looking for folks who care about Diversity in WordPress (#WPDiversity). We are looking for:

Big-picture thinkers
Project management strategists
Content strategists
Marketing strategists
People who can carry out a marketing plan
Trainers (we will train you)
Folks who can do small admin tasks
Folks who can just give opinions here and there to help guide us through the big and little decisions
Translators
and more!

Comment here with your interest, write to @jillbinder on the WordPress Slack, or attend tomorrow’s meeting (2nd and 4th Wednesdays) on the #community-team Slack channel: Wednesday, June 12 @ 5pm UTC.

Timi Wahalahti 9:13 am on February 23, 2019
Tags: community-events ( 9 ), community-team, discussion ( 4 ), Office Hours ( 12 )

Discussion: continuity of Community Office Hours

Office hours are usually quite quiet, people ask their questions when it’s convenient for them and deputies forgot to open or close those (regardless of the bot we have to remind us). There is almost always deputy to answer questions or if there isn’t, the question will be caught up later when some deputy sees it.

So, I’d like to question if community hours are really needed and propose their retirement. In exchange there are few things we could do to encourage people to ask questions freely.

During the last community team meetings, few good ideas were conducted from the discussion:

replace the office hours sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. and welcome box text with something more general about #community-events channel and encouraging to ask questions at all times
having a random empathy bot that reminds #community-team that we should post something encouraging to #community-events if the channel has been quiet for some time

Some concerns were also raised:

some people are waiting for the office hours before asking their questions
we don’t want to loose a human touch so having a bot in #community-events opening/closing office hours, sending random reminder messages or auto-replying is not an option
we need to be very clear that people can ask their questions any time, but know that they may not get an immediate answer

Please share your thoughts about retiring office hours or ideas on how to evolve those! Comments will close 10.4., please leave your comment before that.

#discussion, #office-hours

Francesca Marano 3:26 pm on January 7, 2019
Tags: community-team

WordPress Governance Project: change of venue

Concerns have been raised about the posting of news about the WordPress Governance Project on make.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/ and use of 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 giving the impression the project is sanctioned as an official WordPress project. It has not received such sanctions from WordPress leadership.

For this reason, all further work of the WordPress Governance Project will take place on the dedicated site at wpgovernance.com and asynchronous chat will happen at twgp.slack.com.

To allow everyone interested to sign up to the New Slack channel, and get acquainted with the new site, the first meeting will be postponed by one week to January 15, 1600 UTC.

Timi Wahalahti 4:29 pm on January 1, 2019
Tags: community-team

Meetup Application Vetting Sprint – January 3rd

Looks like were going to skip our next team meeting, since people are still enjoying their holidays on January 3rd. For those who are back from the holidays and have scheduled Community team meeting in their calendars – let’s have MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. application vetting sprint!

What is a vetting sprint?

A vetting sprint for meetup applications is a 1 hour session where all available deputies meet together in the #community-team channel in the WordPress Slack group. Over the course of the hour, we will all work on vetting meetup applications and use the 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 as a central place to discuss what we’re working on and support each other.

Who can take part?

Any deputies who have access to the Meetup Tracker can take part. That means people who have completed the deputy training, signed the agreement and been given access to the tracker (details about the tracker here).

If you are a deputy who has been active in the last 6 months, then you would have been added to the tracker already, but if you don’t have access and still want to take part then please comment here and we can give you access.

When is this happening?

Currently, we have one planned sprint. It would be awesome to have a sprint also on the later community team meeting, so please tell us in #community-team if you can lead that sprint!

Thursday, January 3rd, 11:00 UTC – lead by @sippis
Thursday, January 3rd, 20:00 UTC – lead by ?

All deputies are welcome to join in meetup vetting sprints and do the vetting by themselves at any time 🙂

How does it work?

As explained above, we will meet in the #community-team channel on Slack at the times listed and dive into vetting meetup applications. Here are some handy links that you will need on the day:

Rachel Cherry 3:27 pm on December 29, 2018
Tags: community-team

WordPress Governance Project Launch

The WordPress Governance Project kicks off on Asia-Pac / EMEA friendly Tuesday January 8 2019, 1600 UTC with a one hour meeting 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. The meeting will be conducted and moderated by provisionary team leads @bamadesigner and @mor10.

Meeting moved to twgp.slack.com and postponed to January 15. See announcement and update your calendars. Thanks!

What is the WordPress Governance Project?

First announced at 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. US 2018, the WordPress Governance Project is an initiative spearheaded by @bamadesigner and @mor10.

The purpose of this project is to explore:

the governance of the WordPress open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project and its various community components, and
WordPress’ role in the governance of the open web including representation in forums where decisions about the web platform and the Internet are made.

The scope of stage 1 of the WordPress Governance Project is WordPress and its communities. Stage 2 of the project will focus on how WordPress can take part in the governance and evolution of the wider web through policy and representation.

Why is this necessary?

The WordPress Governance Project will aim to answer who “we” are and who “we” represent.

WordPress powers +32.7% of the web. Every decision made by WordPress is a decision made on behalf of those users and has a significant impact on the web as a whole. Because of this footprint, the onus is on WordPress and its contributors to ensure decisions are made in a transparent and accessible way and that governance structures are concrete, transparent, and understandable. In short, it has to be possible for anyone to find an answer to the question “who are the deciders”.

To be able to take part in the larger conversation about the governance of the web platform, the open web, and the Internet, WordPress first needs to clarify its principles through an exploration of what necessary conditions need to be in place for it to meet its goal of “democratizing publishing.” With such principles in place, representatives can be selected and sent to decision makers (governing organizations like W3CW3C The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community where Member organizations, a full-time staff, and the public work together to develop Web standards.https://www.w3.org/., government representatives, etc) to speak on behalf of WordPress and its millions of users.

To claim our seat at the table, we must first know what we stand for and where we want to take the web and the Internet.

For more context, view the announcement of the project as part of @mor10’s session at WordCamp US 2018.

How will this project unfold?

The goal of the WordPress Governance Project is to propose a governance model for WordPress at or before WordCamp Europe 2019 or the 2019 Community Summit (if such an event takes place).

The project will research existing governance models from within the open web community as well as local and international organizations, corporations, and government.

What is the scope of this project?

The scope of the WordPress Governance Project, stage 1, includes:

Propose a set of principles based on, and defining the necessary conditions for, the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. philosophy of the WordPress open source project: To democratize publishing through free, open source software.
Propose a leadership and governance model for the WordPress open source project and its communities.
Propose a model for electing or appointing representatives to speak on behalf of WordPress and its users in forums where decisions are made which impact WordPress and its users.

The project will provide a model for policy making, decision making, oversight, and accountability within the WordPress project. This may include solidifying existing governance structures in teams, introducing new governance structures for parts of or the entire project, and / or creating new governance roles and responsibilities.

The scope of the WordPress Governance Project does not include replacing or reducing existing leadership or introducing democratic voting on features and other decisions within the WordPress project or community.

Will WordPress governance mean someone can make decisions about what I can and cannot do with WordPress?

Short answer: No.

Long answer, WordPress is an open source project published under the GPL which grants you the Four Freedoms. This will not change.

The WordPress Governance Project aims to introduce transparent and accountable governance structures to the WordPress project to make it more accessible and bring clarity to decision making processes. It also aims to create the necessary structures for WordPress and its users to be properly represented in the many groups and spaces where decisions are made which directly impact you as a WordPress user.

Can you impose a governance model on WordPress?

Once the WordPress Governance Project puts forward its proposal for governance of the WordPress project, it is up to the current leadership, and the community at large, to decide whether to adopt the new model.

Vedanshu Jain 11:25 am on December 24, 2018
Tags: community ( 12 ), community-events ( 9 ), community-team, Core ( 2 ), meta ( 3 ), polyglots ( 3 ), slack ( 3 )

Slack notifications for WordCamp and Meetup application updates

In the WordPress project, multiple teams (#meta, #core, #polyglots, etc.) make use of 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/. notifications to surface new, interesting changes in their team’s respective channel. This includes notifications on new commits, tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. issue updates, new translation strings availability, etc.

These notifications serve at least two purposes:

1. People interested in following these teams have a very convenient way to look at recent and ongoing activities.

2. It provides a way to acknowledge contributors.

In the WordPress community channels, we don’t currently use this tool, but there may be some cases where having these notifications would add lot of value for us.

These include:

Someone sends a new application for a 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.
Someone sends a new application for a WordPress chapter meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area.
A new WordCamp is set to Scheduled status
A new WordPress meetup group is now active in the chapter
A WordCamp application is declined
A Meetup application is declined

For reference, you can see status of some active WordCamp applications here.

These notifications could include whether the event is a WordPress or a Meetup, city and country of the event, description of the update, and 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/ usernames of people who were involved in vetting the event application.

I have written some initial code for this, and it could look like:

`(screenshot for when a new WordCamp application is submitted)`

(screenshot for when WordCamp is scheduled) — `(screenshot when a WordCamp application is scheduled)`

(screenshot for when a WordCamp application is declined) — `(screenshot when a WordCamp application is declined)`

A few more things to note and discuss here:

We can perhaps send these notifications to #community-events, #community-team, or both of these channels.
The props section will include usernames of everyone who added notes to the application listing and/or changed the listing’s status.
We would also want to send notifications when an application is declined, and not just when it is received or scheduled, in order to credit the deputies who nevertheless did the work to vet and respond to it. It could normalize the process of declining the application, because it is not uncommon for subsequent applications to be approved.

What do you think? Should we have these notifications? If we have them, then should they be more granular, or less granular? What changes in language or overall appearance would you suggest? Leave your thoughts in a comment on this post!

#community, #slack

Hugh Lashbrooke 7:17 am on September 21, 2018
Tags: community-team

Meetup Application Vetting Sprint – 26 & 27 September

In order to get through the large backlog of meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. applications that are currently in need of vetting, we are going to be joining together in two 1-hour vetting sprints next week!