Tag Archives: community-team

Francesca Marano 8:00 am on May 2, 2018
Tags: , community-team,   

Community Team Chat | Thursday, May 3rd 2018

Hey Team!

Our bi-monthly Community Team chat is happening this Thursday, May 3rd 2018. Meeting times are 11:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC in #community-team on Slack – we use the same agenda for both meetings in order to include all time zones.

Agenda

  1. Deputy check-in:
    What have you been doing and how is it going?
  2. P2 posts needing feedback/discussion:
  3. New posts on P2 (no feedback needed, but reading appreciated to be up-to-date!)

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

#meeting #agenda

Andrea Middleton 9:56 pm on February 28, 2018
Tags: , community-team,   

Community Team Chat | Thursday, 1 March 2018

Hey Team!

Our bi-monthly Community Team chat is happening this Thursday, 1 March 2018. Meeting times are 08:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC in #community-team on Slack – we use the same agenda for both meetings in order to include all time zones.

This site has enjoyed a lot of activity in the last few weeks, yay! There’s a lot we *could* talk about, but a few topics that folks have raised specifically for discussion, so this agenda will focus on those. As always, if you’d like to suggest a topic, please do so in the comments below!

Agenda

  1. Deputy check-in:
    What have you been doing and how is it going?
  2. Calls for volunteers:
  3. Proposals for discussion:
  4. In Case You Missed It (ICYMI):

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

#meeting #agenda

jillbinder 6:57 pm on February 26, 2018
Tags: community-team,   

Recap of the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training Meeting on February 21st, 2018

Start time stamp in Community-Team Slack

https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1519232433000189

Attending:
@jillbinder @zoonini @caroleo @miriamgoldman

 

Today’s Agenda

  • Addressing the drop off in help from most on the team lately
  • Looking for a co-leader to help run our group!
  • Actions to set up Meetups for success for running the workshop to get more women (or other underrepresented groups) to be speakers
  • Promotions to get the word out there to the Meetups

Addressing the Drop off in Help

In November and December when we started the group, we were all really excited about it.There has been a big drop off in people attending the meetings and I only got a few replies about the new volunteer roles, now that we’re moving from Prep phase to Action phase.

But also, a few people still are participating so just quickly a kudos to them:

We have a few volunteers for Promotion

@miriamgoldman @Webrite @sheilagomes and @newyorkerlaura started with us and now @jenswish is taking over for her

Volunteer for communicating with the Meetups:

@cguntur

Volunteers for training the Meetups for running the workshop:

@Webrite @angelinasimms

And a few other folk are participating in the bi-weekly meetings and also going to run the workshop in the very near future. A big thank you to you.

I can’t help the Meetups do this work and make a difference in the diversity of their speakers (which leads to diversity in their community and leadership and all kinds of other good changes) without more people. Without you.

So here is a big, bold question that I’m feeling brave to ask, and I know that the folk on this meeting are ones who are already participating more so this might not be the right audience, but if you have insights that would be great, and/or people can write to me privately after,

I am wondering what has happened between then? What in the way I’m running the group so far or in the way I’m making requests is having people not participate?

@miriamgoldman suggested people not having enough time for the team
@jillbinder thought it could be that I’m focusing too much on details and forgetting to remind people why we are doing this and what difference we are making
@jillbinder also thought it could have been my life stresses in November and December that distracted me while trying to build the team, and it might have affected people
@caroleo suggested she could keep her eyes open for more volunteers

Please do write to me anything about this. I’m learning to lead and I’m sure I’m making mistakes along the way, and I’m always looking to improve.

 

Looking for a co-leader to help run our group!

It’s been the goal all along to recruit a group to take long-term leadership so I can pass this on.

With that in mind, now that we are moving into Action phase, I’m looking for one or more co-leaders who will lead with me while we create and act on the Action systems.

It’s a great opportunity to really make a difference, changing the landscape of gender and diversity in WordPress around the world. The ideal person is (or is willing to learn) being passionate about this work, is great at keeping people motivated, and is good at details, and has some time to put into this.

[Edit since the meeting: We have a co-leader! More on that after I get her started.]

Actions to Set up Meetups

We have our message and form for the meetups, and we are moving forward on promoting it and then supporting the meetups who say yes.

Form is at this handy shortlink: http://tiny.cc/wpwomenspeak

We are creating a system where we’re able to track how many are running it and being able to support any groups that say that they need help.

I have done a call-out to folks with a few people saying yes and we need more, so I’m thinking through what is next. I have a couple of ideas for getting people interested and trained up, specifically for replying to the meetups who say yes and training any who request it.

These are a couple of ideas:

I could hold a live info and orientation web call to explain them further

Benefits:

  • Live sessions could allow meetup organizers to get instant answers to questions

Thoughts:

  • Huge time investment

I could record something for people to watch

Benefits:

  • A good option for taking timezones into account

Thoughts:

  • Could record with one extra participant so it’s more natural than me talking to myself

I am open to other ideas that will be efficient with everyone’s time

  • Live meetings could be held by me (Jill) or by other trained volunteers- who would hopefully be in different time zones
  • @caroleo: Recording a video and after interested people watched it, have a skype or similar for further orientation, questions
  • Training mentors by giving them access to a training recording then having a live follow up session (on Skype or similar)
  • Originally I was training people to run it by actually taking them through the workshop, but I’m nervous about spreading that kind of recording around as people share quite personal info in it. It also takes about an hour and a half to run one module. (We have 5 modules.)
  • Do a general “this is the material and some general points on how to run it.” I think that takes half an hour for all 5 modules. So probably more reasonable.
  • @zoonini pointed out it’s important for anyone giving the workshop to have actually experienced a workshop
  • @zoonini and @jillbinder discussed doing a hybrid workshop/training. Do a general training on most of it but run them through at least one of the exercises, like the brainstorming exercises, and include facilitator-type feedback notes. Or doing condensed versions of the exercises with fewer people.
  • @zoonini suggested finding a better time that works for those who want to give the workshop, rather than the other way around (setting a time and then hoping people can make it)
  • Training people on module 1, then saying  “go do the rest of your own and we’ll reconvene to get your presentations and questions.”

Promotions for the Meetups

For the last item, I’m a little bit stuck on promoting the form until we have the team set up to support people with it,

but also it’s already getting towards end of February and we need to start promoting it regardless.

Actions

@miriamgoldman starting on promotional work- she’s going to start targeting the Canadian WP slack and the local FB groups.

@jillbinder also going to start promoting it and trust that everything will be in place soon.

 

Promotion Plan Spreadsheet

Tab 2: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/195OBnYAOIvZNeoOSmginTtwzY8yegWCQWWm4Jf31gik/edit#gid=891834841

 

 

End meeting Time Stamp

https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1519234493000522

#community-team, #wpwomenspeak

Sherie LaPrade 12:47 am on February 16, 2018
Tags: community-team   

Small Change to Meetup and WordCamp Organizer Applications

In today’s afternoon #community-team chat, I mentioned that it can sometimes be difficult for deputies vetting applications to find information about the applicants online and that it might be helpful to request a little additional information on the application.  It was generally agreed that this would be only an incremental change and would not make it more difficult to apply so we have decided to update the application. @camikaos has since updated both the Meetup Interest Form and the WordCamp Organizer Application to include a single question: “Where can we find you online?”.

In the interest of transparency we wanted to post about the change here. As @andreamiddleton pointed out, though the decision was made in a public meeting, we try to avoid deciding on things during a single synchronous meeting. In order to include more of our global community (and for those who don’t have access to the slack), we’re posting about it here. Let us know if you have any concerns or feedback. We will revisit the change in 6 months to review and see if it has made application vetting any simpler (or sooner if we notice any unintended impacts).

jillbinder 2:25 am on February 13, 2018
Tags: community-team, ,   

Recap of the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training meeting on February 7th, 2018

Start time stamp in Community-Team Slack

https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1518022893000581

Attending:
@jillbinder @dianewallace

 

Today’s Agenda

  • Update on core message and contact form
  • How to use HelpScout
  • HelpScout autoresponder
  • Our promotions spreadsheet
  • Looking for volunteers to start training meetups
  • Questions from testers
  • Hashtag
  • Summary

Update on Core Message and Contact Form

Our core message and form are ready to start sending out and promoting. They can be found here: https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/event-formats/diversity-speaker-training-workshop/

How to Use HelpScout

As of yesterday the HelpScout system is set up for us. This is so that we can have several people be in correspondence with meetups who are interested in running the workshop.

I’ll be looking for a few people to be on the HelpScout team. Preference will go to people who are interested in taking leadership positions in our group to replace me within the year, though that is not required.

The interface looks like this. It’s mostly fairly standard email-looking.

The part we’ll need to pay attention to is “Status” and “Assigned”.

By default the status is “Closed”, but we want to keep them “Active” until we are certain there is no more communication that we need to have with them. [Edit: Have since set this to Active by default.]

Initially we want to keep it assigned to “Anyone” so that any of us can jump in and reply next. There may be certain circumstances where there is something a particular person needs to be in action for, so that’s when we would assign it to someone.

 

HelpScout Autoresponder

I’ve had a couple of requests from the testers for autoresponders so that people know their message went through.
Edit since meeting: @iandunn and I set up the autoresponder.

 

Our Promotions Spreadsheet

When someone messages us, we will put it right away into our spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/195OBnYAOIvZNeoOSmginTtwzY8yegWCQWWm4Jf31gik/edit?usp=sharing

As well as messages we will keep track of our promoting in the spreadsheet on another tab. Mark down what you’re planning on doing and when you did it.

 

Looking for Volunteers to Start Training Meetups

I’m going to start looking for people to start being “train the trainers” so that when meetups ask for training, we can help them. Please tell me if you’d like to do this.

 

Questions from testers:

Q: Where can we find the materials for the pitch and description of the workshop to send out when you’re holding it for your local group?

A: It’s the “Description” at the top of each module. I wil try to make that more clear.

Q: Where can we find the handouts?

A: I haven’t put those up yet but I will very soon.

Also when I’ve trained people on this material lately they’ve been wanting slides, so I have talked with the #training team about how we can put up slides. We are going to use reveal.js, and soon the lessons will be moved over to github and everything will be hosted there.

Seattle gave me their slides, so I will use those as a starting point. I may call out for volunteers to help with slides.

 

Hashtag

We have a tweet from the last recap to use and we have a hashtag: #WPWomenSpeak.

If you want to see all the recaps easily in one place, we’re using that same tag to mark them. So they’re all here: https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/wpwomenspeak/

 

In Summary:

  • Looking for volunteers for replying to meetups in HelpScout
  • Looking for volunteers to start training meetups on our workshop
  • It’s time to start promoting. Let me know how and by when you’re planning on sending it out and we’ll keep track in the spreadsheet.

 

End meeting Time Stamp

https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1518024447000774

#community-team

jillbinder 1:20 am on January 27, 2018
Tags: community-team,   

Recap of the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training meeting on January 24th, 2018

Start time stamp in Community-Team Slack
https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1516813231000016

Attending:
@jillbinder @caroleo @andreamiddleton @sheilagomes

Today’s Agenda

  • Our final core message
  • Our online article and form
  • Testing the HelpScout system
  • Support for those of you running workshops and train the trainer sessions
  • Next promotion actions that people would like to take
  • Our promotions spreadsheet

Our final core message

We discussed on the last meeting if we should use “women” or “people who identify as women.” I checked in with a few people and we decided on “women and other underrepresented groups.” I have kept the mention of “people who identify as women” later in the message.

Our online article and form

Our core message is now up online along with a form that I have put together:

https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/meetup-organizer/event-formats/diversity-speaker-training-workshop/

I think the core message is finalized now, unless someone has a burning “this must be changed.”

I put together a version of the form based on @BlogAid’s suggestions in a previous meeting, along with some other things I think we need. I am open to feedback.

Feedback ~

@caroleo: Sixth question I would rather say: “Would you like us to train you…” as this should be a question if the answers are yes or no

@andreamiddleton: It might be useful to add a field for meetup.com URL. Sometimes people will identify as one city but their meetup is in a suburb, especially with big cities.

@sheilagomes filled out the form and wasn’t sure if it was done right. I got Sheila’s feedback after the meeting.

Testing the HelpScout system

The other thing we’ve been working on is how the form is going to work. Currently it’s forwarding to my email address.

Soon @andreamiddleton will have it set to go to HelpScout. My understanding is this is a system that allows us to all see the correspondences easily so that nothing is getting repeated nor lost. That way any of us will be able to go in and pick up where the last one of us left off with corresponding to someone.

Through this system we hope to:
a) Keep track of which meetups are running it so we can keep a tally on how close to our goal of 27 meetups this year we are getting

b) Keep track of who would like us to train them how to run it

There’s a trade-off. We need to maintain the spreadsheet of meetup replies and statuses manually. The trade-off will be worth it though for the easier communication.

The first tab of this spreadsheet is where we will put in their answers:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/195OBnYAOIvZNeoOSmginTtwzY8yegWCQWWm4Jf31gik/edit?usp=sharing

Currently it’s viewable by anyone with a link and will make it editable by invitation only.

@caroleo volunteered to be the gatekeeper for giving our team access to edit the spreadsheet. Anyone outside of our team, she will check them with me.

Support for those running workshops and train the trainer sessions

Many of the people in our team are planning on running the workshop themselves. If you’re the contact for your city and you’re planning on running a training, please fill out our form after it is hooked up to HelpScout so we can test this system.

Next promotion actions that people would like to take

A number of people on our team are ready to start promoting as soon as our message is up online and ready.

Let’s start promoting next week. That way we can make sure HelpScout is ironed out and also we have the chance to test the system amongst ourselves. [Edit: It is not yet ready. I will edit this once it is.]

Also let us know how we can support you in running the workshop and train the trainer trainings.

The second tab of the spreadsheet is where we’ll keep track of who is doing what promotions. I’ve put a few people in there that I know about. You can talk to me to get yours into it or ask @caroleo for access to be able to edit it yourself.

@caroleo: I can help with promoting here in Europe

@sheilagomes: We had our last local meetup on Saturday and I mentioned the workshop on February, inviting everybody, and I talked to some people on Slack, but not broadly yet. I had said I would write en article based on the first video of the training. Is that video going to be available publicly?

@jillbinder: It is not available publicly. I will create another one that will be or get permission from the current people to use this one. TBD.

Please feel free to reach out to me (@jillbinder) on Slack, in the #community-team channel, or by comment on this post.

 

End meeting time stamp

https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1516815189000154

#wpwomenspeak

jillbinder 6:22 pm on December 27, 2017
Tags: community-team, , wpwomenspeaker   

Recap of the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training meeting on December 27th, 2017

Start time stamp in Community-Team Slack
https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1514394162000410

Attending:
@jillbinder @BlogAid @meher

Goals of Today’s Meeting

Reviewing the core messaging that @cguntur and @jillbinder wrote, and talking about moving the plan moving forward long term.

 

Core Message

We are choosing to focus for now on reaching out to meetup organizers to run this training at their local meetups.

The current version of the message for us to send out, with the call to action edited by @blogaid and @meher is:

Have you ever had trouble getting women to speak at your meetups and WordCamps?

We are looking for meet up organizers to run the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training workshop. It is a workshop to help more women want to speak. We will train you and provide the materials.

This workshop has been run in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and Montreal. The combination of running this workshop and putting in other related efforts, these cities all had a significant increase in the number of WordCamp speakers who identify as women. In particular, Vancouver has had 50% for 3 years in a row, and this year Seattle had the highest so far, 60%.

Now we are bringing it to Meetups in other cities. We want to hear from you! Let us know if you’re interested in conducting this workshop for your local meetup or any hesitations you have. Please fill in this form.

Along with a form that has some required radio buttons for:

  • “I’m in”
  • “Not now” or “Later”

And a text box for “Anything else you want us to know?” for more open ended responses.

We would contact them a couple of days later.

@blogaid asked where this will be posted. @jillbinder will check with @andreamiddleton. She’s thinking probably using a google form, and doesn’t mind using her google account if that is appropriate. If not, Andrea will be able to tell us which account to use. Likely it will be posted on the community P2. Again, Jill will check with Andrea.

 

Long-Term Plan

Our long-term plan suggestions so far:

  • Reaching out to the meetup organisers from different places
  • WCUS Twitter
  • Possibly WCEU twitter
  • Writing articles (coordinate with marketing for their help)
  • Speaking about it in the Slack groups of countries
  • Speaking about it in Facebook groups
  • Speaking to people about it at WordCamps
  • People who are already doing Diversity work, ask for a mention in their talks or a tweet out to their followers
  • Leveraging the monthly or quarterly email newsletters to chapter meetup organizers that may be starting
  • Asking former workshop attendees to write articles about how attending the workshop affected them
  • WordPress.tv which posts to YouTube. Creating a YouTube playlist.

@jillbinder said that for Twitter we need a shorter message.

@blogaid suggested: “Want to encourage more women speakers at your next WP MeetUp?” along with a link to an article that explains more. The article will include the form. She suggested that if we use Bitly, we can create the shortlink for the article, video, etc and have a better time tracking the spread of the word too, or even have a hashtag to track shares, such as #wpwomenspeaker or #wpwomenspeak.

@blogaid suggested that we activate everyone in our working group to post on their social media accounts when there is a new article, video, etc. We can post the tweet to #community-team for our team to use.

@blogaid belongs to about 40 industry related Facebook groups and says this would be appropriate to post in several of them.

@meher has access to multiple social streams that she can post to.

@jillbinder suggested that we look at the long-term plan in the next meeting (second week of January) with the larger group. For starting in the new year, the first steps can be the easy-to-do items:

  • Contacting meetup organizers directly (If we have access to them. She’ll find out from @andreamiddleton)
  • Tweets out to WCUS and WCEU (@newyorkerlaura has access to WCUS and we can ask WCEU)
  • Writing to Slack and FB country-specific groups. Jill has access to Canada on Facebook and Vancouver on Slack. We can find out who else in our group (or anyone reading this meeting) has access to other places.

 

Other

The next meeting will be second week of January where we look at the plan as a group.

In January @jillbinder will also be holding the second part of the workshop training for those who took it either live with her or watched the recording after. It will be a half hour wrap-up of the work people did on their own after taking or watching the first module with her. Date and time tbd.

 

End meeting time stamp

https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1514396188000126

jillbinder 6:03 pm on December 10, 2017
Tags: community-team,   

Recap of the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training meeting on November 29, 2017

Recap written by @sheilagomes

This is the recap of the the first Diversity Outreach Speaker Training meeting, which took place in the Slack #community-team channel on Nov 29.
The link for the whole meeting is here: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1511974875000240

These people were present:

  • Jill from Vancouver, Canada
  • Chandrika from Cupertino, CA, USA
  • Simona from Milan, Italy
  • Kathy from Atlanta, USA
  • Diya from Bangladesh
  • Hardeep from Kanpur, India
  • Sheila from Brazil
  • Mahesh from Ahmedabad, India
  • Meher, From Mumbai India

@jillbinder said she would explain the project and the general proposed planning, then open for:

  • First questions people had
  • Talking about when the first online training would be (1.5 hours for the first one, then half an hour for a follow up a couple of weeks later)
  • Thinking together how to promote this to get at least 27 communities running it this year

Up to this point there are thirteen people who said they could make this time work for the Slack meetings. A few of them wouldn’t start until after WCUS.

Quite a few men volunteered for this project. The men can help promote and support the women running it. Ideally workshops for women should be run by women. If it’s just not possible to have a women run it for some reason, then the men can run it too.

This workshop doesn’t have to be for women, it can be for any underrepresented group.

Jill explained what the workshop is: it started as a 3 or 4 hour session in Vancouver which later evolved into 5 modules with help from other cities.
The modules can be run all together or separately.

  • The first module covers things like: why we want more women (or other underrepresented groups), the myths of what it is to be the expert at the front of the room, the types of talks, an exercise where people generate about 50 different talk ideas, choosing a talk.
  • The second module gets into writing a pitch, choosing a title, writing a bio.
  • In the third module they use that pitch to generate an outline for a talk (but it can also be run alone).
  • The fourth module is about creating great slides, and one on tips to becoming a better speaker.
  • The fifth module hasn’t been created yet. It’s on Impostor Syndrome.

The goal of this working group is to get lots of WordPress communities around the world running this.
If we aim for 5% of all meetups in the first year, that is about 27 cities.
That would be the first year’s goal. So far as it’s only been run in person, but we are going to start running it online too when running it in person isn’t possible.

Jill will start by running a session online for this team, where people will go through the material as a regular participant would, and she’ll show things they want to know when running it themselves.

There will be a first 1.5-hour online training for the same time of day as this first meeting.
That will be on a webcam Zoom call, on Wednesday, December 20th.
For the people who can’t make this time work, if the first one goes well a second training can be held for them at another time.

In the last part of the meeting the discussion turned to how the participants can promote this initiative to get 27 or more communities running it.

  • AfshanaDiya suggested reaching out to the meetup organisers from different places.
  • Sheila said she could talk about it in the slack Brazilian group, and in the next local meet up. She also suggested writing articles.
  • Simona said their next WordCamp in Italy would be on the 15th of December, and she would talk to people there. She would like to run the workshop in April during WordCamp Turin.
  • Sheila asked about using WordPress.tv and Jill said she has a talk about this that she did at WordCamp Seattle about this that will be going up on WordPress.tv sometime soon.

The meeting finished with:

  • The proposal to think of more ideas
  • Jill would send out a poll to figure out the time for the December training
  • Jill said that in the next Slack meeting in 2 weeks we would come up with an official promotion plan with action items assigned to people.

#wpwomenspeak

jillbinder 5:35 pm on November 28, 2017
Tags: community-team,   

Meeting Time: Diversity Outreach Speaker Training

As not everyone who volunteered is on Slack (yet), I wanted to post the voting results for the meetings for the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training.

The meeting will be at 5:00pm UTC (12pm Eastern) on every other Wednesday in #community-team on Slack. The first one will be tomorrow, Wednesday, Nov. 29th.

We will be creating a plan for promoting the training and organize an online train-the-trainers version of the workshop.

It is not too late to volunteer. If you are interested, please comment on the call for volunteers post.

If you’re interested in the effort but would rather focus on organizing a workshop in your local community or join in on an online, train-the-trainers version of the workshop, that’s great too! Comment that on the call for volunteers post and we’ll reach out to let you know when it’s scheduled.

P.S. Those who volunteered and who weren’t on Slack yet, please PM me on Slack @jillbinder once you have your slack handle. Thanks!

Call for Volunteers: Diversity Outreach Speaker Training

#wpwomenspeak

Andrea Middleton 10:40 pm on October 4, 2017
Tags: community-team   

Community Team Chat | 5 October 2017

Howdy, Team!

Our bi-monthly Community Team chat is happening this Thursday, 5 October. Meeting times are 08:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC in #community-team on Slack – we use the same agenda for both meetings in order to include all time zones.

Heads up! A few of the people who sometimes lead discussion in these chats will be away tomorrow (including me and Hugh). So I’m making an open invitation for any deputy who plans to attend, to leave a comment on this post (or just speak up in the chat) if they’re willing to lead the discussion. 🙂

Agenda

  1. Deputy check-in (progress and blockers to progress)
  2. Decision making process discussion summary and proposal –
    This post is still open for discussion; if you have not already commented, please do so! 🙂 Another big thanks to @francina for putting his proposal together.
  3. Additional P2 post discussions:

If you have anything else to add to the agenda, please add it by commenting on this post! 🙂