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It is time to host the next Mentorship chat of the WordPress Contributor Working Group after a brief gap. We’re meeting on Thursday (April 18th) to continue our work on improving the contribution experience of WordPress. For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post and past chats.
We will hold these chats in multiple time zones to accommodate as many participants all over the world as possible. These chats will continue to be held on the Third Thursday of every month.
The chat will be held on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack. Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file containing calendar entries for our upcoming chat so you won’t miss it. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. Everyone interested in improving the contributor experience in WordPress and building future mentorship programs is welcome to attend!
1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves. Do we also have any volunteers for notetaking, next agenda drafting, or next meeting host?
2. Mentorship Cohort #2 Recap The second edition of our WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program has concluded! The event was a huge success with 44 out of 52 mentees formally graduating from the program! Let’s take a moment to look back at the program, and celebrate our wins and learnings from the program, as well as the survey results.
3. What’s next for the mentorship program? Now that we have completed two cohorts of the mentorship program, how should we go ahead with the next edition of the mentorship program? What is the future of the program and how does it look like?
4. Next Steps for our Working Group The original purpose of the working group was to bolster the contributor experience of WordPress, and we identified mentorship as a kick-it off. As we have some clarity on mentorship for our program, it is time to explore other ways to improve the WordPress contributor experience, such as working on Five for the Future and to take other steps to address other obvious gaps in the WordPress contributor experience. Let’s brainstorm on what the next steps of our group will look like.
5. Questions, thoughts, and open floor! If we still have time after all that intense discussion, we’ll open up the floor to discuss WordPress Contribution broadly and our program!
The cohort, which had 52 mentees supported by 28 mentorsEvent SupporterEvent 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., kicked off on February 19, 2024, and went on for six weeks to formally wrap up on March 29. Out of this group, 44 mentees leveled up their WordPress contribution knowledge and made impactful contributions to the WordPress project.
Please join me in congratulating all our mentees who have graduated from the program!
Our mentorship program took place in a dedicated slackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel in the Make/WordPress Slack for six weeks. For the first two weeks, our mentees were oriented to the program through kick-off session, got to know their mentors, set contribution goals, and learned about the WordPress project through learn-up sessions. On Weeks 3 and 4, our mentees started contributing to the teams of their choice, which continued through Weeks 5 and 6, when they wrapped-up by setting a 30-60-90 day goal and graduated from the program! Many mentees took part in projects where they worked in small groups to make collective contributions. Throughout the process, our mentees also got an inside view of the WordPress 6.5 release process and the WordPress project itself, as many mentees contributed to WordPress CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. by joining the release parties.
Achievements from our Program
In six weeks, many of our mentees went out of the way to contribute to WordPress. Compared to our last cohort, we had many more contributions to WordPress, as our mentees not only onboarded to the project, but also spent a bulk of their time contributing. Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of achievements from our cohort members:
👩💻Scores of Core Contributions (issues and patches)
🌎 WordPress 6.5 BetaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. and RCRelease CandidateA beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. release posts translated to local languages.
🌎 Thousands of strings translated to several languages
🎓 Translated Learn WordPress lessons
🇫🇷🇮🇹Translating WordPress documentation to local languages (Italian and French)
✍️ Extensive contributions to the WordPress User and Developer Documentation
💬 Running Team chats for multiple teams (Community, Training, Test)
📜 Writing summaries for multiple team chats (Community, Training, Test)
🎉 Active participation in WordPress 6.5 Beta, RC, dry-run, and main release parties.
♻️ Contribution to the Sustainability Team documentation
📺 Becoming a WordPress.tv moderator
📝 Leading contributor dayContributor DayContributor 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/. tables at a WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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.
⛺️ Organizing a WordCamp
📸 Contribute photos to the WordPress Photo Directory
👔🤝 Individually advocating and helping their company join Five for the Future!
🖥 Set up a local environment for WordCamp.org and started working on open issues for the WordCamp network.
🎟 Contributed to the MetaMetaMeta 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 by submitting Meta tickets.
🧑🎨 Several contributions to the Community Theme project (both existing and new themes).
🛝 Contributions to the WordPress Playground Documentation
📚 Updates to the CLICLICommand Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress. handbook
🖨 Several contributions to GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/
💪 Active participation in team processes such as publishing blog posts in Make/Test
⚡️Supporting WordPress event reactivation
Another highlight of this cohort was that six of our graduating mentees were supported by an LGBTQ+ empowerment grant.
Contributions to WordPress 6.5
The biggest win of the program remains to be its impact on WordPress 6.5. To summarize:
🌟 Among our mentors and mentees, our program offered eight (8) first-time core contributorsCore ContributorsCore contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. to the project!
Big congratulations and many thanks to all contributors!
Learning Materials from the Mentorship Program
For folks who are curious about the Mentorship Program, we are sharing some of the learning materials that our mentees used and were created during the program.
This program was a true community effort, with WordPress Contributor Working Group members working hand-in-hand to make this pilot program a reality. We faced many challenges, but we all worked together to ensure a smooth contributor experience for our mentees.
Mentors
As a heavily mentorEvent SupporterEvent 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.-driven program, our mentors are the cornerstone behind the success of this cohort. Mentors went out of their way to support their paired mentees by helping them step up their contributions. I can safely attribute the success of our program to the exceptional support and commitment offered by our vibrant group of mentors.
Our mentors and mentees did not miss any chance to connect with each other. We hung out with each other informal group calls and had a lot of fun! Some of us also met in-person a few times at WordCamp Asia and WordCamp Torrelodones!
What next?
Even though the mentorship program has formally concluded, our mentees’ WordPress contributor journey has only started. Many of our mentees have prepared 30-60-90 day plans and plan to active contribute to WordPress. Quite a few of our mentees have also expressed interest in participating in the WordPress 6.6 release process. We have a total of 19 participants from our program who would like to join the 6.6 release team so far, with 14 applications coming from mentees! Many mentees have formally ensconced their commitment to WordPress contributions by pledging to contribute through part of Five for the Future, with at least one mentee securing sponsorship from their employer to do so during the program!
Going forward the success of our program depends on how engaged our mentees are. We are working on a post-event survey for our mentees and mentors, and the survey results will shed more light into how the program went. Working group members aim to check in with mentees later this year to see how they are doing with their contributor journey, to also find out more about their contribution journey and offer any support that they need.
Even as we celebrate the success of the contributor mentorship program, the Contributor Working Group still has miles to go. We will continue our monthly chats, and start working on the next iteration of the mentorship program alongside WordPress 6.7, in November.The working group also aims to start working on other tasks to improve the overall WordPress contributor experience, focusing on improving programs such as Five for the Future.
Join us for the next mentorship chat on April 18th in #community-team, if you would like to be a part of the working group and support us in making the WordPress contributor experience the best it can be!
Interested in being a part of the next cohort of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program as a mentor or mentee? Leave a comment on this blog post expressing your interest!
Reading about the program so far, what are your thoughts on this mentorship program? Do you have any thoughts, suggestions, feelings, ideas, or feedback for us? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
+make.wordpress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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//project
We are thrilled to share the exciting news about the launch of the second cohort of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship program, starting next week, Monday, February 19th! This program offers a special chance for those enthusiastic about WordPress to immerse themselves in the project and make impactful contributions.
Who Are the Mentees?
This cohort is made up of over 50 diverse contributors, each either matched with a mentorEvent SupporterEvent 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 part of a task-focused project under the guidance of multiple mentorsEvent SupporterEvent 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.. These participants were chosen from a pool of 76 applicants from around the globe. All those who submitted an application should have an email waiting for them with the application results.
Program Breakdown
This cohort will span over a six-week period:
Weeks 1 and 2 (February 19 – March 3): Kick-off session, initial mentor/mentee check-in, setting contribution goals, and online workshops.
Weeks 3 and 4 (March 4 – March 17): Focus on onboarding mentees to their chosen Make/WordPress teams, with support from team representatives, to make their initial contributions.
Weeks 5 and 6 (March 18 – March 29): Wrap up, set a 30-60-90-day goal, and a graduation session.
After these six weeks, mentees will gain a solid understanding of the WordPress project, contribute to their chosen Make/Teams, and prepare for continued involvement. Following the pilot cohort’s success, this cohort’s timing is again aligned with the WordPress 6.5 release, providing mentees with a firsthand look at the release process of WordPress.
Our Mentors
The success of this program is largely due to our dedicated mentors who provide one-on-one support, guiding mentees through their WordPress journey.
MetaMetaMeta 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 the spirit of openness and collaboration, we invite the WordPress community to follow our cohort’s progress. While not everyone can be assigned a specific mentor, those interested are welcome to join the #contributor-mentorship channel on Make/WordPress SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. Here, you can engage in public sessions and stay informed about the developments of the WordPress 6.5 release and the broader contributor community.
This program couldn’t happen without the tireless efforts of our mentors, the Contributor Working Group, and all involved in organizing and supporting this initiative. Your dedication to fostering growth and learning within the WordPress community is invaluable. Let’s make this cohort a success together to enhance mentorship within the WordPress project and empower more contributors!
The next Mentorship chat of the WordPress Contributor Working Group is on the cards. We’re meeting today – on Thursday (February 15th) to continue our work on improving the contribution experience of WordPress. For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post and past chats.
Today’s chat is particularly exciting, because we are launching the second cohort of the Contributor Mentorship Program next week (February 19th)!
Meeting times
We will hold these chats in multiple time zones to accommodate as many participants all over the world as possible. These chats will continue to be held on the Third Thursday of every month.
The chat will be held on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack. Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file containing calendar entries for our upcoming chat so you won’t miss it. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. Everyone interested in improving the contributor experience in WordPress and building future mentorship programs is welcome to attend!
1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves.
Any volunteers for notetaking, next agenda drafting, or next meeting host?
2. Mentorship Cohort #2 status update We closed our call for mentorsEvent SupporterEvent 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 mentees last week, and we are close to announcing our selected mentors and mentees (waiting for some final confirmation/feedback from mentors). At this point, we will chat about the current state of the selection process for transparency.
3. Draft Program Schedule A draft schedule for our program is ready! We will be discussing the same in this chat for members’ feedback.
4. Call for Help As the program is about to launch, we’re going to need a lot of help from our mentors and mentees to make it happen! We will define the areas where help is needed in the chat, but to summarize:
Documentation Tasks (Review mentorEvent SupporterEvent 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., mentee guides, showrunning documents, checklists)
Facilitators (Folks who can engage the mentees throughout the program and run the program broadly)
Onboarding sessions hosts (We need representatives from Make/Teams to host sessions on various topics for our group)
And finally, some additional mentors (While our call for mentors is closed, we are looking for additional mentors who can support our pool of mentors)
5. Questions, thoughts, and open floor! If we still have time after all that intense discussion, we’ll open up the floor to discuss mentorship broadly and our program!
Don’t hesitate to share any relevant information for mentorship in general.
GithubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/
We shared the agenda and latest win: @adityakane: “Currently, we have received 10 mentorEvent SupporterEvent 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 13 mentee applications”
Mentorship Cohort Details
Program Schedule and status
Call for mentorsEvent SupporterEvent 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 mentees – Published
Cohort selection & program building: (Jan 8 – Feb 15) – Ongoing
Announce selected mentees/mentors (Feb 14)
Mentorship Program: 4-6 weeks (Feb 19 – March 29; 6 weeks leading up to the release week)
Graduation & Retrospective: 2 weeks (April 1 – April 12)
@gusa asks if it’s possible to publish which teams are selected by applicants.
More Mentorship Projects Wanted
Here is a summary of the ideas we have received thus far:
Courtney (@courane01) had proposed an idea of creating collaborative Learn WordPress workshops (this program can only be worked on if there is a mentor from the training team)
@annezazu proposed the idea of a dedicated mentorship opportunity for folks to shadow WordPress releases. (this idea is being worked on)
@annezazusuggests a dedicated release-oriented mentoring project that offers participants an inside view of releases with dedicated projects. She also shared that as part of the Queeromattic Employee Resource Group of Automattic, scholarships could be made available for participants. The idea was welcomed with great enthusiasm.
All working group members were encouraged to amplify the Mentorship calls. The Make/Marketing team already has published the following posts in social platforms on official WordPress accounts:
Additionally, the Make/Marketing team has an Amplify entry in their GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ profile.
@hellosatya proposes to involve the Make/Marketing team to have the mentorship program mentioned in every team’s meetings.
We also reviewed upcoming tasks for the mentorship program. Working group members are encouraged to leave a comment on the relevant GitHub issue or help us by creating an issue.
@angelasjin proposed “office hoursOffice HoursDefined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time.” for mentors where she will be answering questions and providing support to mentors as needed.
It’s time for the next Mentorship chat of the WordPress Contributor Working Group. We’re meeting this Thursday (January 18th) to continue our work on improving the contribution experience of WordPress. For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post and past chats.
Note that this is our first chat of 2024, and today’s chat is exciting because we just published the call for mentees of the Mentorship Program’s second cohort!
Meeting times
We will hold these chats in multiple time zones to accommodate as many participants all over the world as possible. These chats will continue to be held on the Third Thursday of every month.
The chat will be held on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack. Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file containing calendar entries for our upcoming chat so you won’t miss it. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. Everyone interested in improving the contributor experience in WordPress and building future mentorship programs is welcome to attend!
1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves.
Any volunteers for notetaking, next agenda drafting, or next meeting host?
2. Mentorship Cohort #2 planning 2-1: Program Scheduleand status
Call for mentorsEvent SupporterEvent 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 mentees – Published 🎉
Cohort selection & program building: (Jan 8 – Feb 15) – Ongoing
Announce selected mentees/mentors (Feb 14)
Mentorship Program: 4-6 weeks (Feb 19 – March 29; 6 weeks leading up to the release week)
Graduation & Retrospective: 2 weeks (April 1 – April 12)
2-2. More Mentorship Projects Wanted We are moving ahead with the Team Projects idea for this cohort. We have three active ideas right now:
@courtney had proposed an idea of creating collaborative Learn WordPress workshops (mentorEvent SupporterEvent 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. needed)
@annezazu proposed the idea of a dedicated mentorship opportunity for folks to shadow WordPress releases.
Don’t hesitate to share any relevant information for mentorship in general.
GithubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/
4. Questions, thoughts, and open floor! If we still have time after all that intense discussion, we’ll open up the floor to discuss mentorship broadly and our program!
As on February 7th, 2024 23:59 PT (07:59 UTC), MentorEvent SupporterEvent 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 Mentee applications for the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program have closed. Thank you so much for the overwhelming response to the call for mentorsEvent SupporterEvent 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 mentees. We will reach out to all applicants that had applied, regarding next steps.
We are thrilled to announce the launch of the second WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program cohort for the first quarter of 2024! This initiative is a fantastic opportunity for experienced WordPress contributors and those looking to get involved for the first time.
Program Goals
Our program aims to connect seasoned WordPress experts with newcomers to the community. Mentees will gain invaluable hands-on experience contributing to WordPress, while mentors share their expertise and enhance their leadership skills.
Who Can Join?
Mentees
Whether you are new to WordPress or looking to enhance your skills in a specific area, this program offers a unique chance to learn from experienced contributors in the community.
Never contributed? You’re invited to apply!Experience is not required, but we are looking for someone ready to dive into the program when we start the cohort in mid-February. Your chance of being selected will increase if the following criteria are met by the end of the application period (February 7, 2024):
You’ve set up WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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 SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. accounts (here’s how)
* Some ways to achieve this are to visit the Contributor Orientation Tool to find your first contribution opportunity or take one of the Contributing to WordPress courses. A profile badge counts as an activity as well. If you have any questions, please leave a comment on this post – which actually will show up as an activity on your profile, too 😀
[Edit on January 29]A third-party grant is available for up to four mentees who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. For more information, visit this post.
Mentors
If you have experience in WordPress development, design, marketing, community engagement, or any other WordPress-related area and wish to guide new contributors, this is your chance to make a significant impact.
This time, there’s also the option to propose a small project for folks to work on! If you have something you’d like to complete while guiding a group of 4-6 mentees, you’d be a perfect fit for this program. Read more about an optional project-based mentorship.
Edit on January 15: In the previous cohort, the mentorship relation was 1:1 between mentors and mentees. If you are interested in supporting multiple mentees, please indicate your interest in the last comment box of the application form.
Application Process & Cohort Timeline
To participate, please fill out the relevant form: Mentor and mentee applications are now closed.
The timeline for this cohort is:
Application Opens: Friday, January 12, 2024
Application Deadline: Wednesday, February 7, 2024
Cohort Selection Announcement: Third week of February 2024
Program Duration: February 19 to March 29, 2024 (6 weeks)
Benefits
For Mentees: Personalized guidance, skill development, and networking opportunities within the WordPress community.
For Mentors: A chance to give back to the community, enhance your leadership skills, and connect with emerging contributors.
I hope many of you participate in this exciting journey of learning and collaboration!
Planning Mentorship Cohort #2 of the Mentorship Program
Our main focus for this chat was planning the second cohort of the mentorship program which kicks off in January 2023.
Adjusted Schedule of the Mentorship Program Cohort #2
Based on feedback from the last chat, we decided to move our second cohort to January 2024, so as to give us more time to run the program on planned dates. Our updated schedule is as follows:
Publish Call for mentees/mentorsEvent SupporterEvent 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. (late November; close at the end of the year) Week of January 8, 2024
Cohort selection & program building: (Jan 16 – Feb 9) (Jan 8 – Feb 15)
Announce selected mentees/mentors (Feb 14)
Mentorship Program: 4-6 weeks (Feb 19 – March 29; 6 weeks leading up to. T the release week)
Graduation & Retrospective: 2 weeks (April 1 – April 12)
Contributor Feedback
All members were generally in agreement about the updated schedule.
@st810amaze shared a concern about holidays around the world in January and February 2023, which could affect the program, and shared about upcoming holidays in this period. While it is not possible to change the schedule right now, we decided that it would be best to work around these holidays to ensure that our contributors get the best experience.
@kirasong: “I’ve shared this elsewhere, but I think the schedule starting after betaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. makes it a bit harder for folks to contribute to coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. for things landing in 6.5.Knowing that’s the case, though, we can pick tasks that are more likely to be able to be committed (like testing/tests/bug fixes). And/Or make the expectations clear that forms of contribution leading up to commits are good enough too. I like that the announcement post encourages getting set up early and if there’s any way I can help folks as they do that, I would love to.”
@harishanker: “Personally, I feel that the new schedule aligns better with our goals. It’s also nice to have the call for mentors/mentees in the new year, we could have some more sign ups that way. And in terms of timelines, I think we have sufficient time to work on all our tasks.”
Cohort Announcement Post Feedback
Our draft cohort announcement post and calls for mentors and mentees are out. All details can be found in the linked GitHub issue. Group members shared their feedback on the announcement post and the mentorEvent SupporterEvent 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./mentee calls.
Contributor Feedback
@harishanker suggested some mentor specific feedback along the lines of mentor motivation, experience, etc.
@angelasjin wondered whether we should add more questions or whether we should strike a balance to get the right mentors in our program.
Based on the feedback, the mentor form was updated.
@alexcu21: “How will be the selection process, I guess you shared it on previous cohort but I can’t find it.”
As a result of the feedback, the mentor form was updated, and the selection process was clarified in the GitHub issue.
Projects for the Mentorship Program
In this meeting, we discussed the idea of project-based mentorship for the next cohort – an idea that was originally suggested by @oglekler and @tobifjellner in our past chats. Mentorship programs from other open sourceOpen SourceOpen 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. initiatives (such as Linux Foundation Mentorship and Google Summer of Code, to name a few), have always been project-based. These programs have always had encouraging results, as project-based mentorships offer direction and provide a great pathway for mentee engagement. In our chats, we brainstormed a couple of ideas for mentorship program projects.
A project to have a group of mentees come together to build Community Themes (proposed by @onemaggie, who has kindly offered to be a mentor in that project as well)
A Learn WordPress Tutorial on a high-impact topic created by a group of mentees, dividing work around script writing, video & audio recording, editing, and subtitles, as proposed by @courtneypk – who has also kindly agreed to support the idea.
Ideally, we identified that mentorship program projects have the following features:
Completable in four to five weeks
Something you and/or someone else can mentor
Benefits WordPress projects at large rather than specific individuals or organizations only
Required skills are relevant for beginner- to intermediate-level mentees
Group members shared the following feedback:
@nao: “Both projects sound like great fit, they are well-defined and low-risk, and provide lots of opportunity to learn new skills. Plus, group work is a good way to gain collaboration experience.”
@josepmoran: “ @nao Completely agree. Cooperation and fostering cohesion of work groups would be great.”
@oglekler: “I will think about Core project, but I believe that it should be a team work. It will be fun and mentees will learn to collaborate”
@harishanker: “I strongly advocate for group projects, I’m not sure how much we can do this for our Q1 cohort, but I would love to do more projects for other cohorts too. Having a clear output could be immensely helpful.”
@kirasong agreed that group projects are a good idea. “I thinkit’s likely to be easier to arrange for next time but trying it out is a wonderful idea regardless,” they added.
@javiercasares: “I think the project idea is great, but yes, we probably need to clarify the project and, mainly, the goal. I’m thinking on some project, but I’m usually involved in seed projects, so I don’t have any project right now…But, I think documentation may have some projects (I know Mobile and others have some needs, but probably somebody from the Docs team can help better). For example, probably we will have some projects from the Hosting team that may be around the time for the 2nd cohorst, so when I have some clarity about it, I can try and propose something”
@st810amaze: “I love the idea of group work. Working 1-on-1 with the mentor is great. But having a chance to catch up with other mentees might motivate them more, and always a chance to make new friends.”
@kafleg and @onemaggie supported the idea strongly and committed their support to mentor new contributors in this project as part of the Community Theme Projects idea.
@tobifjellner: “How about some mentees organizing an online meetupMeetupMeetup 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.? Someone might join as speaker… #marketing should be able to share useful ideas. We haven’t had a WP-TranslationDay for a while
@nao was excited about the idea of a translation day. “
I think it would be great if someone can mentor to lead a group of mentees (some PTEs, perhaps?) to update WPTranslation Day tools and docs, so it’s possible to run it this September (and every year!).This could be a Community/Polyglots TeamPolyglots TeamPolyglots Team is a group of multilingual translators who work on translating plugins, themes, documentation, and front-facing marketing copy. https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/. joint project?”
On @nao’s nudge, @tobifjellner is going to ask in the next Polyglots meeting if anyone would be interested in being a mentor.
@gusa shared an excellent idea of a WordPress Hackathon from the Sustainability Team. “The description isn’t quite clear, but a primary goal is to create resources that could be used for training and mentoring. There’s already some overlap with multiple teams”, he added. Per Gus, this is already submitted as a NextGen event, and are working with the community team members to refine.
@harishanker shared that the Contributor Working Group would love to work with the Sustainability Team on related projects.
@gusa also pointed us to FundOSS – a program that tries to fund open source contributors. More can be found here: https://github.com/WordPress/sustainability/issues/22
Folks are also encouraged to share the feedback in GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/: https://github.com/WordPress/wp-contributor-working-group-tracker/discussions/7
Mentorship Program Clarifications
We clarified a few important housekeeping items for our chats:
Starting in the new year, our group will start looking at the Five for the Future program as well. Group members are encouraged to share their feedback on the program in the Five for the Future GitHub Repository. Folks can create documentation for the 5ftF contributors, please add it to the GH repository. You can also review existing issues and share any feedback as required too.
We wrapped up the chat by thanking all group members for their contributions in 2023, and hoping for an exciting year ahead for the program in 2024.
It’s time for the next Mentorship chat of the WordPress Contributor Working Group. We’re meeting this Thursday (December 21st) to continue our work on improving the contribution experience of WordPress. For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post and past chats.
Meeting times
We will hold these chats in multiple time zones to accommodate as many time zones as possible. These chats will continue to be held on the Third Thursday of every month.
The chat will be held on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack. Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file containing calendar entries for our upcoming chat so you won’t miss it. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. Everyone interested in improving the contributor experience in WordPress and building future mentorship programs is welcome to attend!
In the last Mentorship Chat, we established a schedule for the next cohort of the Contributor Mentorship program. It’s time to open for the cohort 2 mentorEvent SupporterEvent 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. & mentee calls!
1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves.
Any volunteers for notetaking, next agenda drafting, or next meeting host?
2. Call for Volunteers for Mentorship Cohort #2 We are a bit behind schedule but still have enough time to run the coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. program on the planned dates.
2-1: Review Adjusted Schedule
Planning phase (now/ending)
Publish Call for mentees/mentorsEvent SupporterEvent 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. (late November; close at the end of the year) Week of January 8, 2024
Cohort selection & program building: (Jan 16 – Feb 9) (Jan 8 – Feb 15)
Announce selected mentees/mentors (Feb 14)
Mentorship Program: 4-6 weeks (Feb 19 – March 29; 6 weeks leading up to the release week)
Graduation & Retrospective: 2 weeks (April 1 – April 12)
3. Team Project Wanted Reflecting on the feedback from the previous cohort and related discussions, it appears we need to identify some well-defined projects for our mentees. @onemaggie brought up the Community Theme Project, which could fit well as one of them.
Don’t hesitate to share any relevant information for mentorship in general.
Contributor WG GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/
If anyone wants to work on documentation for the 5ftF contributors, please add it to the GH repository.
5. Questions, thoughts, and open floor! If we still have time after all that intense discussion, we’ll open up the floor to discuss mentorship broadly and our program!
Results of the Mentorship Program Survey and Contributor Story
Thanks to @ninianepress@sereedmedia and @nao, our working group shipped a post event survey which was sent to all mentees from the mentorship program. At the time of writing this recap, seven people answered the survey and the results are as follows:
Benefits from the program
Gaining confidence
Learning about CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
Understanding release processes
Better understanding of WordPress teams and release processes
Suggestions
Meeting a Core dev while they solve the ticket in the next program (shadowing contributions)
Expand to multiple languages
Have mentees “try out” different teams by making good first contributions
Clear expectations on mentorship timelines and meeting times
Confusion in welcome meetings
More social interactions and connections between mentees.
In terms of achievements, we also celebrated the following wins from our past cohort:
One of the mentees – @josepmoranpublished a post about his journey on Spanish WordPress.org and spoke about it at WordCamp Madrid with his mentorEvent SupporterEvent 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.@javiercasares.
@prikari went on to become a co-organizer of WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. Mumbai 2023, barely a few months after our cohort concluded.
Detailed survey results were also shared privately with working group members for further analysis. Our group members shared the following feedback:
To have more shadowing sessions.
MentorsEvent SupporterEvent 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. helping out mentees directly with the contribution process (matching mentors and mentees based on contribution interests)
Having a schedule beforehand and balance all activities amongst mentors and mentees.
Continue localized mentorships (mentors and mentees matched based on the languages they speak)
Offer clear expectations for the mentorship program, with better tracking of the mentorship progress in a public space (e.g. in a GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ project)
Implement some suggestions now and big ticket ones (like multilingual mentorship) later, based on availability.
Have mentees focus on one team first rather than have them bounce around?
Use the Make/Contribute landing page.
Getting feedback from experienced mentees on what particular things might make their onboarding more pleasant.
Mentorship Cohort #2 Schedule & Plans
Based on members’ feedback from past chats, we have put together a draft plan for the next mentorship program. Here’s a link to the draft plan document – updated to factor in the 6.5 release date (March 26, 2024).
Plan Summary
We are following a similar structure from the last program, but will be expanding it to include more mentors and mentees.
There will be a call for mentors and mentees this time, with the hope of prioritizing mentors who match the contribution interest/experience of mentees.
Lesser time on general project introduction and more time for specific team introduction and release shadowing.
Deeper integration into WordPress release process for 6.5
More actionable pre and post-event feedback loopLoopThe 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. and check-in
Follow-up contribution plan for mentees after graduation
Tentative schedule of Mentorship Cohort
Planning: 2 months (We’re currently in this phase, November – December 2023)
Publish Call for mentees/mentors (late November; close at the end of the year)
Cohort selection & program building: (Jan 16 – Feb 9)
Announce selected mentees/mentors (Early Feb; give enough time for the cohort to prepare)
Mentorship Program: 4-6 weeks (Feb 19 – March 29; 6 weeks leading up to the release week)
Graduation & Retrospective: 2 weeks (April 1 – April 12)
We asked members to share their feedback on the program plan, and they shared the following with us:
Thoughts about the plan
There was general feedback that this program is a good next step from our past cohort.
@oglekler: “Highlight in a call for mentees and mentors the areas they can participate in. I want to make a point that it is fine not to be a developer to be an active and successful contributor.”
@jeffpaul asked any of the feedback items from the survey incorporated in the next cohort plans. @harishanker shared some of the key results that are incorporated into the new plan:
More hands-on sessions
Setting clear expectations on mentorship timelines
Being very clear on welcome meetings
Facilitating more connections with mentees
To have more mentors and mentees
@sereedmedia: “i wonder if the application dates being in the downtime holiday season will be a benefit or dampen interest? just hard to get people to pay attention during the holidays.”. Sé also suggested that the application period launch in January along the lines of “new year, new skills”. @mysweetcate suggested that if the program opens in December, we could keep the applications open until January 2024.
@patricia70 asked: “How do we mentor in areas we are not ourselves experienced in? would there be a short “mentor training” first? For example, I know a lot about community, DEIB, some of other areas, but not about Core or GitHub, bug scrubs, commits, etc”. Proposed answers include:
To have mentor training for this cohort.
@nao: “we should try to find a good match with top interest/expertise, but additional training & support from other mentors can also help mentors learn something new about the project.”
@harishanker: ” We could bring in mentees with some experience and train everyone on these basics, the ones that – Core or GitHub, bug scrubs, commits, etc and also other program related areas.”
@adityakane: “in general a good overview of Core and Github usage as a learn course would be very helpful. For core specifically, I mean”
@javiercasares: “I think the Team Reps has a moment here… they know everything about their teams, the documentation and where to find material (and how to create it) so they should also be involved in some active way, supporting not only mentees, but mentors”
@josepmoran: “I totally agree and I join this interesting initiative, since since my presentation in Madrid, here in Spain a small movement has been created that I try to manage based on Javier’s teachings and explain my own experience.”
@glycymeris: “We are creating in Spain a Github handbook for non-experienced people that could be useful. It will be finished in a couple of weeks. If you want we could share it.”
@josepmoran: “Now not only am I and will be mentored, I am taking actions so that other collaborators are aware of these mentorships and I inform you of my learning and process of great progress as a more effective and continuous collaborator.”
Areas in the mentorship program that will help the program succeed
@oglekler: “I can cover several topics in online Zoom sessions and provide support via in-SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. meetings. I think we can have a brief overview of the whole ecosystem (I can do it, but I believe that there are people who can do it much better), second session is about how to start Core contribution (I already did this intro, but hopefully the second time it can be better), and some session with live example about how to create a patch and also another one about testing. I am just suggesting, and will be happy not to do everything I am proposing by myself.”
@ninianepress: “I think shadowing mentors is a fabulous and highly valuable idea and would help mentees a lot, I think. I think a graduation Zoom call is a wonderful idea and I think we should invite past graduates since we didn’t do so last time”
@harishanker: “I would pick release shadowing and finding ways for mentees to participate in any release related things. Testing comes to mind!”
Something to be included in the next cohort
@oglekler: “More feedback and visibility about mentees self learning. This part was sort of obscured for me. Making it more publicly organized and discussed will provide this visibility and give great feedback and insides.”
@harishanker: “We don’t have it covered, but I would like a sub-cohort of mentees (optionally) working on a group project. Perhaps something like a community blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. theme or a mini feature in core etc (which was suggested by @oglekler)
@ninanepress: “I would really love to see junior and senior mentees and mentors, and to have a mentorship chain”
@sereedmedia “love the mentorship chain. i think that is key to a sustainable program.”
@gusa asked questions on the mentorship program and highlighted the need for a broader culture of mentorship in WordPress. @ninanepress highlighted how the Docs Team has an onboarding guide. @gusus shared of his experience in the Drupal community and shared many excellent points which may be incorporated in WordPress. Some Community Summit sessions were also highlighted in the conversation:
@gusa also shared this task from the Sustainability team which highlights resource needs as well.
Contributing in the next session Many working group members expressed interest in participating in the next cohort in different roles.
Contributor Mentorship Program Badge
One pending task from the past cohort is assigning badges to participants in the program. We had created a formal request for badges, but we recently received feedback from the metaMetaMeta 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 that the program completion badge may not align with the other badges given to mark contribution achievement, leaving us in a bit of a conundrum:
Should we work on a broader change in the badging system?
OR would it be better to display/celebrate the completion differently?
The following ideas were shared in our chats:
@javiercasares: “yes, this is something that has been talked about… we should have two types of badges, the team ones, and “goals one”… but that’s something from Meta… Maybe the option is:
mentors: Community badge
Mentees: the badges from the team they participate (as they gain the badges for their participation)
this is something “for now”, but having in mind having “goals badges””
@harishanker: “Personally, I think our badging system needs an overhaul. But we do need to celebrate the achievements of our mentees. I’m not 100% sure how best we can do that before badging is overhauled””
@josepmoran: “I believe that the mentored badge, without downplaying its importance, can be relative. What really matters are the badges you get through the contributions you make thanks to the emntorias course. and I think those are the ones that are really relevant.”
@tobifjellner changed the ticket type from bug to enhancement.
@courane01: “Noting in the gaming world, badges are called achievements. Sometimes in the edu space. I think we should explore other open sourceOpen SourceOpen 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. projects and how they do likewise. Ex: Linux Foundation does give badges for course completions. https://openprofile.dev/profile/courtneyr. I haven’t seen badging for other uses, yet. Nor have I looked though. I think continuing to differentiate team contribution from other areas is the central point, and terminology is the nuance to sort out first”
@tobifjellner: “I’d love for some badges to still remain as tokens of past contributions, even if we for safety remove some accesses when someone moves on (or even passes away…)”
@ninianepress: “What if we had team badges AND achievements? The latter being stuff like this mentorship completion and the #WP20 From Blogs to Blocks campaign badges”
@jeffpaul: “it seems like the response in that meta ticket is based on not understanding the mentorship program, perhaps restating how the program works will make it clear that the badges apply similarly as other team contribution badges do?”. To which @harishanker asked if we could still do the proposed badges without having to overhaul badging, to which, @jeffpaul agreed as there’s no limit to the number of badges, also the mentorship badge could be created for the community team. Jeff also went on to clarify: “yeah, my reading of the comment on that ticket was more confusion about the request than anything, so perhaps restating and giving some context/links out to make it more clear will hopefully help?”
@harishanker also clarified that as per this post, all working group members are eligible for the community contributor badge.
