Tag Archives: #deputies

Isotta Peira 11:13 am on February 17, 2023
Tags: #deputies,   

Updates to the WordCamp Site Setup Handbook Page

Hello DeputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook.!

I’ve updated the DeputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. Handbook WordCamp Listing & Site Setup page with the current step by step guide to set up 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. websites in 2023.

Please, feel free to share any improvements that you’d like to have on that page if the content is not clear enough.

#deputies, #update

Timi Wahalahti 9:06 am on December 17, 2020
Tags: #deputies, , , deputy check-in   

Community Deputy check-in results and sum-up

In recent weeks, all Community Team DeputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. were contacted personally through SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., and asked to provide feedback on contributions to the Community Team in 2020. Deputies were also asked about their plans for contribution in 2021, and how team reps and fellow deputies could provide better support.

The check-in was done with three things in mind: to know how many active Community deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. will continue in 2021, if and where there is need for more training, and to get feedback on how to improve the deputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. experience. The number side of results is also meant for tracking deputy engagement long term, as the Community Team expressed interest in regular check-ins.

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

Response rate and deputy balance

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

Time contributed

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

The year 2020

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

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

The year 2021

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

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

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

Ways to contribute

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

20202021
MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. application vetting1816
WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. application vetting1318
WordCamp mentoring1218
Local community mentoring1619
Financial aspects (Sponsorship wrangling, WPCSWordPress Community Support WordPress Community Support PBC is a Public Benefit Corporation, created specifically to be the financial and legal support for WordCamps, WordPress Meetup groups, and any additional “official” events organized within the WordPress Community Events program., payments)913
Triaging HelpScout1013
Developing Community Team (Writing proposals or comments on the P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/., etc)1614
Participation on a working group1013

The following observations were made from the answers:

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

Estimates on tools

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

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

Observations from open questions

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

Some observations can be made from responses to these questions:

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

Any follow up thoughts?

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

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

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

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

Cami Kaos 12:02 am on June 26, 2020
Tags: #deputies, ,   

2020 WordCamps stalled in pre-planning

In a normal year we see a number of events that stall in the pre-planning phase and just kind of fizzle out. The number of those events stuck in pre-planning seem higher than ever due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Ask: DeputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. will you please update this list of events in pre-planning that have been stalled long enough to require us to check in on their plans to to give us a better idea of which events are cancelled and which will be shifting to an online only event?

Some of these events may already have discussed cancelling or moving online and we’ve had conversations with them but haven’t received their final decision. Some of them may just not have been updated in Central.WordCamp.org. Either way let’s make sure we have the most up to date information so we have an accurate look at what could be coming in the next 6 months.

Through the end of the weekend please select events with which you have already worked and been in contact. After we’ve all had a chance to select events we’ve worked with we can divided up the remainder to reach out to starting Monday.

If you’re an organizer whose event has been stalled in preplanning, please feel free to update us on the status of your event.

The linked document should be viewable by everyone with the link and several deputies have already been granted access. If you require access please let me know in the comments.

Thanks so much!

#wordcamps #community-management #deputies

Andrea Middleton 10:51 pm on June 17, 2019
Tags: #deputies   

Deputy Discussions: Raising Concerns and Resolving Issues

We have more deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. on the Global Community TeamGlobal Community Team A group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. than ever before, which is so fantastic! And of course, when any group welcomes new members, people start to notice where behavior and communication norms were assumed, rather than explained.

In this post I’ll outline some of the communication paths within the DeputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. group that may have only been assumed in the past. Hopefully this will help deputies feel confident when addressing problems that might arise during their work with local community organizers or other deputies.

They say “when you see something, say something…” but to whom? And how?

There’s a lot of work being done on the Global Community Team, and no wonder — there are more WordPress meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. and WordCamps than ever! Luckily, we’ve got more and more deputies involved to help train and support community organizers.

We’re all human, though, and we all make mistakes. Plus, community admin work includes a number of subjective decisions. If you notice that another deputy missed a possible issue when vetting an application, or you happen to notice a community grant is surprisingly low, etc., don’t just shrug and keep on going — check in!  Here’s how:

First, check in directly with the person who did the work. On this team, we strive to ask questions first, in an effort to understand why something happened in a certain way. (This is a great way to find out if your assumptions are correct! Sometimes they’re not!)

Once you’ve gathered additional context, if you think someone made a mistake — or you disagree with their decision — remember to deliver that feedback courteously. Critical feedback is shared with the intent to help your teammate avoid making a mistake again in the future, and should be carefully phrased to avoid hurt feelings.

I encourage everyone on this team to follow a call-in approach, rather than a call-out approach. Over the years, I’ve found it’s more effective to give my fellow contributors a chance to answer questions and correct mistakes by communicating directly and cooperatively.

Whenever possible, avoid the call-out approach with members of the local communities that you’re advising/supporting. If you’ve approached a local community organizer to raise a concern and your feedback didn’t have the result you expected, it’s not appropriate to complain about (or to) the organizer(s) in a public space. Your best next step is to ask another deputy for help in conveying your message more effectively or strategizing another approach.

I checked in with someone, and we just don’t agree. Now what?

We’re a big team! People take on this deputy role because they are passionate about the way WordPress community is built. Lots of strong opinions around can lead to differences of opinion, and that’s okay.

If you have a difference of opinion with another deputy that you haven’t been able to work through directly with that person, the next step is to reach out to another member of the team for advice and feedback. If you’re part of a deputy mentorship group, reach out to your mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. and get their opinion. If you don’t agree with your mentor, here are other highly experienced deputies you can contact for advice, a second opinion, or to raise a concern with:

@francina, @hlashbrooke, @kcristiano, @camikaos, @bph, @_dorsvenabili, @andreamiddleton

I just don’t like the decision that the team has agreed on. What should I do?

Pretty much everyone on the global community team, including me, disagrees with a few team practices or past decisions. If you’re really struggling with a situation and don’t feel that you’re getting anywhere after talking to other deputies — including multiple people on the above list — then… you’re probably pretty upset, and having a hard time. At this point, it’s time for a few reminders, and then a few questions.

Reminders:

  1. This isn’t emergency work.
  2. No one is perfect.
  3. It’s hard for any one person to know all our expectations and best practices.
  4. Everyone is trying to do what’s best for WordPress (even when we don’t agree on what that is).  

And those questions:

  1. Does the outcome of this decision have an effect on the well-being of participants? And will the outcome be noticeable to attendees in particular?
  2. What is my ultimate goal?
  3. Is there a fundamental conflict between my personal values or goals, and the expectations for my contributor role?
  4. Can I “disagree and commit” here, or do I need to step away from this role*? (Is this issue/problem so important to me that I can’t continue to work cooperatively on this team because of this decision?)  

*It’s always ok to take a break from contributor work for a short or long time, for any reason. If you need to step away from a role in which a lot of people depend on you, for any reason other than an emergency, please give the team as much notice as possible so your responsibilities can be handed off gracefully.  

Feedback

What do you think?

  1. Did I accurately describe the way people on this team aspire to communicate about and resolve conflicts or concerns, or did I miss something?
  2. Are there any steps or expectations here that you think are confusing, unnecessary, or unwise?
#deputies
Hugh Lashbrooke 9:52 am on February 15, 2019
Tags: #deputies   

2019 Deputy Program Goals

Community DeputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. are a team of people all over the world who review 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. and MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each.. We make sure that new and returning organizers are not overworking themselves, still are following the code of conductCode of Conduct “A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party.” - Wikipedia, and generally are making positive contributions to the 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.

– Community Deputy Handbook

The DeputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. Program and all of our committed deputies continue to be a valuable part of our team by keeping the wheels turning and making sure that we are up to date with processing applications, assisting community organisers, and generally making sure we don’t fall behind in our work.

In order to further the work of the Deputy Program and to ensure that it remains sustainable as time goes on, it would be helpful to put together a few goals and implement a few new ideas. These are designed to keep the program fresh, encourage deputy retention, increase deputy skills, and grow our deputy team.

So, first off, here are a few new program ideas that we can implement:

Deputy MentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.

Each deputy mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. would have a group of deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. assigned to them personally and it would be up to the mentor to assist and check-in with their mentees regularly. This would involve helping the deputies with the work they are doing, finding out how they’re enjoying it, making sure they are aware of the latest updates, and training them in additional deputy tasks.

Improved Deputy Documentation

The deputy handbook is great, but some of the most basic information is quite well hidden. This is partly a shortcoming of the handbook structure all across the Make network, but we can definitely improve things to give more high-level summaries of significant areas.

Improved Training Processes

Our current training process takes the form of an online course – this works well for disseminating information and making sure that new deputies have all the information they need. The issue is that it takes a long time to go through the answers submitted by each new deputy to make sure they understood everything correctly. It feels like the best way to improve the deputy training course is to edit all the quizzes to be multiple choice questions (so that they can be graded automatically and a 100% pass is required to move on to the next one), but then have a single quiz at the end that includes a number of long-form questions that require longer answers. This means that grading the course would only require manually doing it for a single quiz for each deputy – this would drastically cut down the time it would take to check these answers.

Editing the quizzes to achieve this will be a bit of work here, but it will be worthwhile in the long run. At the end of the training, deputies will be assigned to a mentor who will have their final orientation call and help them remain connected to the program.

Active Deputy Recruitment

This would involve actively approaching people to become deputies (WordCamp lead organisers being a good starting point of course). We can do this on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. and this P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/., but also in person at WordCamps and meetup events.

If we follow through on these items effectively, we will have more deputies, retain individual deputies for longer, and provide everyone with increasing responsibility to work on more impactful tasks. All of which will work towards the goal of giving deputies a greater sense of belonging within the Community Team.

In addition to those items, here are four measurable goals that we can work towards for the end of Q2 2019. These will all be made possible by working on the four items outlined above:

  • 35 active deputies (we currently have 21)
  • 10 deputy mentors
  • 50% of deputies actively running meetup orientations
  • 25% of deputies actively working with WordCamps (including vetting and orientations)

So what do you think? Do you like the ideas outlined above? Have any others worth adding? Do the stated goals seem realistic and attainable?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

#deputies
Francesca Marano 8:00 am on April 30, 2018
Tags: #deputies,   

Discussion: should Community Self-Training be mandatory?

Hello team!

In the past three years I have been part of different community events and lately I have found that some people involved aren’t very aware of the guidelines we set in our program.

This could happen in a number of cases

  1. 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. organisers who are not the lead, so they don’t go through the handbook, because they expect the lead to read it and provide answers
  2. MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. organisers that joined after the initial orientation, held only with the main organiser from a group
  3. In general, people that are doing awesome work in their local community (MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook., Contributor Days, Hackatons, etc…) without being aware of the Community team resources
  4. DeputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. that were inactive for a while

In the Meetup case (2) I think it might be enough for the team member that went through orientation to give the orientation to the new members every time someone else comes on board.

I wonder if the self-training should be made mandatory for the othe cases.

Pros

Everyone is on the same page

Cons

We don’t have many people grading the quizzes

What do you think?

Deadline to comment is May 18 so we can discuss this during the next two Community chats.

#deputies, #training

Cami Kaos 8:41 pm on April 4, 2018
Tags: #deputies,   

Call for WordCamp Mentors!

Last year 127 WordCamps took place all around the world! Thanks in large part to a rapidly growing WordPress meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. program we’re on track for even more WordCamps in 2018.

As the program continues to grow we need to find new ways to give 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. organizers the support they need to make these events great. With that in mind we’re hoping to grow the number of community members supporting WordCamps by scaling up our WordCamp Mentorship program.

Are you an experienced WordCamp lead organizer or former lead organizer? Are you looking for a way to continue or further your support of folks in the WordPress community and help improve the WordCamp experience for organizers and attendees? Do you have 2-3 hours a month to share with WordCamp organizers?

If so we sure could use your help as a WordCamp mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.!

Requirements to be a mentor:

  • You’ve been the lead organizer of a WordCamp from application through completion of the event in the last 5 years.
  • You have 2-3 hours available per month per event you’re actively mentoring

Requirements of a mentor:

  • Meet bi-weekly with your assigned organizer to advise them, remind them about things organizers frequently forget, and to keep them on track in planning.
  • Be the organizing team’s connection to WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each..
  • Post about your mentorship check-ins on weekly Make/Community updates post.

If this all sounds like something you’re ready, willing, and able to take on then let’s get you started in three easy steps:

  1. Complete the mentor self-training (should take 30-60 minutes): https://community-self-training.mystagingwebsite.com/course/wordcamp-mentor-training/
  2. Fill out the Mentor Application contact form at the bottom of the WordCamp Mentorship handbook page: https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/community-deputy/wordcamp-program-basics/mentoring-wordcamps/
  3. We’ll reach out to you to let you know when the next mentor orientation calls are being held so you can sign up for the time that works best for you!

If you know someone who’d be a great WordCamp mentor please send them our way! Have any questions, please let us know in the comments.

#deputies, #mentorship

Cami Kaos 10:10 pm on February 23, 2018
Tags: #deputies, ,   

Proposal to Simplify Training for WordCamp Mentors

We currently have 27 folks listed internally as “active” WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.. At this time, 11 of the people on the mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. list are not mentoring any events. Earlier this week, I sent an email to all those listed on our mentor roster to determine their availability. Several folks have already asked to be pulled from the active list, and I anticipate several more will either ask to be removed or not respond. That will leave us with about 20 active mentors.

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

As WordCamp mentors, folks are asked to advise organizers, remind them about things organizers frequently forget, keep them on track in planning, and be the team’s connection to WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each.. We also ask that they make regular updates about their mentor sessions on this site.

At this time all mentors are deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook., but not all deputies are mentors — while the work they do is related, it’s different. Our current deputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. training process is for people who might triage our shared email, vet applications for both WordCamps and meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook., orient organizers for both WordCamps and meetups, and review WordCamp budgets. Because of all these different tasks deputies might handle, training is time consuming for would-be deputies (and for the trainers). Including all this additional content and time commitment may be making it harder to recruit and train new mentors.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#mentors #deputies #community-management

Hugh Lashbrooke 10:10 am on February 23, 2018
Tags: #deputies,   

Weekly Deputy Report: 16 – 22 February 2018

The stats for this report are taken from the weekly Help Scout reports and, as such, only reflect the activity inside Help Scout. While this covers the majority of our community work and interaction, it excludes a few things: most 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. mentorship discussions, all WordCamp application processing, and any interactions in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. (Office HoursOffice Hours Defined 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., general chatter, answering questions, etc.) – those are all handled on other platforms.

Here are the stats for this past week (16 – 22 February 2018):

This week we sent 135 emails and helped 86 individuals. Of those, 58 of the tickets were successfully resolved.

The deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. who handled those tickets in Help Scout this week are:

@camikaos
@courtneypk
@_dorsvenabili
@psykro
@hlashbrooke
@remediosgraphic
@andreamiddleton
@00sleepy
@yaycheryl
@chanthaboune
@iandunn

A huge thank you to all of these individuals for their hard work in supporting the WordPress community this week!

#deputies #report

Hugh Lashbrooke 8:05 am on February 23, 2018
Tags: #deputies   

Handling secure access for inactive deputies

We’ve been checking in with most of our deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. over the past month or so and, while many of you are able to continue donating your time to the Community Team, there are some deputies who are not able to do so anymore. This is entirely understandable of course, as we’re all volunteers here, but it leaves us with the question of how to handle inactive deputies.

Right now, deputies have access to our central Help Scout instance where all community support is handled and most deputies also have author or editor access to this P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/.. To that end, we have a few options for how we can handle this kind of access for individuals that are not actively involved for the moment:

  1. Leave everyone in their current state with full access to Help Scout and whatever user role they have on this P2.
  2. Remove inactive deputies from the “WordPress Community Team” inbox in Help Scout, and demote them on this P2. This will mean they are still a user on Help Scout, but they can’t access anything, which makes it easy to reactivate them in the future with very little friction – it should also preserve their interaction history in Help Scout.
  3. Completely delete inactive deputies from Help Scout, and demote them on this P2. This will mean reactivating them on Help Scout in the future would be like starting all over again and we will most likely lose their interaction history in Help Scout.

Option #2 seems like the best bet to me, for security and accountability purposes, but a case could be made for either of the other options. Please comment here with what you think would be the best way to manage things going forward – if you have any different ideas, please share those as well.

This discussion will remain open for 1 week – until Friday, 2 March at 12:00 UTC – then we will wrap it up and go forward with the best option.

#deputies