Recap of the Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on January 18, 2024

Agenda: 
https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/01/17/contributor-working-group-mentorship-chat-agenda-january-17th-0700-utc-apac-emea-and-1600-utc-amer/

Meeting links (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/.): APAC/EMEA, AMER

Hosts: @adityakane (EMEA) @harishanker (AMER)

Notes: @patricia70

In Attendance:
APAC/EMEA @adityakane (host) + @angelasjin @harishanker @hellosatya @javiercasares @KafleG @kirasong @nao @oglekler @onealtr @patricia70 @ratneshsonar @unintended8 @webtechpooja @yoga1103 + async @coachbirgit @josepmoran

AMER: @harishanker (host) + @alexcu21 @alexdeborba @annezazu @askdesign @gusa @hellosatya @nilovelez @tobifjellner @tokyobiyori @topher1kenobe @voboghure + async @ninianepress

Last meeting recap:
https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/12/28/recap-of-the-contributor-working-groups-mentorship-chat-on-december-21-2023/

Notes

We shared the agenda and latest win:
@adityakane: “Currently, we have received 10 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 13 mentee applications”

Mentorship Cohort Details

Program Schedule and status

  • Call for 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. and mentees – Published :tada:
  • 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:

@ninianepress mentions potential projects for the Marketing and Docs:

@annezazu suggests 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. 

Request for Feedback

We had a discussion around @gusa proposal and comment about scholarship/stipend.

Additional ideas for Mentorship Projects:

Amplify the Mentorship Calls

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 GitHubGitHub GitHub 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.

Criteria for Selecting Mentors and Mentees

Discussion around the criteria:
https://github.com/WordPress/wp-contributor-working-group-tracker/issues/9

Upcoming Tasks (Help welcome!)

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.

Open discussion

@angelasjin proposed “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.” for mentors where she will be answering questions and providing support to mentors as needed. 

Notes by @patricia70, reviewed by @harishanker and @nao 

#wpcontributors, #contributor-working-group, #meeting-notes, #mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap, #mentorship-program

Recap of the Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on December 21, 2023

In attendance: @adityakane, @alexcu21, @angelasjin, @gusa, @harishanker, @javiercasares, @onemaggie, @josepmoran, @juliarosia, @kafleg, @matteoenna, @kirasong, @devmuhib, @nao, @ninianepress, @oglekler, @onealtr, @patricia70, @sereedmedia,@st810amaze, @tobifjellner, @topher1kenobe, @webtechpooja, @sumitsingh, @tobifjellner, @yoga1103

Notes: @harishanker

Agenda:  https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/12/19/contributor-working-group-mentorship-chat-agenda-december-21st-0700-utc-apac-emea-and-1600-utc-amer/ 

Meeting Start

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:

  1. Publish Call for mentees/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. (late November; close at the end of the year) Week of January 8, 2024
  2. Cohort selection & program building: (Jan 16 – Feb 9) (Jan 8 – Feb 15)
  3. Announce selected mentees/mentors (Feb 14)
  4. Mentorship Program: 4-6 weeks (Feb 19 – March 29; 6 weeks leading up to. T the release week)
  5. 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 betaBeta A 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 coreCore Core 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 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./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 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. 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 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.? 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 Team Polyglots 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 GitHubGitHub GitHub 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:

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. 

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #meeting-notes

#mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap

Recap of Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on November 16th, 2023

In Attendance: @javiercasares @nao @josepmoran @kafleg @patricia70 @matteoenna @harishanker @oglekler @sumitsingh @webtechpooja @adityakane  @ratneshsonar @jeffpaul @mysweetcate @topher1kenobe @sereedmedia @courane01 @gusa @ninianepress @tobifjellner

Facilitator (EMEA): @adityakane
Facilitator (AMER): @harishanker
Notes: @ratneshsonar 

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/11/14/contributor-working-group-mentorship-chat-agenda-november-16th-0700-utc-apac-emea-and-1600-utc-amer/

Meeting Start: 

EMEA: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1700118080711109
AMER: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1700150402952559

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 CoreCore Core 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 – @josepmoran published a post about his journey on Spanish WordPress.org and spoke about it at WordCamp Madrid with his 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. @javiercasares.
  • @prikari went on to become a co-organizer of 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. 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 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. 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 GitHubGitHub GitHub 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 loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. and check-in
  • Follow-up contribution plan for mentees after graduation

Tentative schedule of Mentorship Cohort

  1. Planning: 2 months (We’re currently in this phase, November – December 2023)
  2. Publish Call for mentees/mentors (late November; close at the end of the year)
  3. Cohort selection & program building: (Jan 16 – Feb 9)
  4. Announce selected mentees/mentors (Early Feb; give enough time for the cohort to prepare)
  5. Mentorship Program: 4-6 weeks (Feb 19 – March 29; 6 weeks leading up to the release week)
  6. 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.”
    • @adityakane: “About a learn course – I did suggest a Topic Idea: Getting Started with Github and Overview for WordPress Core Contributors — (it is still awaiting triage)
    • @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-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/. 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 blockBlock Block 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 metaMeta Meta 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 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. 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…)”
  • @gusa: “I referenced some other projects with good badging/crediting systems in one of the #sustainability roadmap items/ideas”
  • @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.

Group members were asked to share the feedback directly in TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/.https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/7196

Feedback Request from Marketing Team: Contributor Onboarding

The Make/Marketing Team continues their work to improve contributor onboarding experience and would like feedback on:

Group members were asked to share their feedback directly on GitHub.

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #meeting-notes

#mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap

Recap of the Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on August 18, 2023

In attendance: @adityakane @oglekler @yoga1103  @st810amaze @onealtr @tobifjellner @javiercasares @sereedmedia @mysweetcate  @harishanker @patriciabt @webtechpooja @peiraisotta @coachbirgit @sumitsingh @kafleg @topher1kenobe @desrosj @matteoenna @ninianepress @wpdelower @kartiks16 @bycecaelia @sunitarai @unintended8 @jominney

Notes: @harishanker

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/08/16/contributor-working-group-mentorship-chat-agenda-august-17th-0700-utc-apac-emea-and-1600-utc-amer/ 

Meeting Start
EMEA: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1692255601787449
AMER: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1692288003311649

Evaluating our Mentorship Program’s Pilot Cohort

We started off by thanking all group members for their contributions in making the program a success, and celebrated some of our major wins such as being featured in WP Tavern and the Torque Magazine’s Press this podcast. Key wins for the program include:

  • 50 applicants applied to the program, of which 13 were selected as mentees.
  • 12 participants completed the required Learn WordPress courses – at an 89% completion rate.
  • 11 participants formally graduated from the program so far
  • The program was held alongside WordPress 6.3 and participants got a bird’s eye view of the WordPress release.
  • Two mentees got coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. contribution badges for their work.
  • Together, mentees contributed nearly 2000 strings to multiple locales.
  • Contributions were made to several other teams including Training, Docs, Photos, Support, Test, and Training.
  • We have prepared reusable training materials (onboarding videos) for several Make/Teams as part of the program which are available for everyone. 

Additionally, even though only 13 mentees formally participated in the program, several others joined along as our program’s progress was broadcast in the public #contributor-mentorship.

Next, group members were asked to share feedback on the program, especially along the lines of what did and did not work well, what could be improved, our biggest wins and opportunities, among others.

What worked well

  • @coachbirgit: “The interest into the pilot program was overwhelmingly high and I loved to see how many workshops were provided on short hand for this besides the already prepared material on learn.wordpress.org
  •  @adityakane: “That it had enough room to be not over structured helped participants to find their way and also feed their curiosity along with knowing how to contribute.” 
  • @tobifjellner: “We gathered energy, feedback and insights. Created something new and welcoming in several “make” teams.”
  • @kafleg: “The biggest achievement is we did it. As I said before, not matter how many contributors we’ll get in the long term, but we believe that it will be a basement for many contributors.”
  • @javiercasares: “As a whole, I think it was a great pilot program and mentees are happy to participated.”
  • @oglekler: “ I am really pleased about our mentees, amazing people. And I am eager to do it again. ✨ Timing was perfect when the whole program went alongside the release to its finish nose to nose.”
  •  @ninianepress: “I loved how we all came together on this and so many people stepped up and did so much to make this happen, like you @harishanker and so many! Thank you!! I loved how mentees got a Google doc with a checklist on what to accomplish. It made things SO much easier as a 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. since there was a clear path. My mentee was super awesome and super self-motivated 🎉 so it made things vastly easier for me. I also loved how there were Zoom check-ins.”
  • @mysweetcate: “ the program seemed to work exactly as needed and intended. I built a bond with my person, was able to encourage her as she encountered the bumps of getting started, and she was able to find her way to areas of contribution that she enjoyed.”


What did not work well about the program?

  • @coachbirgit: “The zoom sessions or upcoming workshops were often announced at too short notice. The 90-day-plan template would have been nice to have on hand before the cohort ended. (or I may have missed the where-abouts)”
  • @adityakane: “Cannot think of anything specific. Maybe it felt hurried to me, and since it was the pilot cohort, there were no follow up cohorts for someone to skip midway and join another one.”
  • @tobifjellner: “People have more or less, and different hours available. Huge kudo to Hari for the energy of running stuff twice every time. Still: perhaps we need to make more of this work well in an async setting.”
  • @oglekler: “The last to weeks were very impacted with events, I am wondering if we can have something like “Part 2: Advanced program” For Core it would be nice to have at least 1 more dedicated session – about creating a patch and 1 video tutorial about local envs installation (it will be quite boring as an online session and need to cover different OSs).” 

 What could be improved about the program?

  • @coachbirgit: “It would be nice to have a learning path especially for the mentorship cohorts and a calendar view of the live sessions in advance”
  • @adityakane: “We haven’t been using GithubGitHub GitHub 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/ for this Working Group – and we really should. Also it could be a nice onboarding for mentees to get used to using Github in our spaces.”
  • @tobifjellner: “It felt a bit rushed in time. And I think a slightly bigger group might have created more energy. Introduction workshops to various teams would need to be planned a bit more beforehand. At least my introduction (to Polyglots) had very low attendance when it happened, but I hope the recording will still help more people to get started.”
  • @javiercasares: “I think we need to have like, 2 line of work. One, the things we know (like the onboardings and everything set up before the new cohort starts) and, the other is the “real-time” events. The first one need to be exceptionally organized (I thing we improvised a little with that). All good, but some place to improve 😀 Having the calendar helped a lot 😛 (at least for me, my agenda is crazy and helped me to set my personal / profesional meetings)”
  • @topher1kenobe: “I would love some more “definition of success”.  I don’t think itll be the same for each mentee either, it’s something to be determined by the mentor and mentee together. For example, I only met with my mentee a few times, and felt like maybe I wasn’t doing a good job.  But I was actually fulfilling her needs as she saw them quite perfectly. but I didn’t KNOW that.  So establishing what Success looks like near the beginning would be good.”
  • @mysweetcate: “I would recommend giving access to the learning content in stages. My person did an excellent job of getting everything done early, but then was kind of waiting around for next steps (which she and I discussed). Dripping the content out more could help keep momentum up.”
  • @bycecaelia: “It would also help some of us cough cough people like myself lol to not get too overwhelmed with too much info at once (and might help with storing things in long-term memory? maybe)”
  • @kafleg: “About the suggestion, we need to followup the mentees what they are doing, if they need any help or guidance etc.”

What are our biggest wins from the program?

  • @coachbirgit: “The awareness of seasoned contributors that new contributors might struggle to find their way without guidance. The program displayed were we can improve our contributor documentation.”
  • @adityakane: “Looks like all the mentees responded very well to the learning courses and also did some sort of contributions. So that was a big win.”
  • @tobifjellner: “It’s great that we start thinking project-wide on how to make it easier to discover contributing and getting started.”
  • @oglekler: “The biggest win is yet to come. We need to stay in touch with our mentees and make this sustainable by itself.”

Pending steps for our mentorship program
Our cohort has a few pending action items left: 

  • Share a post-event survey for mentees and 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. (@nao @sereedmedia and @ninianepress are working on it
  • Create a draft contribution plan document to encourage mentees to continue ongoing contributions.
  • Create and assign badges to mentors, mentees, and facilitators’ WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ profiles (we already have a tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. request for badges and are waiting for the MetaMeta Meta 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 to help us with this). 
  • Follow-up with mentees after three months to check-in and see how they are doing. 

@ninianepress @sereedmedia @adityakane and @javiercasares offered to help out with these tasks.

Next Steps for our Working Group

Since the pilot is over, the group has decided to start working on next steps. We explored the next project(s) we should focus on, and got the following responses from group members:

  • @oglekler: “We can plan the next program and Advanced program(s) for different teams. We can start on October 11 and finish the day after release, November 8th Hopefully we will be able to make the full schedule and plans beforehand.”
  • @coachbirgit:
    • “I’d love to see a dedicated handbook section for facilitators, mentors and mentees. Since its an overarching program, I wonder if there would be a good place to create  a handbook on make/Projects as the other teams have. This will also help to run local editions
    • I’d imagine having a mentorship section in each make/Team handbook referring to team-specific mentorship actions and activities
    • we should definitely do another cohort this year. I imagine at least one each quarter of the year for a global mentorship cohort.”
  • @kafleg: “I see the community in Japan is organizing the community-building workshop. I think we can communicate with the local community to do some 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. especially focused on contribution and mentorship programs. Every local community has an experienced contributor who can guide the new contributors. We can manage some credits or attribution (like giving badges). We need to get involved in the local community to make it successful. P.S. We are doing a webinar weekly basis on how to contribute. We can run something similar in every local communities. Contribution is always proactive. But as community leaders, we can show them some chocolate and cookies to motivate them.
  • @oglekler: “Possibly some materials can be provided to local meetups for translation and adaptation, like slides or scripts for the talk “
  • @adityakane: “I agree with @kafleg
    • We could start making some plans on outreach to local communities with a focus on involving students.
    • We could also increase our focus on “skill development” as a vital part of career development for people getting involved or contributing (especially in this economic climate it seems like an oppurtunity)
    • On things we can do right away:
      • Mentor Program handbook
      • A mentorship program landing page
      • Plans to have several more cohorts – if we are planning one — maybe we should plan two side by side — one belayed by 2-3 weeks and see how that dynamic plays off.”
  • @javiercasares: “About the “local” contributions, I think the main problem will be having people for “all the teams”. For example, doing the global explanation (the two first weeks) will be easy, but we will have some limitations about the teams. In Spain, for example, I think there won’t be any problem with Polyglots (also, trying to expand not only to Spanish, but Catalan, Euskera, Galego, Asturiano, Aragonese…), There are key people who knows about some teams, but we will depend on those key people (AccessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility), Design, Documentation…) and that may be the stopper… Probably we should have like a mentoring for mentors  so we can have like a quick understand on what we can ask for mentors to do, timing. The students part is one of the reason we are creating an Association in Spain, so we can “officially” approach schools and everything, bacause if you don’t have have an organization, you can do proactically anything with them ”
  • @mysweetcate: “I am definitely in favor of another cohort. Particularly with WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event. happening and likely to spark new contributor interest.”
  • @ninianepress: “What if we kept up a regular rotation and kept a waiting list. We could just keep bringing people through the program for who ever wants to do it. I think a doc where we collect feedback and ideas async is a great idea for next steps. To bring this to local communities, what about doing something similar to Apple and their Genius Bar in their stores. At local meetups, we can have a designated mentor going to onboard people into the program. Maybe sort of similar to tables at Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. if the 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. is large enough. I agree. I think if we set up regular, planned cohorts on a regular rotation, it would be so great! 
  • @sereedmedia: “IMO cohort-based instead of on-demand is better for outcomes and sustainability.

Questions thoughts and Open Floor

@coachbirgit highlighted work happening on the DEIB working group, and asked for help from the contributor working group on creating a primer for the mentorship program a on how it applies to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. She is hosting a session on the same at the Community Summit, and has shared an agenda for preparation. Remote participation is also welcome 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/. on the #deib-working-group Slack channel – details can be found in the agenda task issue in GitHub

The Contributor Working Group is also considering an informal meeting at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US on the contributor day (August 24th). 

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #meeting-notes

#mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap

Recap of the Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on June 15, 2023

Welcome to the recap post of the contributor working group’s mentorship chat that was held on June 15th, 2023. In this chat, we finalized the dates for our pilot mentorship cohort (July 12th to August 9th), and kicked off project management in preparation for the same.

In attendance: @adityakane @oglekler @yoga1103  @st810amaze @onealtr @tobifjellner @javiercasares @courane01 @sereedmedia @juliarosia  @harishanker  @leonnugraha  @patricia70 @webtechpooja @casiepa @realloc @peiraisotta @coachbirgit @angelasjin @chaion07 @ronakganatra @fitehal @sumitsingh @siddhantwadhwani @carl-alberto @kafleg @hapiucrobert @devinmaeztri @zunaid321 @christopheramirian

Notes: @harishanker

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/06/14/contributor-working-group-mentorship-chat-agenda-june-15th-0700-utc-apac-emea-and-1600-utc-amer/

Meeting Start

EMEA: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1686812403775139
AMER: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1686844802822219

Project Updates

We kicked off the chat by sharing our project updates thus far:

  • Thanks to @leogopal, we now have a fully-fledged GitHub project board for our project. Our group will be working on adding tasks and content to the board. Group members also shared their wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ and GitHubGitHub GitHub 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/ profiles to be added to the board. 
  • We also have a draft of the call for mentees post which is ready for publishing. 

Updates from WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe 2023

The Contributor Working Group had an informal tribe meeting at WordCamp Europe 2023 with nearly twelve participants. We did an informal discussion of the program, introduced the pilot, and brainstormed different aspects of our program. In the discussion, we arrived at two important updates:

  • Our pilot cohort will kick off on the second week of July (July 12th) and will run for four weeks until August 4th. We discussed this at the cohort and group members approved the same. 
  • Continuing from our last chat, we finalized the following teams were finalized for our pilot. 
    • CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
    • Community
    • Docs
    • Photos
    • Polyglots
    • Support
    • Test
    • Training

Wins from the past month

Our group did not forget to celebrate some wins from the last month! 

  • Our contributor mentorship program was featured on the June Edition (Episode 57) of The Official WordPress Podcast – WP Briefing. Support from @chanthaboune – our executive director, was a great encouragement for our group and for our work!
  • At WordCamp Europe 2023, our group and our work got a lot of attention with several folks expressing interest in being a 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., mentee, or a facilitator. Our mentorship program also found a prominent mention in the event’s keynote session with Matt Mullenweg, Josepha Haden, and Matias Ventura. Check out the Q&A video of WordCamp Europe 2023 to catch the moment!

While our wins were humbling, we reminded ourselves that we still have miles to go! 

Implementation and Project Management for our Pilot

With dates finalized, we started working on steps to implement our pilot program. We’ll be using our GitHub Project Board to coordinate everything. The action items are divided into high and medium priority, and we sought group members’ help in proceeding with it.

High Priority Action items

  • Call for Mentees announcement
    We already have a draft post going which we aim to publish by early next week. Make/Marketing has also offered to review and amplify the same
  • Finalizing our 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.
    Many group members have offered to become mentors for our program, we hope to finalize at least 5-10 mentors. For our cohort. 
  • Recruit Make/Team Representatives and support their involvement in our pilot.

As shared earlier, we have the following teams in our pilot program. Core, Community, Docs, Photos, Polyglots, Support, Test, and Training. Group members offered to reach out to these teams to get support for our program. 

Medium Priority Action Items

Group members can note down changes or suggestions in this Google Doc: Suggested Changes to Learn WordPress Contributor Courses

  • Prepare mentor script or playbook 📜
    We’re working on a detailed step-by-step guide that mentors can use to adequately support mentees as they go through the contributor mentorship program. We’re collaborating together in this task using this boilerplate script document.
  • Facilitating the program ⚓
    We also asked cohort members to support by facilitating the program (keeping the cohort active and overseeing program progress). While all group members will be engaged in this, anyone who has more bandwidth to support was encouraged to join. 

Making Progress Towards the Pilot Program

With less than a month remaining until the pilot program, we decided to meet more frequently. Our idea is to: 

  • Try a weekly sync on our task, synchronously or asynchronously in the #community-team channel. 
  • Do at least one synchronous audio/video chat before our event.
  • Start a dedicated channel for the working group discussions, but default to public in #community-team as much as possible. 

Discussions

  • We discussed the possibility of a multilingual cohort. While the mentorship cohort will be in English, we’ll try to make it as local as possible by assigning mentors based on language preferences. @javiercasares is also attempting to translate our cohort’s content to Spanish for Spanish language speaking mentees. He has already kickstarted work on the same and is looking for collaborators! @coachbirgit has offered to support German mentees, while @leonnugraha has kindly offered to support mentees from Indonesia. 
  • @angelasjin suggested that we amplify our program in the #team-reps channel to get broad support from team representatives. 
  • Our group members felt strongly about the need for a dedicated channel to discuss the program. So while we will attempt to work in public as much as possible, we will also create and use a dedicated SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel for focussed discussions. 
  • @pascalcasier offered to do an onboarding for group members to the TV team!
  • @milana_cap offered to onboard new contributors to the Docs team.
  • We’re attempting to do yet another contributor working group at WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event. (around contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.). @s810amaze has offered to help broadcast it live.

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #meeting-notes

#mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap

Recap of the Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on May 18, 2023

In attendance: @adityakane @oglekler @yoga1103  @kirasong @st810amaze @onealtr @tobifjellner @javiercasares @courane01 @sereedmedia @juliarosia @annekatzeff @nomadskateboarding  @harishanker@@unintended8 @sandesh055 @askdesign @jominney @leonnugraha @tacoverdo @patricia70 @webtechpooja @francina @Rico F. Lüthi @tobifjellner

Notes: @harishanker

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/05/15/contributor-working-group-mentorship-chat-agenda-may-18th-0700-utc-apac-emea-and-1600-utc-amer/

Meeting Start

EMEA: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1684393200684229

AMER: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1684425602571269

Mentorship Program Pilot 

Based on discussions from past chats, the working group identified a pilot program for our projectwide mentorship, which was recently shared in public in the Make/Project Blog.
The flowchart below explains a draft of the program plan: 

A flowchart depicting the program flow of the WordPress contributor mentorship program. Mentees are connected to a mentor, join a cohort of mentors and mentees, complete self directed courses, learn-ups, selects Make/Team, makes contributions, optionally creates a three month plan, and graduates. If not, they drop out.

Key additions made to the MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia based on past chats: 

  • Mentees will have to make a chosen set of initial contributions for their chosen Make/Team in order to complete the mentorship.
  • For the pilot, Make/Teams can opt-in whether they would like to participate in the pilot program. Interested Make/Teams can nominate 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. who can support mentees and eventually onboard them as contributors to their respective teams.
  • The length of the program has been finalized as one month or four weeks to incorporate contributions. 

Working group members were generally in agreement with the MVP and it was decided to move forward with the same. Group members area already sharing feedback in the white paper separately too. 

Language as a barrier for entry was shared, and the importance of making the program multilingual. A couple of ideas were suggested to mitigate this:

Implementation and Identifying Tasks and Next Steps

Implementation timeline

Our group identified the need to do at least one pilot cohort in 2023, to be in line with our project goals. We discussed a timeline to plan our cohort while being mindful of the time and availability of our group members too. We identified that WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event., the community summit, WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event., along with WordPress 6.3 and 6.4 dates will affect the timelines of our pilot, which will run for four weeks or one month. 

Some ideas that were shared include:

  • After WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe and before WordCamp US.
  • Either starting asap (after WCEU) or later (after WCUS) was also suggested.
  • It was shared that summer vacation in Europe between July and August might be a blocker due to the general unavailability of various mentors. 
  • Group members suggested using in-person time at WordCamp Europe to work on the mentorship program
  • There was broad consensus around using WordCamp Europe as a way to do promotions for the mentorship program and do a cohort right after the same (but before WCUS). 
  • Another suggested idea was to do outreach during WCEU and WCUS, and plan the first cohort around September/October 2023. 
  • The group will brainstorm on this further and share a timeline shortly.

Project Management Tool

The group unanimously agreed to use GitHubGitHub GitHub 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/ projects as a project management tool for the program! Some group members also offered to set it up – we will work on this asynchronously. 

Task List

Based on our MVP, we identified a list of tasks that need to be completed before the program

  • Identifying and recruiting Make/Teams
  • Identifying Mentors
  • Publish call for mentees 
  • Identifying mentees for the cohort based on the selected pool
  • Auditing learning materials on Learn WordPress (existing contributor training courses) for mentees
  • Creating and publishing the pre-event and post event surveys for mentees and mentors
  • Running online workshops on different contribution topics (example topics: Active Listening, Better communication, Active contributor guidance situations, Diversity and Inclusion, Leadership basics, Conflict resolution in WordPress, How decisions are made in WordPress, Introduction to different Make/teams)
  • Facilitating the program
  • Mentoring contributors 
  • Make/Team representatives to onboard contributors to their teams.
  • Ongoing promotion as well as Marcomms for the program

Group members were generally in agreement with the task list with many members expressing interest in taking on multiple tasks. The group identified the need for strategic collaboration with the Community Team (for facilitating the program), Training Team (for auditing Learn courses and holding online workshops) and Marketing Team (for ongoing promotions and Marcomms of this program). 

High Priority Tasks / Next Steps /Action Items!

  • Get buy-in from Make/Teams for our pilot:
    Since our program now involves mentees making initial contributions, support from Make/Teams is definitely needed. Group members recommended the following teams to join the mentorship program:
    • CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
    • Photos 
    • Polyglots
    • Docs
    • Training

Additionally, as mentioned earlier, Community, Training, and Marketing Teams have offered strategic support for this program too! 

  • Publish a call for mentees:
    We have also agreed to publish our call for mentees before the next meeting. The Marketing Team has offered to support with this. 
  • Create a GitHub Project Board
    We need to create a GitHub project board for project management, so that our group can focus on the next steps, and start working on launching the pilot. 

WordCamp Europe 2023 Meeting

Many group members are attending WordCamp Europe 2023, and we have agreed to do a working session alongside the event. More details about the same will be shared soon. 

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #meeting-notes

#mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap

Recap of Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on April 20, 2023

In attendance: @adityakane @nao @oglekler @yoga1103  @kirasong @st810amaze @onealtr @carl-alberto @tobifjellner @javiercasares @sz786 @meher @courane01 @jeffpaul @sereedmedia @cbringmann @angelasjin @juliarosia @askdesign @nomadskateboarding  @harishanker @javiercasares @gounder @unintended8 @webtechpooja @thewebprincess @fitehal @desrosj @askdesign @nikita22 @nomadskateboarding 

Notes: @harishanker

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/04/17/contributor-working-group-mentorship-chat-agenda-april-20th-0700-utc-apac-emea-and-1600-utc-amer/

Meeting Start

EMEA: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1682002804642749

AMEA: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1682002817867819

A Minimum Viable ProductMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia (MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia) of the Proposed Mentorship Program 

The primary agenda of the chat was to discuss an MVP of the proposed Mentorship Program. Based on feedback from the last chat, @harishanker (I) prepared a draft plan for an MVP, which is as follows: 

  • A short cohort of new contributors (mentees) and experienced contributors (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.) are to be brought together in a dedicated space (potentially a SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel in Make/WordPress) to work together for a certain period (two to four weeks)
  • During this time, mentees will learn pre-prepared training material (we can start with existing contributor courses in Learn WordPress)
  • Each mentee will be assigned a 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., with whom they will be having at least two 1:1 mentoring sessions (over text chat and/or video). 
  • Additionally, the group will have at least three group mentoring sessions on broad contribution topics (over text or video)
  • Optionally, they will create a three-month contribution and learning plan with their chosen mentor. 
  • Once all the courses and training sessions are complete, mentees graduate from the program, and are pointed to the Make/Team of their choosing for further contribution. Ideally, they are also connected with a contributor (or group of contributors) from the Make/Team of their choice who will go on to support them (informally) in their contributor journey. 
  • While the mentorship program will wrap up after the period, mentees can continue to reach out to their cohort and mentors for ongoing guidance and support. 

At the chat, group members shared the following feedback on the program: 

  • Folks generally were in agreement with the program, and we decided to move ahead. 
  • Starting somewhere is the most important part. It was suggested that we try something, find out what’s missing or what doesn’t work and then iterate. 
  • The fact that proceeding without everything in place is usually helpful for an MVP was also shared. As long as mentors and mentees are willing to work through the kinks and growing pains, this helps us identify where we are lacking and where we are strong. Even when we know what we are strong or weak. This intentional incompleteness will help folks provide feedback which will help us iterate further.

Next steps

Distilling feedback from this chat, @harishanker will create a detailed draft MVP document for this program that will be shared with all group members. After making any necessary changes to the document based on the feedback, the proposal will be shared in public. Based on the MVP, the group will start assigning roles and will formally start working on this program.

We also informally asked if any group members would like to be mentors, many folks signed up for the same.

At this chat, the group also decided to keep meeting on the third Thursday of each month, at the same timings (07:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC), while attempting to work asynchronously to address any group needs.

Note: In addition to the points mentioned above, there was a detailed discussion on various aspects of the program MVP. Read on to find out more about the summary of the discussion.

Continue reading

#wpcontributors, #contributor-working-group, #meeting-notes, #mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap, #mentorship-program

Community Team Chat Agenda | 03 August 2017

Hello community team!

Our bi-monthly Community Team chat is happening this Thursday, August 3rd. Meeting times are 08:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC in #community-team on Slack – we use the same agenda for both meetings in order to include all time zones.

Agenda

Please post in the comments if you have some agenda items to add so we can update this post as we go.

1. 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. check-in – What have you been working on? Any blockers? Anything that you need help with?
2. Decision Making Process – we posted about it 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/. and we would love to gather more feedback, discuss this during the call.
3. Highlighting a few P2 posts – No real discussion needed, but these are posts worth highlighting for all 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. (add the posts in the comments and I’ll add them here 😉)

Recaps will be in the comments

  • 08:00 UTC
  • 20:00 UTC Notes

#meetings #agenda #meeting-notes

#meeting

Community Team Chat Agenda | 20 July 2017

Hello community team!

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

Agenda

Please post in the comments if you have some agenda items to add so we can update this post as we go.

1. 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. check-in – What have you been working on? Any blockers? Anything that you need help with?
2. Decision Making Process
3. Highlighting a few 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/. posts – No real discussion needed, but these are posts worth highlighting for all 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.:

Recaps in the comments

#meetings #agenda #meeting-notes

#meeting

Meeting notes for Community team chat on June 25, 2015

Link to meeting in Slack: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/outreach/p1435258867000006

Ian Dunn shared that the follow-up survey on WordCamp.org themes/templates is closed now, with a really good response rate, and he’ll be publishing the results in the next few days. The CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. importer is getting closer to a minimal viable product, and he hopes to launch it next week.

WordPress stickers have finally been ordered, and we’ll be shipping some stickers directly to WordCamps during the end of June/early July.

We discussed a standardized system of tagging for the Community SupportPress queue. There were no objections to the proposed component/priority/keyword structure. It was agreed that we shouldn’t be assigning tickets to people via tags; people should be assigning tickets to themselves and then following through.

If a ticket is labeled “Urgent” then that should mean that anyone who can answer it, should do so asap — before addressing the older tickets in that bucket.

We got hung up on how to handle location tags, though. Among the options:

  • hashtags (troublesome for 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.)
  • city name (variations on city name like Vegas/Las Vegas or Rio/Rio de Janeiro make this tricky)
  • unique ID in a meetup.com or FB URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org (these can be changed easily)
  • 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. subdomain (doesn’t really apply if there hasn’t been a wordcamp there yet)

We still need to come up with a solution for location tagging, as we did come even come close to finding consensus on this one. Jen aptly pointed out that we need a geo tag that references the overall community not just the 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. or WordCamp.

Suggested keywords (these are the actions that need to be taken):

needs-review
needs-vetting
needs-meeting
needs-payment
needs-signature
needs-site
needs-advice
escalate

Please weigh in on the question of location tags, if you have a solution you think will work. 🙂

#agenda, #community-management, #meeting, #meeting-notes