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Hari Shanker R 1:00 pm on August 21, 2023
Tags: , , , meeting notes, , ,   

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

Hari Shanker R 3:45 am on June 17, 2023
Tags: , , , meeting notes, , , ,   

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

Hari Shanker R 3:30 am on May 20, 2023
Tags: , , meeting notes, , ,   

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

In attendance: @adityakane @oglekler @yoga1103  @mikeschroder @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

Hari Shanker R 10:34 pm on April 25, 2023
Tags: , , meeting notes, , ,   

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

In attendance: @adityakane @nao @oglekler @yoga1103  @mikeschroder @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

Francesca Marano 6:19 pm on August 1, 2017
Tags: , , , meeting notes,   

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

Francesca Marano 11:08 am on July 17, 2017
Tags: , , , meeting notes,   

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

Andrea Middleton 10:33 pm on June 25, 2015
Tags: , , , meeting notes   

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

Andrea Middleton 7:30 pm on February 21, 2014
Tags: meeting notes,   

Meeting Summary for February 20, 2014

Full meeting transcript: https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-getinvolved&day=2014-02-20&sort=asc

This week’s focus was WordCamps/conferences. Bolded subjects link to the point in the chat transcript when we started talking about it.

WordCamp organizer hangouts: We’ve held 4 orientation hangouts now, and while they have generally been successful, we agreed to make a few changes. First: schedule some topic-specific hangouts about things like budget, CampTix, wordcamp.org tools, and video. Second: record one baseline hangout every month (and transcribe it) or so for those who can’t join but focus on more interaction between organizers and community team members. Andrea clarified about whether the hangouts are intended just for new 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: they’re intended for everyone, as repeat organizers will benefit from hearing about tools and practices that have been adopted since they organized last.

WordCamp Tools: It was agreed that new page templates for the WordCamp Base theme are always welcome, and that it might be nice to have more options for ways to display speakers, sessions, etc. Then we moved along to identifying other tools we might need/use for WordCamps.

Newsletters: All chat participants who’ve used a third-party tool for WordCamp newsletters said they had used MailChimp. There was concern about the security of attendee data when we use third-party tools, and general discussion about how WordCamps use newsletters as well as other methods of communicating important information with attendees (email, posting to the site, SMS). We agreed we should start with a list of the specific needs that we’re currently using third party tools to meet; WordCamp organizers can post those lists to the community site.

Accessibility: WordCamp sites should be accessible, and right now they’re not, very. @jenmylo suggested we ask the 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) team to review the themes in play as base themes, and fix those themes based on their advice; she also suggested we create a guide of baselines for CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. accessibility (contrast, etc) so organizers can meet those guidelines. I’ll post to the Accessibility 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 ask for help.

#meeting-notes, #wordcamps

Jen 3:35 pm on February 14, 2014
Tags: meeting notes   

Meeting Summary for February 13, 2014

Full meeting transcript: https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-getinvolved&day=2014-02-13&sort=asc#m9841

This week’s focus was mentorship and diversity programs. Bolded subjects link to the point in the chat transcript when we started talking about it.

Google Summer of Code (GSoC). Our application has been submitted. I posted the questionnaire portion on this blog for anyone who’s interested. We’ll find out if we are accepted as a mentoring organization on February 24.

GNOME Outreach Program for Women. Deadline to apply is this Friday. We discussed the pros/cons of participating and agreed that for this summer it would be better to focus on developing our in-house mentorship program, and think about doing OPW again later on when we have more structure in place to help ensure successful internships.

In-house Mentorship Program. Jen to contact each contributor group about developing a 1-month/3-month pilot per the post about it. For this team, we’ll try pilotsaround 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. organizing, 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. organizing, and WordPress.tv. Jen and Andrea will work out the volunteers and will set up a meeting next week to discuss the content with those volunteers. @andymci will be one of the first meetup 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.. @STDestiny reminded us of the work done last year around a WC mentorship program. (We need to find you a new username that doesn’t make people think of STDs.)

Speaker Diversity at WordPress Events. @jillbinder gave a briefing on the brainstorming/practice workshop for women interested in becoming speakers they’re doing in Vancouver in March. Andrea and I committed to doing one in Portland, and are reaching out to a couple of other local communitios about doing them as well as a pilot. If successful, we can write up a curriculum for it and post it 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. and other groups to use to increase speaker diversity in their areas. (Note: this would not be limited to women) 

Sponsoring Third-party Events. Automattic is sponsoring the diversity mixer at Philly Tech Week for WordPress. @liljimmie is one of the organizers. We’re looking at the Philly Ladyhacks event also. Anyone with events by other groups that help underrepresented groups get started with tech (especially/specifically WordPress), let Jen know. Likewise if there are third-party groups e should consider partnering with on outreach or educational programs. Will make a form or something for submitting suggestions, and will try to have a point person to act as the liaison with each group we decide to work with. 

Girl Develop IT/Training. @liljimmie summarized the work she’s done around WP tracks with GDI Philly, and we talked about how we could standardize with modules for 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/ training (which had staled again, but Tracy picked up the child themeChild theme A Child Theme is a customized theme based upon a Parent Theme. It’s considered best practice to create a child theme if you want to modify the CSS of your theme. https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/. module again and it’s looking good). She hopes to standardize her WP training content across GDI. As we develop more training on wordpress.org, we’ll be able to hare more. Jen offered to make connections as needed to help Tracy with a more advanced WP programming track for GDI. Tracy will be wrapping up the child theme module for wordpress.org and will then look at the forat to extend to other modules for our theme school project. @sabreuse will take another stab at updating the troubleshooting curriculum from our pilot workshops a year ago so we can finally get that posted and distributed. 

Next Week’s meeting will focus on WordCamps.

#meeting-notes

Jen 2:36 pm on February 13, 2014
Tags: meeting notes,   

Meeting Notes from February 6, 2014

This was our first meeting using the new topic-by-week plan, and it was definitely more focused and had more participants than the usual old, “Hey, who has stuff?” meetings we did before. In addition to existing team members, these event organizers participated: Andy (andymci) from Toronto, Andrew (andrew_cpht) from NYC, Blossom from Austin, Mark (WPNI) from Belfast, Lisa (lschuyler) from Antigonish, bastetmilo from Wroclaw.

Meetup.com chapter account update:
We have 67 groups on the account. There are a couple that are inactive or have some sketchy goings-on that need to be contacted. There are a few that didn’t fill in the form in time for the rollover so probably won’t get added until March. There are a couple of new applicants that need to be contacted for a talk about the initial commitment. And then there are the couple of hundred 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. not on the chapter account that still need to contacted about joining (meeup.com limits to contacting 3 per day).

Discussed who was/wasn’t on the chapter account of the people at the meeting. Toronto and NYC are not on chapter and had reps there. Plan to set up a group chat with Andy from Toronto and his co-organizers to discuss joining. Andrew from NYC said he would ask Steve to respond to the email I’d sent him about it.

Kinds of 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. Events
We discussed kinds of events different from the standard lecture format that people are interested in trying, including contributor days, demo days to promote WP as a platform (perhaps with a standardized presentation created by volunteers to the project), smaller gatherings etc. Also discussed reaching out to colleges, which we’ll discuss more at the next chat since it ties in with GSoC as well. Also discussed wanting to bring the meetup groups closer to the .org project in general, so in addition to contributor days talked about lining up virtual speakers from the project via hangout to multiple groups at a time, contributor drives for specific contrib groups, etc.

During the course of this discussion Andy (Toronto) made it clear that he should be an active participant in the chapter program because his suggestions were all similar to the things we have been asking the chapter meetups to start doing. 🙂

Connecting Meetups
There’s a desire to create more connections between organizers and groups between cities. Dsicussed adding forums, sister-city pairings, and organizer mentorships/buddy program. Will start the latter in the next week or two, with Andy being one of the first 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 Lisa and Mark being his mentees. More on that to be discussed in the next team chat re mentorship programs.

Bad Actors
We discussed the possible negative outcome of opening up groups to letting anyone set events and contact the full group: scammers, spammers, and flakes taking advantage of the openness to their own ends and/or people posting meetups but not showing up to lead them. Agreed on a 3-strikes you’re out rule, with the local organizers having the leeway to boot sooner or immediately for severe actions such as harassment or other over-the-line actions.

Helping New Organizers
Previously mentioned buddy program. Also discussed resources we can provide like signage so people can find each other. Swag, sign in sheets, name badges, etc. Handouts explaining WP/Project/Community/etc to give new attendees to explain things instead of organizers having to give the spiel over and over. Will try to get a little group together to figure out what a welcome pack should include, and will continue adding pages to this site similar to plan.wordcamp.org for meetups.

WordCamps/Meetups/Local Events
We talked about how these labels are possibly becoming less useful because it sets up divisions instead of one cohesive local events/community umbrella. No decisions on this one, just some back and forth on what people thought. Will be discussed again in future.

Events on WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/
Discussed the plans to bring in WC and meetup activity to 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 and to an events page. Starting with wordcamp.org and meetup.com chapter events. Talked about facebook groups etc, especially where more popular with int’l groups, but lack of ability to vet content is an issue. Discussion kept coming back to wanting official meetup/local community groups to have the official presence on wordpress.org rather than 3rd party sites, and to syndicate the content out to locally-preferred channels like fb rather than the reverse. Bigger project. 🙂

Connecting with Other Local Groups
Discussed connecting with other local groups in the same general interest areas. For example, Toronto working with another group for a kids coding workshop, working with GDI in Philly (via Tracy Levesque rather than the meetup organizers), BarCamps, non-wp meetup groups, etc.

And that’s our first meetups meeting! Sorry it took so long to post these notes. The channel wasn’t being logged, and the “smart transcript” I saved from colloquy wasn’t very smart as it interleaved the dev channel activity, so it took some time to parse it all out. The channel is now being logged, so moving forward we can post summaries and link to the transcript for this level detail rather than trying to cover every little bit.

#meeting-notes, #meetups-2