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Note: On getting feedback from the community that the AMER timing of our chat was a bit off, we did an experiment where AMER folks could join the chat asynchronously, but it did not work out as planned, unfortunately. We will be resuming regular EMEA and AMER chats going forward from next week.
Notes
Program Updates
Call for Mentees Closes
The early call for mentees for the Q4 2024 WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program concluded on July 15, 2024. The program received 54 mentee applications from 35 cities and 20 countries, along with 30 mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. applications from 10 countries and 19 cities. Significant interest was noted in the CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. Team and Plugins team, with 17 and 21 mentee applications respectively. Full application details were shared with the working group for evaluation.
In our chat, we took a detailed look at the applications. There was clearly a higher interest in the Community, Polyglots, and Photos teams from mentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. compared to mentees. We also discussed the higher number of mentee applicants for the Plugins team, questioning whether applicants were more interested in creating plugins rather than contributing to the Plugins team’s work. A suggestion was made to separate the Core Team into distinct options: Core, Core Test, and Editor (GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/).
Based on discussions from the past chats, we put together an initial plan for the first cohort, including documentation. The goal of creating this document at an early stage is to create a clear, cohesive, and transparent plan for our initial cohort of the mentorship program helping us to create a more structured and systematic mentoring experience. Here’s a draft of the plan that was shared: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uatuObmi0iZyAC_bBSiGvAMoXV7UFZosPJyqRCySi38/edit
A draft project plan for the next cohort was shared, outlining phases from planning and cohort selection to The plan includes structured onboarding and training sessions, with a goal of establishing a replicable mentorship program format. The plan is based on the current WordPress 6.7 release plan.
Program Duration and Phases
Phase 1: Planning (June-July 2024)
Close Early Mentee Applications by July 15
Create a detailed project plan and white paper
Develop mentor and mentee documentation and guidelines
Define cohort selection criteria
Finalize facilitators and create vetting groups for mentors/mentees
Outreach for the mentorship program
Phase 2: Cohort Selection & Program Building (August–September 2024)
Open call for mentors/mentees
Finalize mentor/mentee selection and inform them
Provide pre-event orientations and training
Create the mentorship Slack channel
Phase 3: Mentorship Program (October 7 – November 15 2024)
Week 1: Welcome and introductions
Week 2: Onboarding and release process familiarization
Ensure at least 25% of mentees contribute to big picture goals-related projects
Major Changes from Previous Cohorts
Use GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ Project for centralized management
Pre-scheduled live onboarding and training sessions as much as possible
Discussion
We had a discussion on the Mentorship Program and some excellent feedback was shared highlighting the importance of documentation and outreach to local communities.
Broad Suggestions
The team discussed several key points for improving the mentorship program. They emphasized the importance of documentation and suggested setting a 25% contribution goal. The need for outreach to local communities and the inclusion of local cohorts was highlighted. An introductory session before the final team selection was proposed, along with the flexibility for mentees to switch teams if needed. The conversation also covered the importance of planning for translations and setting an application deadline to accommodate vacations in Europe. The overall focus was on structured introductory sessions, local outreach, and careful planning for the mentorship program’s success.
Program Dates
The team discussed potential dates for the mentorship program, suggesting October 7 – November 15, 2024, to align with the release week and avoid overlapping with WCUSWCUSWordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event.. Concerns were raised about this timeline starting too late for optimal contributions to the 6.7 release. An earlier start, like September 30, was proposed for better alignment with the release cycle. Additionally, the idea of bringing a few early applicants as mentees to follow the entire release was considered, which could increase their chances of contributing effectively. The team agreed to finalize the best dates to balance program needs and core involvement.
Opening the Formal Call for Mentees
The team discussed how to combine early and later mentee applications for the mentorship program. One suggestion was to pair mentors and mentees initially, and if any mentees are left without mentors, issue a specific call for the required mentors closer to the start date. The challenge is balancing the early interest sparked by WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe with the promise of a later call. Another idea proposed was to double-check early applicants’ interest before opening the standard invitation. Additionally, the importance of a longer, more structured program to build strong mentor-mentee bonds was emphasized, highlighting that ongoing support and camaraderie are crucial for effective mentorship.
Mini Cohort Starting Early?
A suggestion was made to pre-select up to five early applicants as mentees to follow the entire 6.7 release, starting with the Alpha phase, allowing them to make more significant contributions. This idea was well-received, especially if the mentees seem ready and mentors are available. Another suggestion was to include these mentees in the mentorship planning and documentation process. It was proposed that a “bridge mentor” could be appointed to explain the various aspects of the release as they happen, helping to navigate the complex release operations and enriching the overall experience for everyone involved.
Discussing Program Next Steps
We took some time to discuss next steps in the mentorship program:
Cohort Selection Criteria
Suggestions included prioritizing motivation, desire to learn, and ensuring mentees do not already have connections within the community. It was agreed that previous criteria used should be maintained, but adding a multilingual aspect would be beneficial to address language barriers. It was also noted that mentees should have some prior contribution experience, and mentors should be well-connected within the community. Emphasizing a safe and supportive environment for non-native English speakers was highlighted as essential for effective mentorship. The goal is to offer a more multilingual and globalized version of the mentorship program to better support diverse contributors.
Cohort Size
Participants debated whether to expand the cohort size to 100 or keep it smaller. It was agreed that the number of mentors available would determine the cohort size. A 1:2 mentor-to-mentee ratio was suggested as ideal, with a potential adjustment to 1:3 if needed. Additionally, the idea of creating a mini French cohort was proposed and received positive feedback, acknowledging the presence of Francophone members in the group. The overall consensus was to scale the cohort size based on mentor availability while ensuring effective mentorship.
Working with Projects
One participant suggested organizing an online Contributor DayContributor DayContributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. for bbPressbbPressFree, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org., potentially expanding it to include BuddyPress. The idea received support, and plans were made to coordinate and organize the event. Another participant highlighted the involvement of various teams such as Polyglots, plugins, themes, and learning in parallel operations with the release. The tech leads expressed enthusiasm for collaborating with the mentorship program during the 6.7 release, emphasizing the potential for cross-team projects and enhanced coordination.
We celebrated wins from the mentorship program in the last chat, incluing the program being featured in the WP Briefing Podcast and the DooTheWoo podcast. Our program also made a splash at WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe 2024, with the event generating a lot of excitement and energy. At the camp, there was a dedicated WordCamp Connect session titled “Introduction to the Mentorship Program” which was facilitated by group members @nao@peiraisotta and @josepmoran. This session provided detailed insights into various aspects of the program and generated significant excitement among attendees. Additionally, in the opening slide of Matt Mullenweg’s 2024 Summer Update, the mentorship program was featured with Q1 2024 mentees being celebrated. Additionally, the opening slide of Matt Mullenweg’s 2024 Summer Update celebrated the Q1 2024 mentees of the mentorship program. Here are some pictures from WCEUWCEUWordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event.:
Participants in the chat expressed their enthusiasm and positive experiences from WordCamp Europe 2024. According to in-person participants at the dedicated WordCamp Connect session, there was great engagement and valuable questions during the event. @josepmoran‘s proposal to bring the mentorship program to local teams in their own languages got a lot of attention. Seeing all the interest from WordCamp participants in mentorship, we opened up an early call for interest for the 2024 Q4 mentorship program at WCEU, which was also announced in the final presentation!
Mentorship Program Cohort #3 (Q4 2024) Updates
Preparations for the next mentorship program have begun with the early call for interest already out. In the last meeting, the group decided on a cohort size of about 40 mentees paired with 20 mentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.. The aim is to involve as many Make/Teams as possible, with each mentee working on dedicated projects contributing to the 6.7 release.
The program will be executed in four phases:
Planning (June to August 2024): The full call for mentees and mentors will open in August.
Cohort Selection and Program Building (August to September 2024): Selection of participants will take place, with announcements in early September.
Mentorship Program (late September to early November 2024): The program will run for 4-6 weeks leading up to the release week.
Graduation and Retrospective (November to December 2024): Focus on concluding activities and reflecting on the program.
Chat participants expressed great interest in the cohort and in joining the same in various capacities. We then opened up a discussion on the following important points:
On Ensuring Great Mentorship Participants emphasized the need for pre-introduction workshops to help mentees understand various teams and select the right one, preventing mismatches and dropouts. The importance of conducting interviews with potential mentees and mentors to ensure a clear understanding of stable and lasting contributions was highlighted. There was consensus on creating a clear schedule of workshops and introductory sessions. Additionally, the idea of multilingual mentorship programs was proposed to make contributions more accessible to non-English speakers, with suggestions for local language cohorts working on language-specific projects. Regular Zoom calls for mentees to share progress and experiences were also recommended.
Connecting Mentorship with 6.7 Release The group discussed integrating the mentorship program with the WordPress 6.7 release. It was suggested that mentees could work on high-priority projects or features related to the release, providing them with practical tasks. This approach aims to give mentees real-life experience and a sense of contribution to the coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. WordPress project.
Timeline to Open the Formal Call for Applications The group was in agreement with the suggested timeline.
Suggestions for Next Cohort Suggestions for the next cohort included setting clear expectations for mentors and mentees, involving them in practical tasks to build self-esteem and a sense of usefulness. The idea of having local language cohorts working on language-specific projects alongside the main program was discussed. Creating a dedicated landing page and providing recognition for mentors and mentees were suggested to enhance the program’s visibility and appeal. There were also proposals to include opportunities for mentees to work closely with release leads, providing valuable real-life experience. Direct outreach and scholarships for underrepresented groups were recommended to ensure a diverse group of participants. An early call for “Make/Team Projects” was also suggested for this cohort.
Creating a Plan for On-Demand Mentorship in 2025
We took some time to discuss implementation details for the On-Demand Mentorship Idea. Key points discussed in the last chat include creating a structured asynchronous mentorship approach, a pool of available mentors, clear processes, a dedicated onboarding Slack channel, mentorship content on Learn WordPress, Q&A sessions, and bridging cohorts with continuous mentorship.
We realize that it might be difficult to implement this idea in 2024, but we are considering implementing the same in 2025. Towards that, we discussed the following points:
Adopt Current Cohort-Based Mentorship Structure for On-Demand Mentorship We discussed the idea of leveraging the existing cohort-based mentorship structure for the on-demand program. The idea is to create a detailed process and documentation to guide mentors and mentees, ensuring consistency. This approach could bridge on-demand mentorship with the cohort-based model, providing ongoing guidance and support. It was suggested to document key learnings and progress on a platform like P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/., allowing mentees to showcase their achievements.
Creating a Process for 1:1 Mentorship The value of offering mentorship on demand was highlighted in this discussion. We all agreed that having a structured program where new contributors could onboard into the project with the help of a mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues., could facilitate quality contributions. We shared the idea of creating a framework for mentors to support mentees asynchronously through a dedicated process and structure. The idea of having a pool of mentors was explored, with hopes of encouraging mentees to connect with other mentors, too, when needed, on an on-demand mentorship program.
Facilitating On-Demand Mentorship To facilitate on-demand mentorship, the group proposed creating a pool of available mentors who can be booked for sessions by mentees. This system would allow for flexible and immediate support. The idea of hosting sessions with multiple mentors for open questions was also discussed, with sessions conducted based on mentee interest. Creating a central repository of current mentor/mentee assignments was suggested to ensure coordination and awareness among mentors. We all agreed that to move ahead with on-demand mentorship, the process should be clear and documented, as well as possible.
How to Connect Mentors and Mentees Participants emphasized the need for a dedicated Slack channel for onboarding new contributors, serving as a general onboarding space with team-specific customizations. This channel would facilitate easy connections between mentors and mentees. Additionally, mentorship content on Learn WordPress, coupled with Q&A sessions, was proposed to provide flexible support. Collaborative documentation and clear guidelines would help mentors and mentees navigate the on-demand mentorship process effectively. We also explored the idea of setting up some Informal (unstructured) mentorship across the project. Also, we discussed setting up various criteria to match mentors and mentees, including their language preferences, region, personalities, etc.
In conclusion, the group decided to use preparation time towards Cohort #3 as a way to create documentation and structure as a first step towards launching on-demand mentorship in early 2025.
Brainstorming/Planning Cohort #3 of the Mentorship Program
We spent some time planning the third cohort of the WordPress contributor mentorship program. Participants agreed to maintain the six-week duration but also suggested extending it to seven weeks, dedicating the first week for introductions and onboarding. There was a consensus to keep the cohort size at 40 mentees paired with 20 mentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues., but with a backup list of mentors to handle emergencies or increased applications. Clear and visible documentation for mentors was emphasized, as current public resources on mentorship are lacking. Ideas like integrating mentees into multiple teams to showcase cross-team collaboration, creating a dedicated onboarding channel in Slack, and organizing an online WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. for mentorship were discussed. Leveraging existing programs like do_action hackathons and bridging with the Training Guide program for onboarding new contributors were also brought up in this discussion.
We decided to focus on enhancing clarity, structure, and support for both mentors and mentees. Participants stressed the importance of setting clear individual project goals and maintaining general program goals to measure success. Improving mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.-mentee communication and avoiding the initial loss of momentum were highlighted as key areas for refinement. Additionally, ideas for integrating initiatives like Hacktoberfest and WP Translation Day to enhance contributions were explored. Overall, the discussions aimed at creating a more effective and engaging mentorship experience, ensuring sustainable mentor participation, and providing a comprehensive support system for new contributors.
Based on the discussion, we arrived at a broad set of dates for the next cohort which are as follows:
June – July 2024: We finalize the structure for the next cohort
August – September 2024: Call for mentees/mentors goes out, we select mentors + mentees, and announce them.
October-November 2024: Mentorship Program.
It was highlighted that the mentorship program should avoid coinciding with major events like WCUSWCUSWordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event. to ensure that mentors are not overly occupied. Adjustments may be needed to align with the WordPress 6.7 release cycle, aiming to start the program after major events to maximize participation and focus. For further details, refer to the 2024 Major Release Timing Proposal.
We are going to start working on building the next cohort as per this plan, and will try to create an 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 plan for the next cohort with the goal of creating a strong foundation and structure for the program as early as possible.
On-demand Mentorship
In our last chat, @tobifjellner shared an excellent idea around “on-demand mentorship”, where we create a pool of mentors who are available to support new contributors, so that new contributors coming in can get mentorship whenever they want. We discussed this idea quite a bit in this month’s chat.
@tobifjellner elaborated on this idea in the discussion. Essentially, the idea involves creating a dedicated Slack channel for onboarding, supplemented by an email sequence to help new contributors become familiar with the WordPress project. This channel could serve as a general onboarding space, with specific teams building on this process for their own needs. Additionally, the idea of mentorship content living on Learn WordPress, coupled with available time slots for Q&A sessions, was proposed to offer flexible support. The goal is to bridge the periodic cohorts with continuous, ongoing mentorship, ensuring new contributors receive guidance whenever needed.
Participants also discussed having a structured approach where mentors can support mentees asynchronously and provide guidance while encouraging them to connect with their primary mentors. This would ensure mentees receive timely assistance without undermining their mentor-mentee relationships. Creating a pool of available mentors and setting up weekly sessions for bug scrubs were suggested to maintain engagement and address specific questions. Furthermore, integrating the on-demand mentorship with existing programs like do_action hackathons and leveraging university partnerships for project-based contributions were considered valuable for expanding outreach and sustaining the mentorship program. We also pointed to discussions on different forms of mentorship in the WordPress Contributor Working Group Tracker.
On-demand mentorship was identified as an idea with great potential – and our group will continue to discuss the idea with hopes of creating a structure and launching it after the next mentorship cohort concludes.
Five for the Future Documentation Updates and Discussions
Additionally, in our chat, we highlighted a set of important ongoing discussions related to Five for the Future and the WordPress Contributor Experience.
A group of volunteers from our group have started working on creating documentation for self-sponsored and sponsored contributors for Five for the Future. We have already received excellent feedback on the same from community members on work done so far. Please review these docs and share any feedback that you have – the plan is to ship these updates to the Five for the Future website once the documentation is more complete. Feedback is specifically requested for these documents:
10 of our 28 mentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. contributed to WordPress 6.5 with one of them being a noteworthy contributor 🧰
We had eight new core contributorsCore ContributorsCore contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. from the mentorship program 🧑💻
14 mentees have committed to join the WordPress 6.6 release squad! ⚡
Pre and Post-Event Mentee Survey Results
Contribution familiarity went up from 53.65% to 80.24% 📈
Contribution confidence went up from 57.72% to 82.62% 📈
88.62% of mentees were satisfied by the program! 🤩
80.68% mentees achieved their personal goals as part of the program! 😱
62.1% mentees created contribution plans! 🗺️
Participants shared the following feedback about the program later:
@patricia70: “Special mention to @lumiblog, mentee in the 2nd cohort and listed in the “Noteworthy Contributors” list of the 6.5 release credits! “
Thoughts about the program
@patricia70: “the program was very good and needs to continue into a 3rd cohort, with refinements based on the feedback”
@josepmoran: “I have firsthand experienced the benefits that this program achieves with people who have a strong commitment to contributing to WordPress and striving to keep its community alive and active. As a result of my experiences, I’ve also appreciated how much this recently concluded edition has grown and improved in terms of focus and goal attainment.”
@matteoenna: “Every now and then I get help from translate, so I respond slowly xD I loved it, it helped me better contextualize each team and created strong teamwork. Plus organizing a 30-60-90 helps. Maybe I would have included more “practice sessions” to the whole thing”
@devmuhibul: “I believe this is the best program to start contribution journey in WordPress. With the help of experienced mentors, here people at least can learn how to start walking. From where to start and all the guidance provided helps new contributors to keep contributing. “
From a facilitator standpoint, I think we should try project- or goal-based mentee recruitment next time, based on mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. availability. So there is no ambiguity or mismatch between mentee’s interest and mentor’s capacity.
Using GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ was something we tried based on the feedback from last cohort but I don’t think it was successful enough. Some other form of better communication tool (Calendar of course, but adding something else – Make P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. page? post?) might be helpful. Or even using GitHub docs (like this)?
@kirasong mentioned that the Contributor Mentorship Program successfully demonstrated that participants can contribute effectively to a release, even if they join later in the process. She emphasizes the importance of mentees feeling connected and integral to the creation of WordPress, which she believes is a powerful and crucial experience.
@rcreators: “I think it was great. It gives lot of great knowledge to start contribution to the WP in interesting way. Initially i thought contribution is only connected to programming but i really understand that its programming is just one small part of the larger contribution.”
@gusaus: “I wasn’t able to participate in the cohort (and kinda lost track of it after collab moved into a different channel ) but I thought mentoring projects was a great idea (hence several suggestions in this discussion) and would love to help enable more of that in moving forward. Also stipends and other incentives for mentees, mentors, and other participants. Was glad there was a bit of a test run in this cohort”
What could be improved?
@patricia70: “have the calendar of all sessions (onboarding, workshops, meetings, etc) more easily reachable/published, and all dates set in advance (not saying: tomorrow there is this) but at the start of the program, for all 6 weeks so we can plan our agendas accordingly + emphasize that all sessions are open to everyone (not only in the selected team/project we participate in). reach out in local communities, for example in France, @jdy68 said almost no one heard about the program before it was too late”
@josepmoran mentioned that the Contributor Mentorship Program has significantly matured in its recent edition, showing noticeable improvements in focus and achieving its goals. He mentions that the selection process of mentees needs minor adjustments to ensure alignment with the program’s objectives, emphasizing the importance of identifying genuine commitment. @josepmoran also underscores the value of using platforms like MeetupMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. to enhance program visibility and engage more effectively with the WordPress community.
@kirasong suggests starting the next cohort earlier, during the alpha stage, to enhance contributions to features, while maintaining some overlap with release parties which are popular and boost mentees’ comfort and understanding of the development process.
@ninianepress: “Both my mentees went AWOL (I couldn’t get in touch with one of them at all) this cohort so… “
@peiraisotta: “I wasn’t directly involved in the cohort until almost the end, but I loved meeting everyone and hearing about each one’s experience. It was very illuminating to me see how different contribution areas needed different approach from mentors. I learn a lot from everyone’s challenges and wins. It seemed very cool to me see how mentees worked on their contribution plans, and how they connected to their new contribution teams. Another highlight, watching @matteoenna preparing a pitch for his company and convince them to join the 5ftF program”
Feedback on the cohort
@patricia70 “I felt a bit bad about my mentorship, and we didn’t accomplish much. some limited time during the 6 weeks for me for 2 weeks, and for my mentees only available some short time in their evenings or week-ends. + my choice of team was not that good as there was no practical, easy to do for first time contributors, tasks”
It would be great to do the mentor orientation before the program starts
If possible, as a mentor, I’d like to better understand what workshops are planned so that I know better what things to plan or go over with mentees individually.
@sancastiza: “The Mentorship program has been a wonderful journey for me, with some surprising things. However, it somehow helped me better navigate what I wanted to contribute the most. Soon I will have the opportunity to do my first Meetup.”
@peiraisotta: “I think that learning more about how he did it could help many people doing the same, if they want to. In general, I love that the cohorts support folks also in achieving other goals related to their career or development.”
What’s next for the mentorship program?
Since we have wrapped-up two cohorts, we discussed what the next steps of the program would look like. We also discussed an idea shared by @tobifjellner – which is a low-key always-on mentorship program where there are mentors available to provide 1:1 help to new contributors. :
Thoughts on Cohort-based Mentorship
@rcreators: “I liked the cohort based mentorship a lot. In this people can pick up what they like and learn from the group.”
@kirasong: “I am not sure what the future of mentorship looks like in WordPress, ideally. But I would love cohort based mentorship to continue to be a part of it!”
What should we do differently about the next cohort?
@nilovelez: “I would love the option to have mentees in multiple teams at the same time, like one main team and onboarding in others. Also short (1 min) videos explaining what each team does to help mentees choose would be really helpful.”
@kirasong supported @nilovelez‘s comment saying how contributing to multiple teams happened organically, and how she was surprised seeing how folks contributed to more than one team.
@rcreators: “In last few weeks I found, Forum team need more volunteer. So if there is some focus to push more mentee towards forums will be good.”
@devmuhibul: “We can make some premade short videos for each teams and share at the start of cohort program that will reduce the hard work of mentors and help mentees to start at least.” @patricia70 responded that all the recorded videos from this cohort could be shared in one space.
@kirasong: “I agree that this, along with the cohort model, could be helpful and is worth trying out.” Kira has also offered to be a mentor if such a program happens.
@josepmoran: “I think Tobi is on the right track. It could be mentoring sessions where the mentee and mentor join forces to be productive without deadlines in between. In fact, I still have a strong bond with my mentor, and he remains committed to the program from a slightly greater distance, as he appreciates the evolution of his mentee and the work he has done as a mentor.”
@patricia70 suggested an interesting idea of hosting an ongoing program (as @tobifjellner mentioned) with possibility to join the “bigger” cohort-based twice a year.
@coachbirgit: “I think, having some form of low-key always-on mentorship program in place would be helpful in addition to “bigger” cohorts. This might be suitable for certain teams to have some (interested) team members appointed as the “go-to” mentor for this team or working-group.”
@jdy68: “It’s easier to talk to one person than to a whole team where you don’t know anyone, so designer mentors are a good idea.but this requires a place where the mentors of each team (general or local) can be identified, and where they can be contacted.”
@coachbirgit also suggested that these thoughts could well be added to the Contributor Handbook.She shared that the repository for the next iteration of the contributor handbook was moved to the WordPress GitHub org. The #deib-working-group has taken over the responsibility to work on that in cross-collaboration with all teams. https://github.com/WordPress/contributor-handbook
Next Steps for our Working Group
The original purpose of the working group was to bolster the contributor experience of WordPress, and we identified mentorship as a kick-it off. Now that we have run two cohorts and have good clarity on mentorship, we explored working on other projects such as Five for the Future and also asked our group members to share if they have any thoughts on additional projects to work on.
@coachbirgit: “As mentioned in the proposal, I published last year, the idea of establishing a formal DEIB team as an umbrella group to enhance the contributor experience and act as a shared resource. From my understanding, the 5ftF, diversity speaker training and mentorship program would fit under that umbrella.”
@rcreators: ” There are many small companies or medium size company like to start contribute but the issue is contribution is connected to user profiles. Apart from that if they don’t have any contributor in the team, they have no clue. So it will great to put both items in to one umbrella. So new companies register to 5ftF and add more new contributors to the table.”
@kirasong asked for clarity on how 5ftF connects to contributions, and @harishanker clarified that it could be a way to work on Five for the Future in the open, and also have a chance to improve the contributor experience in WordPress through sponsored contributions.
@gusaus suggested a couple of ideas such as creating an entry point for various community programs, as well as an idea on extending do_action. We also briefly discussed and brainstormed some ideas on mentorship too.
@gusaus also clarified that Contributing to Five for the Future is indeed on the Sustainability roadmap #16. He also pointed us to some good discussion on collaboration in the #sustainability channel for us to pick up later.
In short, group members shared broad consensus on working on other impactful community projects.
With that discussion, we concluded the meeting. The open floor in both chats were empty, and we soon wrapped-up the conversation.
Please comment on the post below if you have any questions.
We shared the agenda and latest win: @adityakane: “Currently, we have received 10 mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. and 13 mentee applications”
Mentorship Cohort Details
Program Schedule and status
Call for mentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. and mentees – Published
Cohort selection & program building: (Jan 8 – Feb 15) – Ongoing
Announce selected mentees/mentors (Feb 14)
Mentorship Program: 4-6 weeks (Feb 19 – March 29; 6 weeks leading up to the release week)
Graduation & Retrospective: 2 weeks (April 1 – April 12)
@gusa asks if it’s possible to publish which teams are selected by applicants.
More Mentorship Projects Wanted
Here is a summary of the ideas we have received thus far:
Courtney (@courane01) had proposed an idea of creating collaborative Learn WordPress workshops (this program can only be worked on if there is a mentor from the training team)
@annezazu proposed the idea of a dedicated mentorship opportunity for folks to shadow WordPress releases. (this idea is being worked on)
@annezazusuggests a dedicated release-oriented mentoring project that offers participants an inside view of releases with dedicated projects. She also shared that as part of the Queeromattic Employee Resource Group of Automattic, scholarships could be made available for participants. The idea was welcomed with great enthusiasm.
All working group members were encouraged to amplify the Mentorship calls. The Make/Marketing team already has published the following posts in social platforms on official WordPress accounts:
Additionally, the Make/Marketing team has an Amplify entry in their GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ profile.
@hellosatya proposes to involve the Make/Marketing team to have the mentorship program mentioned in every team’s meetings.
We also reviewed upcoming tasks for the mentorship program. Working group members are encouraged to leave a comment on the relevant GitHub issue or help us by creating an issue.
@angelasjin proposed “office hoursOffice HoursDefined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time.” for mentors where she will be answering questions and providing support to mentors as needed.
Planning Mentorship Cohort #2 of the Mentorship Program
Our main focus for this chat was planning the second cohort of the mentorship program which kicks off in January 2023.
Adjusted Schedule of the Mentorship Program Cohort #2
Based on feedback from the last chat, we decided to move our second cohort to January 2024, so as to give us more time to run the program on planned dates. Our updated schedule is as follows:
Publish Call for mentees/mentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. (late November; close at the end of the year) Week of January 8, 2024
Cohort selection & program building: (Jan 16 – Feb 9) (Jan 8 – Feb 15)
Announce selected mentees/mentors (Feb 14)
Mentorship Program: 4-6 weeks (Feb 19 – March 29; 6 weeks leading up to. T the release week)
Graduation & Retrospective: 2 weeks (April 1 – April 12)
Contributor Feedback
All members were generally in agreement about the updated schedule.
@st810amaze shared a concern about holidays around the world in January and February 2023, which could affect the program, and shared about upcoming holidays in this period. While it is not possible to change the schedule right now, we decided that it would be best to work around these holidays to ensure that our contributors get the best experience.
@kirasong: “I’ve shared this elsewhere, but I think the schedule starting after betaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. makes it a bit harder for folks to contribute to coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. for things landing in 6.5.Knowing that’s the case, though, we can pick tasks that are more likely to be able to be committed (like testing/tests/bug fixes). And/Or make the expectations clear that forms of contribution leading up to commits are good enough too. I like that the announcement post encourages getting set up early and if there’s any way I can help folks as they do that, I would love to.”
@harishanker: “Personally, I feel that the new schedule aligns better with our goals. It’s also nice to have the call for mentors/mentees in the new year, we could have some more sign ups that way. And in terms of timelines, I think we have sufficient time to work on all our tasks.”
Cohort Announcement Post Feedback
Our draft cohort announcement post and calls for mentors and mentees are out. All details can be found in the linked GitHub issue. Group members shared their feedback on the announcement post and the mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues./mentee calls.
Contributor Feedback
@harishanker suggested some mentor specific feedback along the lines of mentor motivation, experience, etc.
@angelasjin wondered whether we should add more questions or whether we should strike a balance to get the right mentors in our program.
Based on the feedback, the mentor form was updated.
@alexcu21: “How will be the selection process, I guess you shared it on previous cohort but I can’t find it.”
As a result of the feedback, the mentor form was updated, and the selection process was clarified in the GitHub issue.
Projects for the Mentorship Program
In this meeting, we discussed the idea of project-based mentorship for the next cohort – an idea that was originally suggested by @oglekler and @tobifjellner in our past chats. Mentorship programs from other open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. initiatives (such as Linux Foundation Mentorship and Google Summer of Code, to name a few), have always been project-based. These programs have always had encouraging results, as project-based mentorships offer direction and provide a great pathway for mentee engagement. In our chats, we brainstormed a couple of ideas for mentorship program projects.
A project to have a group of mentees come together to build Community Themes (proposed by @onemaggie, who has kindly offered to be a mentor in that project as well)
A Learn WordPress Tutorial on a high-impact topic created by a group of mentees, dividing work around script writing, video & audio recording, editing, and subtitles, as proposed by @courtneypk – who has also kindly agreed to support the idea.
Ideally, we identified that mentorship program projects have the following features:
Completable in four to five weeks
Something you and/or someone else can mentor
Benefits WordPress projects at large rather than specific individuals or organizations only
Required skills are relevant for beginner- to intermediate-level mentees
Group members shared the following feedback:
@nao: “Both projects sound like great fit, they are well-defined and low-risk, and provide lots of opportunity to learn new skills. Plus, group work is a good way to gain collaboration experience.”
@josepmoran: “ @nao Completely agree. Cooperation and fostering cohesion of work groups would be great.”
@oglekler: “I will think about Core project, but I believe that it should be a team work. It will be fun and mentees will learn to collaborate”
@harishanker: “I strongly advocate for group projects, I’m not sure how much we can do this for our Q1 cohort, but I would love to do more projects for other cohorts too. Having a clear output could be immensely helpful.”
@kirasong agreed that group projects are a good idea. “I thinkit’s likely to be easier to arrange for next time but trying it out is a wonderful idea regardless,” they added.
@javiercasares: “I think the project idea is great, but yes, we probably need to clarify the project and, mainly, the goal. I’m thinking on some project, but I’m usually involved in seed projects, so I don’t have any project right now…But, I think documentation may have some projects (I know Mobile and others have some needs, but probably somebody from the Docs team can help better). For example, probably we will have some projects from the Hosting team that may be around the time for the 2nd cohorst, so when I have some clarity about it, I can try and propose something”
@st810amaze: “I love the idea of group work. Working 1-on-1 with the mentor is great. But having a chance to catch up with other mentees might motivate them more, and always a chance to make new friends.”
@kafleg and @onemaggie supported the idea strongly and committed their support to mentor new contributors in this project as part of the Community Theme Projects idea.
@tobifjellner: “How about some mentees organizing an online meetupMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook.? Someone might join as speaker… #marketing should be able to share useful ideas. We haven’t had a WP-TranslationDay for a while
@nao was excited about the idea of a translation day. “
I think it would be great if someone can mentor to lead a group of mentees (some PTEs, perhaps?) to update WPTranslation Day tools and docs, so it’s possible to run it this September (and every year!).This could be a Community/Polyglots TeamPolyglots TeamPolyglots Team is a group of multilingual translators who work on translating plugins, themes, documentation, and front-facing marketing copy. https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/. joint project?”
On @nao’s nudge, @tobifjellner is going to ask in the next Polyglots meeting if anyone would be interested in being a mentor.
@gusa shared an excellent idea of a WordPress Hackathon from the Sustainability Team. “The description isn’t quite clear, but a primary goal is to create resources that could be used for training and mentoring. There’s already some overlap with multiple teams”, he added. Per Gus, this is already submitted as a NextGen event, and are working with the community team members to refine.
@harishanker shared that the Contributor Working Group would love to work with the Sustainability Team on related projects.
@gusa also pointed us to FundOSS – a program that tries to fund open source contributors. More can be found here: https://github.com/WordPress/sustainability/issues/22
Folks are also encouraged to share the feedback in GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/: https://github.com/WordPress/wp-contributor-working-group-tracker/discussions/7
Mentorship Program Clarifications
We clarified a few important housekeeping items for our chats:
Starting in the new year, our group will start looking at the Five for the Future program as well. Group members are encouraged to share their feedback on the program in the Five for the Future GitHub Repository. Folks can create documentation for the 5ftF contributors, please add it to the GH repository. You can also review existing issues and share any feedback as required too.
We wrapped up the chat by thanking all group members for their contributions in 2023, and hoping for an exciting year ahead for the program in 2024.
Results of the Mentorship Program Survey and Contributor Story
Thanks to @ninianepress@sereedmedia and @nao, our working group shipped a post event survey which was sent to all mentees from the mentorship program. At the time of writing this recap, seven people answered the survey and the results are as follows:
Benefits from the program
Gaining confidence
Learning about CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
Understanding release processes
Better understanding of WordPress teams and release processes
Suggestions
Meeting a Core dev while they solve the ticket in the next program (shadowing contributions)
Expand to multiple languages
Have mentees “try out” different teams by making good first contributions
Clear expectations on mentorship timelines and meeting times
Confusion in welcome meetings
More social interactions and connections between mentees.
In terms of achievements, we also celebrated the following wins from our past cohort:
One of the mentees – @josepmoranpublished a post about his journey on Spanish WordPress.org and spoke about it at WordCamp Madrid with his mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.@javiercasares.
@prikari went on to become a co-organizer of WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Mumbai 2023, barely a few months after our cohort concluded.
Detailed survey results were also shared privately with working group members for further analysis. Our group members shared the following feedback:
To have more shadowing sessions.
MentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. helping out mentees directly with the contribution process (matching mentors and mentees based on contribution interests)
Having a schedule beforehand and balance all activities amongst mentors and mentees.
Continue localized mentorships (mentors and mentees matched based on the languages they speak)
Offer clear expectations for the mentorship program, with better tracking of the mentorship progress in a public space (e.g. in a GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ project)
Implement some suggestions now and big ticket ones (like multilingual mentorship) later, based on availability.
Have mentees focus on one team first rather than have them bounce around?
Use the Make/Contribute landing page.
Getting feedback from experienced mentees on what particular things might make their onboarding more pleasant.
Mentorship Cohort #2 Schedule & Plans
Based on members’ feedback from past chats, we have put together a draft plan for the next mentorship program. Here’s a link to the draft plan document – updated to factor in the 6.5 release date (March 26, 2024).
Plan Summary
We are following a similar structure from the last program, but will be expanding it to include more mentors and mentees.
There will be a call for mentors and mentees this time, with the hope of prioritizing mentors who match the contribution interest/experience of mentees.
Lesser time on general project introduction and more time for specific team introduction and release shadowing.
Deeper integration into WordPress release process for 6.5
More actionable pre and post-event feedback loopLoopThe Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. and check-in
Follow-up contribution plan for mentees after graduation
Tentative schedule of Mentorship Cohort
Planning: 2 months (We’re currently in this phase, November – December 2023)
Publish Call for mentees/mentors (late November; close at the end of the year)
Cohort selection & program building: (Jan 16 – Feb 9)
Announce selected mentees/mentors (Early Feb; give enough time for the cohort to prepare)
Mentorship Program: 4-6 weeks (Feb 19 – March 29; 6 weeks leading up to the release week)
Graduation & Retrospective: 2 weeks (April 1 – April 12)
We asked members to share their feedback on the program plan, and they shared the following with us:
Thoughts about the plan
There was general feedback that this program is a good next step from our past cohort.
@oglekler: “Highlight in a call for mentees and mentors the areas they can participate in. I want to make a point that it is fine not to be a developer to be an active and successful contributor.”
@jeffpaul asked any of the feedback items from the survey incorporated in the next cohort plans. @harishanker shared some of the key results that are incorporated into the new plan:
More hands-on sessions
Setting clear expectations on mentorship timelines
Being very clear on welcome meetings
Facilitating more connections with mentees
To have more mentors and mentees
@sereedmedia: “i wonder if the application dates being in the downtime holiday season will be a benefit or dampen interest? just hard to get people to pay attention during the holidays.”. Sé also suggested that the application period launch in January along the lines of “new year, new skills”. @mysweetcate suggested that if the program opens in December, we could keep the applications open until January 2024.
@patricia70 asked: “How do we mentor in areas we are not ourselves experienced in? would there be a short “mentor training” first? For example, I know a lot about community, DEIB, some of other areas, but not about Core or GitHub, bug scrubs, commits, etc”. Proposed answers include:
To have mentor training for this cohort.
@nao: “we should try to find a good match with top interest/expertise, but additional training & support from other mentors can also help mentors learn something new about the project.”
@harishanker: ” We could bring in mentees with some experience and train everyone on these basics, the ones that – Core or GitHub, bug scrubs, commits, etc and also other program related areas.”
@adityakane: “in general a good overview of Core and Github usage as a learn course would be very helpful. For core specifically, I mean”
@javiercasares: “I think the Team Reps has a moment here… they know everything about their teams, the documentation and where to find material (and how to create it) so they should also be involved in some active way, supporting not only mentees, but mentors”
@josepmoran: “I totally agree and I join this interesting initiative, since since my presentation in Madrid, here in Spain a small movement has been created that I try to manage based on Javier’s teachings and explain my own experience.”
@glycymeris: “We are creating in Spain a Github handbook for non-experienced people that could be useful. It will be finished in a couple of weeks. If you want we could share it.”
@josepmoran: “Now not only am I and will be mentored, I am taking actions so that other collaborators are aware of these mentorships and I inform you of my learning and process of great progress as a more effective and continuous collaborator.”
Areas in the mentorship program that will help the program succeed
@oglekler: “I can cover several topics in online Zoom sessions and provide support via in-SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. meetings. I think we can have a brief overview of the whole ecosystem (I can do it, but I believe that there are people who can do it much better), second session is about how to start Core contribution (I already did this intro, but hopefully the second time it can be better), and some session with live example about how to create a patch and also another one about testing. I am just suggesting, and will be happy not to do everything I am proposing by myself.”
@ninianepress: “I think shadowing mentors is a fabulous and highly valuable idea and would help mentees a lot, I think. I think a graduation Zoom call is a wonderful idea and I think we should invite past graduates since we didn’t do so last time”
@harishanker: “I would pick release shadowing and finding ways for mentees to participate in any release related things. Testing comes to mind!”
Something to be included in the next cohort
@oglekler: “More feedback and visibility about mentees self learning. This part was sort of obscured for me. Making it more publicly organized and discussed will provide this visibility and give great feedback and insides.”
@harishanker: “We don’t have it covered, but I would like a sub-cohort of mentees (optionally) working on a group project. Perhaps something like a community blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. theme or a mini feature in core etc (which was suggested by @oglekler)
@ninanepress: “I would really love to see junior and senior mentees and mentors, and to have a mentorship chain”
@sereedmedia “love the mentorship chain. i think that is key to a sustainable program.”
@gusa asked questions on the mentorship program and highlighted the need for a broader culture of mentorship in WordPress. @ninanepress highlighted how the Docs Team has an onboarding guide. @gusus shared of his experience in the Drupal community and shared many excellent points which may be incorporated in WordPress. Some Community Summit sessions were also highlighted in the conversation:
@gusa also shared this task from the Sustainability team which highlights resource needs as well.
Contributing in the next session Many working group members expressed interest in participating in the next cohort in different roles.
Contributor Mentorship Program Badge
One pending task from the past cohort is assigning badges to participants in the program. We had created a formal request for badges, but we recently received feedback from the metaMetaMeta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team that the program completion badge may not align with the other badges given to mark contribution achievement, leaving us in a bit of a conundrum:
Should we work on a broader change in the badging system?
OR would it be better to display/celebrate the completion differently?
The following ideas were shared in our chats:
@javiercasares: “yes, this is something that has been talked about… we should have two types of badges, the team ones, and “goals one”… but that’s something from Meta… Maybe the option is:
mentors: Community badge
Mentees: the badges from the team they participate (as they gain the badges for their participation)
this is something “for now”, but having in mind having “goals badges””
@harishanker: “Personally, I think our badging system needs an overhaul. But we do need to celebrate the achievements of our mentees. I’m not 100% sure how best we can do that before badging is overhauled””
@josepmoran: “I believe that the mentored badge, without downplaying its importance, can be relative. What really matters are the badges you get through the contributions you make thanks to the emntorias course. and I think those are the ones that are really relevant.”
@tobifjellner changed the ticket type from bug to enhancement.
@courane01: “Noting in the gaming world, badges are called achievements. Sometimes in the edu space. I think we should explore other open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. projects and how they do likewise. Ex: Linux Foundation does give badges for course completions. https://openprofile.dev/profile/courtneyr. I haven’t seen badging for other uses, yet. Nor have I looked though. I think continuing to differentiate team contribution from other areas is the central point, and terminology is the nuance to sort out first”
@tobifjellner: “I’d love for some badges to still remain as tokens of past contributions, even if we for safety remove some accesses when someone moves on (or even passes away…)”
@ninianepress: “What if we had team badges AND achievements? The latter being stuff like this mentorship completion and the #WP20 From Blogs to Blocks campaign badges”
@jeffpaul: “it seems like the response in that meta ticket is based on not understanding the mentorship program, perhaps restating how the program works will make it clear that the badges apply similarly as other team contribution badges do?”. To which @harishanker asked if we could still do the proposed badges without having to overhaul badging, to which, @jeffpaul agreed as there’s no limit to the number of badges, also the mentorship badge could be created for the community team. Jeff also went on to clarify: “yeah, my reading of the comment on that ticket was more confusion about the request than anything, so perhaps restating and giving some context/links out to make it more clear will hopefully help?”
@harishanker also clarified that as per this post, all working group members are eligible for the community contributor badge.
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 coreCoreCore 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.
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 SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. 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 GithubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ 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 SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. (@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.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ profiles (we already have a tracTracTrac 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 MetaMetaMeta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team to help us with this).
Follow-up with mentees after three months to check-in and see how they are doing.
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.”
“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 meetupsMeetupMeetup 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 “
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 (AccessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (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 WCUSWCUSWordCamp 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 DayContributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. if the meetupMeetupMeetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. 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 SlackSlackSlack 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 WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US on the contributor day (August 24th).
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.
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.orgThe community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ and GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ profiles to be added to the board.
Updates from WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. 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.
CoreCoreCore 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!
At WordCamp Europe 2023, our group and our work got a lot of attention with several folks expressing interest in being a mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues., 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 SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. 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
Audit Learn WordPress courses 🔍 Since our program’s learning content is based on Learn WordPress, we’re asking group members if they could audit these 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 SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel 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.
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:
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 SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. 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:
Matching mentors and mentees based on languages
Localizing Learn WordPress courses and content to provide multilingual support
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 WCEUWCEUWordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event., the community summit, WCUSWCUSWordCamp 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 WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. 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 GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ 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:
CoreCoreCore 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.
