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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.
A Minimum Viable ProductMinimum Viable Product"A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia (MVPMinimum Viable Product"A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia) of the Proposed Mentorship Program
The primary agenda of the chat was to discuss an MVP of the proposed Mentorship Program. Based on feedback from the last chat, @harishanker (I) prepared a draft plan for an MVP, which is as follows:
A short cohort of new contributors (mentees) and experienced contributors (mentorsEvent 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.) are to be brought together in a dedicated space (potentially a SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel in Make/WordPress) to work together for a certain period (two to four weeks)
During this time, mentees will learn pre-prepared training material (we can start with existing contributor courses in Learn WordPress)
Each mentee will be assigned a mentorEvent 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., with whom they will be having at least two 1:1 mentoring sessions (over text chat and/or video).
Additionally, the group will have at least three group mentoring sessions on broad contribution topics (over text or video)
Optionally, they will create a three-month contribution and learning plan with their chosen mentor.
Once all the courses and training sessions are complete, mentees graduate from the program, and are pointed to the Make/Team of their choosing for further contribution. Ideally, they are also connected with a contributor (or group of contributors) from the Make/Team of their choice who will go on to support them (informally) in their contributor journey.
While the mentorship program will wrap up after the period, mentees can continue to reach out to their cohort and mentors for ongoing guidance and support.
At the chat, group members shared the following feedback on the program:
Folks generally were in agreement with the program, and we decided to move ahead.
Starting somewhere is the most important part. It was suggested that we try something, find out what’s missing or what doesn’t work and then iterate.
The fact that proceeding without everything in place is usually helpful for an MVP was also shared. As long as mentors and mentees are willing to work through the kinks and growing pains, this helps us identify where we are lacking and where we are strong. Even when we know what we are strong or weak. This intentional incompleteness will help folks provide feedback which will help us iterate further.
Next steps
Distilling feedback from this chat, @harishanker will create a detailed draft MVP document for this program that will be shared with all group members. After making any necessary changes to the document based on the feedback, the proposal will be shared in public. Based on the MVP, the group will start assigning roles and will formally start working on this program.
We also informally asked if any group members would like to be mentors, many folks signed up for the same.
At this chat, the group also decided to keep meeting on the third Thursday of each month, at the same timings (07:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC), while attempting to work asynchronously to address any group needs.
Note: In addition to the points mentioned above, there was a detailed discussion on various aspects of the program MVP. Read on to find out more about the summary of the discussion.
At the chat, it was clarified that the exclusive focus of the group will be on building a projectwide mentorship program for WordPress. This is because lack of mentorship was identified as one of the biggest gaps in contribution experience for our program based on feedback from multiple blog posts. Besides, “Establish contributor and 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. programs” is one of the big picture goals of the WordPress Project in 2023 as well.
@tobifjellner shared some excellent ideas that the group might want to look at, which includes finding easier ways to contribute, find a new default channel 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/. for newcomers, suggeestions to improve onboarding, and onboarding contributors regionally and locally. The idea of creating a default channel for contributors was supported by several participants. While these ideas have merit and should be pursued, the group decided that it was best to focus on Mentorship for now, which is a big project to tackle.
The group proposes to have bi-weekly chats (for now), every second and fourth Thursday at 12:00 and 21:00 UTC (for now).
Proposed Mentorship Program Brief
The Mentorship Program is envisioned as a short-term optional program for new contributors. It does not focus on a particular Make/Team but is aimed at imparting necessary guidance and skills to new contributors to succeed in and with the project through 1:1 and cohort-based mentorship. The program will be launched with the hope that mentees will pick up the necessary knowledge, guidance and skills required to succeed with WordPress and will go on to make successful contributions in the project, and grow with the project.
