Tag Archives: mentorship-chat

Ratnesh Sonar 8:26 am on November 24, 2023
Tags: , , , mentorship-chat, , ,   

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

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

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

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

Meeting Start: 

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

Results of the Mentorship Program Survey and Contributor Story

Thanks to @ninianepress @sereedmedia and @nao, our working group shipped a post event survey which was sent to all mentees from the mentorship program. At the time of writing this recap, seven people answered the survey and the results are as follows:

Benefits from the program

  • Gaining confidence
  • Learning about CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
  • Understanding release processes
  • Better understanding of WordPress teams and release processes

Suggestions

  • Meeting a Core dev while they solve the ticket in the next program (shadowing contributions)
  • Expand to multiple languages
  • Have mentees “try out” different teams by making good first contributions
  • Clear expectations on mentorship timelines and meeting times
  • Confusion in welcome meetings
  • More social interactions and connections between mentees. 

In terms of achievements, we also celebrated the following wins from our past cohort:

  • One of the mentees – @josepmoran published a post about his journey on Spanish WordPress.org and spoke about it at WordCamp Madrid with his mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. @javiercasares.
  • @prikari went on to become a co-organizer of WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Mumbai 2023, barely a few months after our cohort concluded.

Detailed survey results were also shared privately with working group members for further analysis. Our group members shared the following feedback:

  • To have more shadowing sessions.
  • MentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. helping out mentees directly with the contribution process (matching mentors and mentees based on contribution interests)
  • Having a schedule beforehand and balance all activities amongst mentors and mentees.
  • Continue localized mentorships (mentors and mentees matched based on the languages they speak)
  • Offer clear expectations for the mentorship program, with better tracking of the mentorship progress in a public space (e.g. in a GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ project)
  • Implement some suggestions now and big ticket ones (like multilingual mentorship) later, based on availability.
  • Have mentees focus on one team first rather than have them bounce around?
  • Use the Make/Contribute landing page.
  • Getting feedback from experienced mentees on what particular things might make their onboarding more pleasant.

Mentorship Cohort #2 Schedule & Plans

Based on members’ feedback from past chats, we have put together a draft plan for the next mentorship program. Here’s a link to the draft plan document – updated to factor in the 6.5 release date (March 26, 2024).

Plan Summary

  • We are following a similar structure from the last program, but will be expanding it to include more mentors and mentees.
  • There will be a call for mentors and mentees this time, with the hope of prioritizing mentors who match the contribution interest/experience of mentees.
  • Lesser time on general project introduction and more time for specific team introduction and release shadowing.
  • Deeper integration into WordPress release process for 6.5
  • More actionable pre and post-event feedback loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. and check-in
  • Follow-up contribution plan for mentees after graduation

Tentative schedule of Mentorship Cohort

  1. Planning: 2 months (We’re currently in this phase, November – December 2023)
  2. Publish Call for mentees/mentors (late November; close at the end of the year)
  3. Cohort selection & program building: (Jan 16 – Feb 9)
  4. Announce selected mentees/mentors (Early Feb; give enough time for the cohort to prepare)
  5. Mentorship Program: 4-6 weeks (Feb 19 – March 29; 6 weeks leading up to the release week)
  6. Graduation & Retrospective: 2 weeks (April 1 – April 12)

We asked members to share their feedback on the program plan, and they shared the following with us:

Thoughts about the plan

  • There was general feedback that this program is a good next step from our past cohort.
  • @oglekler: “Highlight in a call for mentees and mentors the areas they can participate in. I want to make a point that it is fine not to be a developer to be an active and successful contributor.”
  • @jeffpaul asked any of the feedback items from the survey incorporated in the next cohort plans. @harishanker shared some of the key results that are incorporated into the new plan:
    • More hands-on sessions
    • Setting clear expectations on mentorship timelines
    • Being very clear on welcome meetings
    • Facilitating more connections with mentees
    • To have more mentors and mentees
  • @sereedmedia: “i wonder if the application dates being in the downtime holiday season will be a benefit or dampen interest? just hard to get people to pay attention during the holidays.”. Sé also suggested that the application period launch in January along the lines of “new year, new skills”. @mysweetcate suggested that if the program opens in December, we could keep the applications open until January 2024.
  • @patricia70 asked: “How do we mentor in areas we are not ourselves experienced in? would there be a short “mentor training” first? For example, I know a lot about community, DEIB, some of other areas, but not about Core or GitHub, bug scrubs, commits, etc”. Proposed answers include:
    • To have mentor training for this cohort.
    • @nao: “we should try to find a good match with top interest/expertise, but additional training & support from other mentors can also help mentors learn something new about the project.”
    • @harishanker: ” We could bring in mentees with some experience and train everyone on these basics, the ones that  – Core or GitHub, bug scrubs, commits, etc and also other program related areas.”
    • @adityakane: “in general a good overview of Core and Github usage as a learn course would be very helpful. For core specifically, I mean”
    • @javiercasares: “I think the Team Reps has a moment here… they know everything about their teams, the documentation and where to find material (and how to create it) so they should also be involved in some active way, supporting not only mentees, but mentors”
    • @josepmoran: “I totally agree and I join this interesting initiative, since since my presentation in Madrid, here in Spain a small movement has been created that I try to manage based on Javier’s teachings and explain my own experience.”
    • @adityakane: “About a learn course – I did suggest a Topic Idea: Getting Started with Github and Overview for WordPress Core Contributors — (it is still awaiting triage)“
    • @glycymeris: “We are creating in Spain a Github handbook for non-experienced people that could be useful. It will be finished in a couple of weeks. If you want we could share it.”
  • @josepmoran: “Now not only am I and will be mentored, I am taking actions so that other collaborators are aware of these mentorships and I inform you of my learning and process of great progress as a more effective and continuous collaborator.”

Areas in the mentorship program that will help the program succeed

  • @oglekler: “I can cover several topics in online Zoom sessions and provide support via in-SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. meetings. I think we can have a brief overview of the whole ecosystem (I can do it, but I believe that there are people who can do it much better), second session is about how to start Core contribution (I already did this intro, but hopefully the second time it can be better), and some session with live example about how to create a patch and also another one about testing. I am just suggesting, and will be happy not to do everything I am proposing by myself.”
  • @ninianepress: “I think shadowing mentors is a fabulous and highly valuable idea and would help mentees a lot, I think. I think a graduation Zoom call is a wonderful idea and I think we should invite past graduates since we didn’t do so last time”
  • @harishanker: “I would pick release shadowing and finding ways for mentees to participate in any release related things. Testing comes to mind!”

Something to be included in the next cohort

  • @oglekler: “More feedback and visibility about mentees self learning. This part was sort of obscured for me. Making it more publicly organized and discussed will provide this visibility and give great feedback and insides.”
  • @harishanker: “We don’t have it covered, but I would like a sub-cohort of mentees (optionally) working on a group project. Perhaps something like a community blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. theme or a mini feature in core etc (which was suggested by @oglekler)
  • @ninanepress: “I would really love to see junior and senior mentees and mentors, and to have a mentorship chain”
  • @sereedmedia “love the mentorship chain. i think that is key to a sustainable program.”
  • @gusa asked questions on the mentorship program and highlighted the need for a broader culture of mentorship in WordPress. @ninanepress highlighted how the Docs Team has an onboarding guide. @gusus shared of his experience in the Drupal community and shared many excellent points which may be incorporated in WordPress. Some Community Summit sessions were also highlighted in the conversation:
  • @gusa also shared this task from the Sustainability team which highlights resource needs as well.

Contributing in the next session
Many working group members expressed interest in participating in the next cohort in different roles.

Contributor Mentorship Program Badge

One pending task from the past cohort is assigning badges to participants in the program. We had created a formal request for badges, but we recently received feedback from the metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team that the program completion badge may not align with the other badges given to mark contribution achievement, leaving us in a bit of a conundrum:

  • Should we work on a broader change in the badging system?
  • OR would it be better to display/celebrate the completion differently?

The following ideas were shared in our chats:

  • @javiercasares: “yes, this is something that has been talked about… we should have two types of badges, the team ones, and “goals one”… but that’s something from Meta… Maybe the option is:
    • mentors: Community badge
    • Mentees: the badges from the team they participate (as they gain the badges for their participation)
    • this is something “for now”, but having in mind having “goals badges””
  • @harishanker: “Personally, I think our badging system needs an overhaul. But we do need to celebrate the achievements of our mentees. I’m not 100% sure how best we can do that before badging is overhauled””
  • @josepmoran: “I believe that the mentored badge, without downplaying its importance, can be relative. What really matters are the badges you get through the contributions you make thanks to the emntorias course. and I think those are the ones that are really relevant.”
  • @tobifjellner changed the ticket type from bug to enhancement.
  • @courane01: “Noting in the gaming world, badges are called achievements.  Sometimes in the edu space. I think we should explore other open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. projects and how they do likewise. Ex: Linux Foundation does give badges for course completions. https://openprofile.dev/profile/courtneyr. I haven’t seen badging for other uses, yet. Nor have I looked though. I think continuing to differentiate team contribution from other areas is the central point, and terminology is the nuance to sort out first”
  • @tobifjellner: “I’d love for some badges to still remain as tokens of past contributions, even if we for safety remove some accesses when someone moves on (or even passes away…)”
  • @gusa: “I referenced some other projects with good badging/crediting systems in one of the #sustainability roadmap items/ideas”
  • @ninianepress: “What if we had team badges AND achievements? The latter being stuff like this mentorship completion and the #WP20 From Blogs to Blocks campaign badges”
  • @jeffpaul: “it seems like the response in that meta ticket is based on not understanding the mentorship program, perhaps restating how the program works will make it clear that the badges apply similarly as other team contribution badges do?”. To which @harishanker asked if we could still do the proposed badges without having to overhaul badging, to which, @jeffpaul agreed as there’s no limit to the number of badges, also the mentorship badge could be created for the community team. Jeff also went on to clarify: “yeah, my reading of the comment on that ticket was more confusion about the request than anything, so perhaps restating and giving some context/links out to make it more clear will hopefully help?”
  • @harishanker also clarified that as per this post, all working group members are eligible for the community contributor badge.

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

Feedback Request from Marketing Team: Contributor Onboarding

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

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

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

#mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap

Naoko Takano 8:32 am on October 16, 2023
Tags: , , , , mentorship-chat,   

Contributor Working Group: Mentorship Chat Agenda | October 19th 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER)

It’s time for the next WordPress Contributor Working Group Mentorship chat. We’re meeting this Thursday (October 19th) to continue our work on improving the contribution experience of WordPress. Check out our launch post and past chats for more information on the working group and its plans.

Meeting Times

We will be holding these chats in multiple time zones to make accommodations for as many time zones as possible. These chats will continue to be held on the Third Thursday of every month.

Note: We will only be hosting the APAC/EMEA chat this week, as we don’t have a host for the Americas chat yet. If you can host the chat in the Americas time, let me (@nao) know. The Americas chat was originally planned for 2023-10-19 16:00 UTC (Google Calendar link).

In case a host is not found for the Americas chat, group members in the Americas are encouraged to participate in the EMEA/APAC chat asynchronously.


The chat will be on the #community-team channel in Make/WordPress Slack. Use this .ics file for calendar entries to not miss it. It’s also on the Make/Meetings calendar. Anyone keen on enhancing WordPress contributor experience or developing mentorship programs is welcome!

Pinging some of our active working group members as well as facilitators/mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. from our latest mentorship program pilot:

@adityakane, @askdesign, @carl-alberto, @casiepa, @cbringmann, @coachbirgit, @courane01, @desrosj, @foosantos, @@gusa, @harishanker, @javiercasares, @jeffpaul, @jominney, @juliarosia, @kafleg, @leogopal, @leonnugraha, @matteoenna, @mayukojpn, @meher, @milana_cap, @mikeschroder, @mrfoxtalbot, @mysweetcate, @nao, @ninianepress, @nomadskateboarding, @oglekler, @onealtr, @patricia70, @realloc, @sereedmedia, @st810amaze, @sumitsingh, @sz786, @thehopemonger, @thewebprincess, @topher1kenobe, @tobifjellner, @unintended8, @webtechpooja, @yoga1103

Agenda

Following up on our last chat, we will focus on planning the next iteration of our mentorship program!

1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins
How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves.

2. Planning for the Next Mentorship Cohort
In our last chat, there was a consensus that our group should do a cohort along with WordPress 6.5 release (likely in Q1 2024). Let’s discuss the second cohort’s structure, timeline, and milestones in this chat.

Feedback to the draft plan doc (put together based on previous chats) is welcome any time!

3. Call for Volunteers
Are you interested in building the mentorship program? Express your interest in joining the team to build the mentorship program’s next edition.

4. Questions, thoughts, and open floor!
If we still have time after all that excellent discussion, we’ll open up the floor for discussing mentorship broadly and our program!

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

#wpcontributors, #contributor-mentorship, #contributor-working-group, #mentorship-programs, #mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-agenda
Naoko Takano 7:28 am on September 22, 2023
Tags: , , , , mentorship-chat, , ,   

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

In attendance: @adityakane, @coachbirgit, @gusa, @harishanker, @kafleg, @leogopal, @matteoenna, @mayukojpn, @mikeschroder, @nao, @ninianepress, @oglekler, @onealtr, @patricia70, @sereedmedia, @tobifjellner, @topher1kenobe, @webtechpooja, @yoga1103

Notes: @nao

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/09/19/contributor-working-group-mentorship-chat-agenda-september-21st-0700-utc-apac-emea-and-1600-utc-amer/

Meeting Start

APAC/EMEA: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1695279617297589
AMER: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1695312003171489

Summary

Based on the conversation, here are some takeaways from the meetings:

  • We should try doing the next cohort alongside 6.5
  • The next cohort size should be bigger
  • We should put out a call for mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. along with mentees
  • We should try to include more Make/Teams in the process
  • We should revisit the process of mentorship, add more documentation, and processes
  • Our project management tool will be our GitHub Project

Pending Tasks from our Past Cohort

These pending tasks were discussed, and additional feedback was provided.

Training Team’s Onboarding Process & Guide Program

@leogopal brought up the Training Team’s Learning Pathway project and suggested that we work on creating different pathways for contributors to meet their interested roles.

@gusa shared @piyopiyofox’s comment in the Refreshing the contributor pipeline discussion, where she said the Training Team onboarding program is highly successful and can be adapted to other Make Teams, process-wise.

Planning the Next Mentorship Cohort

Timing

Many shared their preference for the next cohort tining to be after some break, possibly alongside of 6.5 release. “As soon as possible” was also mentioned.

Cohort Size

@nao @harishanker @adityakane @tobifjellner said the cohort size could be larger next time. No mention in the exact number, except @adityakane said doubling the size (= 26 mentees).

@tobifjellner suggested multiple mentees per mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. could also be possible.

Centralize project management

Everyone agreed that we need a better project management tool, and using the GitHub Project for the working group that @leogopal had set up earlier is a good idea.

@coachbirgit shared that the discussion feature on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ Project can be useful for the group, so @nao enabled it: https://github.com/WordPress/wp-contributor-working-group-tracker/discussions

Working alongside a release

@nao @harishanker @coachbirgit @tobifjellner @mikeschroder @sereedmedia said running the next cohort along the 6.5 release would give enough preparation time for the working group.

@sereedmedia: “I like that the cohort could get exposure to the release process, regardless of what team they are on. it touches all the teams in some way, and the releases are why we are all here at the end of the day.”

@adityakane said intentionally decoupling the timing from release could help new contributors see non-coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. development parts of the project.

@ninianepres: “having a cohort alongside one release it super great and less overwhelming. But also, it’s worth taking a look at when these releases are scheduled just so we don’t feel we’re rushed like the last cohort”

Duration/Timeframe

Some suggestions were brought up about the duration and timeframe: increasing the 4-week period, separating out the general onboarding parts, and spending four weeks on the specific team onboarding.

@sereedmedia made a point about reviewing survey feedback before making a concrete decision.

Things to change for the next cohort

Additional comments:

@kafleg: “Strictly monitoring and reporting the updates, and Mentee rating from Mentor and monitor”

@coachbirgit: “Template for a 90-day plan as follow-up for the mentees after the cohorts end.”

@sereedmedia: “Bug scrub & contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. as a sprint, developing actionable contribution goals for each team that would be suitable for a “first issue”

@oglekler: “I can make a bug scrub meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. or something”

@ninianepress: “Consider having facilitators initiate the onboarding process, followed by mentors taking over/have different levels where junior & senior mentors or facilitators come in at different times; create checklists and forms for mentors as well this time and not just mentees; more clarity around defining the roles”

@adityakane: “Clearer framework, Github to project manage.”

Open floor/FYI

#wpcontributors, #contributor-mentorship, #contributor-working-group, #mentorship-programs, #mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-agenda #mentorship-chat-recap

#mentorship-chat-recap

Naoko Takano 11:37 am on September 19, 2023
Tags: , , , , mentorship-chat,   

Contributor Working Group: Mentorship Chat Agenda | September 21st 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER)

It’s time for the next Mentorship chat of the WordPress Contributor Working Group. We’re meeting this Thursday (September 21st) to continue our work on improving the contribution experience of WordPress. For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post and our past chats.

Meeting times

We will be holding these chats in multiple time zones to make accommodations for as many time zones as possible. These chats will continue to be held on the Third Thursday of every month.

The chat will be held on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack. Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file, which contains calendar entries for our upcoming chat, so you won’t miss it. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. Everyone interested in improving the contributor experience in WordPress and building future mentorship programs is welcome to attend!

Pinging some of our active working group members as well as facilitators/mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. from our latest mentorship program pilot:

@adityakane, @askdesign, @carl-alberto, @casiepa, @cbringmann, @coachbirgit, @courane01, @desrosj, @foosantos, @francina, @harishanker, @javiercasares, @jeffpaul, @jominney, @juliarosia, @kafleg, @leogopal, @leonnugraha, @meher, @milana_cap, @mikeschroder, @mrfoxtalbot, @mysweetcate, @nao, @nomadskateboarding, @onealtr, @oglekler, @patricia70, @patriciabt, @realloc, @sereedmedia, @st810amaze, @sumitsingh, @sz786, @thehopemonger, @thewebprincess, @topher1kenobe, @tobifjellner, @unintended8, @webtechpooja, @yoga1103

Agenda

In the last Mentorship Chat, we evaluated the pilot cohort of the Contributor Mentorship program. WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. US Community Summit had some relevant discussions, and notes were published:

This week, let’s start planning for our second iteration of the mentorship program.

1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins
How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves.

2. Pending Tasks from our Past Cohort
We have a few more pending tasks that need to be done from our past cohort: the participant survey and contributor badge. Let’s quickly share where we are and what help is needed.

3. Planning the Next Mentorship Cohort
It’s clear that our past cohort has been a success, and there has been positive feedback on bringing up a new cohort. How do we go about it? Let’s discuss our next steps: timing, cohort size, project management process, focus/teams, or anything else relevant.

4. Questions, thoughts, and open floor!
If we still have time after all that intense discussion, we’ll open up the floor for discussing mentorship broadly and our program!

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

#wpcontributors, #contributor-mentorship, #contributor-working-group, #mentorship-programs, #mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-agenda

Hari Shanker R 1:00 pm on August 21, 2023
Tags: , , , , mentorship-chat, ,   

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

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

Notes: @harishanker

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

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

Evaluating our Mentorship Program’s Pilot Cohort

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

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

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

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

What worked well

  • @coachbirgit: “The interest into the pilot program was overwhelmingly high and I loved to see how many workshops were provided on short hand for this besides the already prepared material on learn.wordpress.org”
  •  @adityakane: “That it had enough room to be not over structured helped participants to find their way and also feed their curiosity along with knowing how to contribute.” 
  • @tobifjellner: “We gathered energy, feedback and insights. Created something new and welcoming in several “make” teams.”
  • @kafleg: “The biggest achievement is we did it. As I said before, not matter how many contributors we’ll get in the long term, but we believe that it will be a basement for many contributors.”
  • @javiercasares: “As a whole, I think it was a great pilot program and mentees are happy to participated.”
  • @oglekler: “ I am really pleased about our mentees, amazing people. And I am eager to do it again. ✨ Timing was perfect when the whole program went alongside the release to its finish nose to nose.”
  •  @ninianepress: “I loved how we all came together on this and so many people stepped up and did so much to make this happen, like you @harishanker and so many! Thank you!! I loved how mentees got a Google doc with a checklist on what to accomplish. It made things SO much easier as a mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. since there was a clear path. My mentee was super awesome and super self-motivated 🎉 so it made things vastly easier for me. I also loved how there were Zoom check-ins.”
  • @mysweetcate: “ the program seemed to work exactly as needed and intended. I built a bond with my person, was able to encourage her as she encountered the bumps of getting started, and she was able to find her way to areas of contribution that she enjoyed.”


What did not work well about the program?

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

 What could be improved about the program?

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

What are our biggest wins from the program?

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

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

  • Share a post-event survey for mentees and mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. (@nao @sereedmedia and @ninianepress are working on it
  • Create a draft contribution plan document to encourage mentees to continue ongoing contributions.
  • Create and assign badges to mentors, mentees, and facilitators’ WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ profiles (we already have a tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. request for badges and are waiting for the MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team to help us with this). 
  • Follow-up with mentees after three months to check-in and see how they are doing. 

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

Next Steps for our Working Group

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

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

Questions thoughts and Open Floor

@coachbirgit highlighted work happening on the DEIB working group, and asked for help from the contributor working group on creating a primer for the mentorship program a on how it applies to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. She is hosting a session on the same at the Community Summit, and has shared an agenda for preparation. Remote participation is also welcome in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. on the #deib-working-group Slack channel – details can be found in the agenda task issue in GitHub. 

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

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

#mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap

Hari Shanker R 11:44 am on August 16, 2023
Tags: , , mentorship-chat,   

Contributor Working Group: Mentorship Chat Agenda | August 17th 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER)

It’s time for the next Mentorship chat of the WordPress Contributor Working Group. We’re meeting this Thursday (August 17th) to continue our work on improving the contribution experience of WordPress – in light of the graduation (and success) of our Mentorship Program Pilot. For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post and our past chats.

Meeting times

We will be holding these chats in multiple timezones to make accommodations for as many timezones as possible. These chats will continue to be held on the Third Thursday of every month.

The chat will be held on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack. Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file which contains calendar entries for our upcoming chat, so that you won’t miss it. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. Everyone interested in improving the contributor experience in WordPress and building future mentorship programs are welcome to attend!

Pinging some of our active working group members as well as facilitators/mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. from our latest mentorship program pilot:

@adityakane, @angelasjin, @askdesign, @carl-alberto, @casiepa, @cbringmann, @coachbirgit, @courane01, @desrosj, @foosantos, @francina, @harishanker, @javiercasares, @jeffpaul, @jominney, @juliarosia, @kafleg, @leogopal, @leonnugraha, @meher, @milana_cap, @mikeschroder, @mrfoxtalbot, @mysweetcate, @nao, @nomadskateboarding, @onealtr, @oglekler, @patricia70, @patriciabt, @realloc, @sereedmedia, @st810amaze, @sumitsingh, @sz786, @thehopemonger, @thewebprincess, @topher1kenobe, @tobifjellner, @unintended8, @webtechpooja, @yoga1103

Agenda

Last week, we wrapped up the pilot cohort of our mentorship program – congratulations to us! While the program is still fresh in our minds, let us use this week to look back at it, and share our learnings and feedback.

1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins
How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves.

2. Evaluating our Mentorship Program’s Pilot Cohort
First of all, kudos to everyone for facilitating the huge success of our mentorship program. We would not have been able to achieve what we did, had it not been for your hard work! Let us take a look at our pilot program, and share any open feedback on how it went. Please feel free to talk about what worked, what did not, and where the program could be improved. Let us also discuss any pending tasks from the program as well as any pending next steps.

3. Next Steps for our Working Group
Now that our pilot program is over, it is time to start working on the next steps for our group. What should we do next? Should we host another cohort, and if so when? How do we facilitate mentorship in WordPress going forward?

4. Questions, thoughts, and open floor!
If we still have time after all that intense discussion, we’ll open up the floor for discussing mentorship broadly and our program!

Additionally – since many working group members will be attending WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event., let us explore whether we can meet informally at the event, possibly on contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.!

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #mentorship-chat

Hari Shanker R 3:45 am on June 17, 2023
Tags: , , , , mentorship-chat, , ,   

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

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

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

Notes: @harishanker

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

Meeting Start

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

Project Updates

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

  • Thanks to @leogopal, we now have a fully-fledged GitHub project board for our project. Our group will be working on adding tasks and content to the board. Group members also shared their wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ and GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ profiles to be added to the board. 
  • We also have a draft of the call for mentees post which is ready for publishing. 

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

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

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

Wins from the past month

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

  • Our contributor mentorship program was featured on the June Edition (Episode 57) of The Official WordPress Podcast – WP Briefing. Support from @chanthaboune – our executive director, was a great encouragement for our group and for our work!
  • At WordCamp Europe 2023, our group and our work got a lot of attention with several folks expressing interest in being a mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues., mentee, or a facilitator. Our mentorship program also found a prominent mention in the event’s keynote session with Matt Mullenweg, Josepha Haden, and Matias Ventura. Check out the Q&A video of WordCamp Europe 2023 to catch the moment!

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

Implementation and Project Management for our Pilot

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

High Priority Action items

  • Call for Mentees announcement
    We already have a draft post going which we aim to publish by early next week. Make/Marketing has also offered to review and amplify the same
  • Finalizing our mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.
    Many group members have offered to become mentors for our program, we hope to finalize at least 5-10 mentors. For our cohort. 
  • Recruit Make/Team Representatives and support their involvement in our pilot.

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

Medium Priority Action Items

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

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

Making Progress Towards the Pilot Program

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

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

Discussions

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

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

#mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap

Hari Shanker R 2:14 pm on June 14, 2023
Tags: , , mentorship-chat,   

Contributor Working Group: Mentorship Chat Agenda | June 15th 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER)

It’s time for the next Mentorship chat of the WordPress Contributor Working Group. We’re meeting this Thursday (June 15th) to continue our work on building a Mentorship Program for WordPress and shipping its pilot program! For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post and our past chats.

Meeting times

We will be holding these chats in multiple timezones to make accommodations for as many timezones as possible. These chats will continue to be held on the Third Thursday of every month.

The chat will be held on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack. Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file which contains calendar entries for our upcoming chat, so that you won’t miss it. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. Everyone interested in building a mentorship program is welcome to attend these chats.

Looping in folks that had expressed interest in the program: @coachbirgit @williamsba1, @megabyterose, @wolfpaw, @soulseekah, @courtneypk, @leogopal @milana_cap @unintended8 @webcommsat @meher @kcristiano @meaganhanes @annezazu @kafleg @dpknauss.

Also looping in the folks who attended the last chat:

@adityakane @nao @oglekler @yoga1103 @mikeschroder @leonnugraha @st810amaze @onealtr @carl-alberto @tobifjellner @javiercasares @sz786 @meher @courane01 @jeffpaul @sereedmedia @cbringmann @angelasjin @juliarosia @askdesign @nomadskateboarding @patriciabt @javiercasares @gounder @unintended8 @webtechpooja @thewebprincess @desrosj @askdesign @francina and @nomadskateboarding

Agenda

We now have a fully-fledged pilot for our mentorship program, and it’s time for our group to start working together to make sure it rolls out as planned!

1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins
How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves.

2. Sharing wins and updates
After our last meeting, our group has made a bunch of progress on our program and have drawn significant attention too! We also held a tribe meeting at the WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. Contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. which was a huge success. We’ll spend some time going over updates from last week so that all group members are up to speed!

3. Implementation and project management for our pilot!
We’ll be kicking off our pilot program soon, and need to start working on things. Let’s talk implementation, create a plan to start working on things, and decide how we work together towards implementing the pilot!

4. Questions, thoughts, and open floor!
If we still have time after all that intense discussion, we’ll open up the floor for discussing mentorship broadly and our program!

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #mentorship-chat

Hari Shanker R 3:30 am on May 20, 2023
Tags: , , , mentorship-chat, ,   

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

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

Notes: @harishanker

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

Meeting Start

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

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

Mentorship Program Pilot 

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

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

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

  • Mentees will have to make a chosen set of initial contributions for their chosen Make/Team in order to complete the mentorship.
  • For the pilot, Make/Teams can opt-in whether they would like to participate in the pilot program. Interested Make/Teams can nominate mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. who can support mentees and eventually onboard them as contributors to their respective teams.
  • The length of the program has been finalized as one month or four weeks to incorporate contributions. 

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

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

Implementation and Identifying Tasks and Next Steps

Implementation timeline

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

Some ideas that were shared include:

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

Project Management Tool

The group unanimously agreed to use GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ projects as a project management tool for the program! Some group members also offered to set it up – we will work on this asynchronously. 

Task List

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

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

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

High Priority Tasks / Next Steps /Action Items!

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

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

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

WordCamp Europe 2023 Meeting

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

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

#mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap

Hari Shanker R 3:27 pm on May 15, 2023
Tags: , , mentorship-chat,   

Contributor Working Group: Mentorship Chat Agenda | May 18th 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER)

The contributor working group is gearing up for its next Mentorship chat on Thursday (May 18th) to continue its work on building a Mentorship Program for WordPress! For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post.

Meeting times

To make accommodations for as many timezones as possible, we will be holding these chats in multiple timezones. Based on feedback from last week, we will continue holding these chats on the Third Thursday of every month.

The chat will be held on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack. Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file which contains calendar entries for our upcoming chat, so that you won’t miss it. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. Everyone who is interested in building a mentorship program is welcome to attend these chats.

Looping in folks that had expressed interest in the program: @williamsba1, @megabyterose, @wolfpaw, @soulseekah, @courtneypk, @amethystanswers @leogopal @milana_cap @unintended8 @lesleysim @itsjustdj @evarlese @prathameshp, @webcommsat @meher @kcristiano @leonnugraha and @dpknauss.

Also looping in the folks who attended the last chat:

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

Agenda

Last week, our focus was on finalizing 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) to test out our Mentorship Program. This week, based on all our findings, we have finalized a pilot for our mentorship program and start working on implementation steps.

1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins
How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves.

2. Mentorship Program Pilot
Based on discussions from our last chats, the working group has identified a pilot program for our projectwide mentorship! We briefly go through the pilot program to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Here’s the link to the draft blog post announcing the program’s MVP/Pilot and a white paper about the program.

3. Implementation and Assigning Tasks
Now that everyone is on the same page on the pilot program, we start talking about implementing our mentorship program! We will try to come up with a plan to implement our program, identify a list of tasks, and put out a call for volunteers to help with the different tasks. We will also try and find a project management tool to keep track of our work!

4. Next steps
Based on next discussion this week, we will identify a task list for the group until next week.

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #mentorship-chat