Over the past 2 weeks we’ve made some awesome progress. Knowing that this program will be greatly organic, we’ll have numerous additions to existing systems vs. a bunch of new systems that may not ever get maintained.

By the way, here’s who’s in my rockin’ group:
Andrew Christian
Jeffrey Zinn
Ben Lobaugh
Dre Armeda

We noted that the main target of our program is a person that’s new to organizing events but already love WordPress. This fits the majority of new organizers.

Andrea joined our call and provided some guidance during week 3. She approved making some additions to the new organizer application form, which would include some prompts for the new organizer to seek out their mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues., and also to see if the new organizer will be one that may also become a mentor in the future. She’s also going to include some new questions and prompts during her first chat with a new organizer, making sure they know where to find a mentor.

We also discussed having a P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. set up for each 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. to provide a venue to officially communicate with one another and let the team or other organizers 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. chime in. This could also house the cheat sheets per location (venue info, t-shirt vendors, sticker vendors, catering, maps, hotels, etc.).

Andrea created a P2 for WordCamp mentors already. We will share more about this and how it can be used in the future (we don’t have it quite flushed out yet, but know if will be really cool, fun, and useful).

In week 4 we started to put together the mentor guidelines, which include things like:

• mentors must have organized at least 1 WordCamp before
• 1-3 hours per week will be dedicated to supporting your mentee
• willing to be rated by the mentee and to rate their mentee after the WordCamp
• show the mentee where the top resources for planning reside
• respecting that it’s the organizer’s camp, not the mentor’s
• more coming…

And some mentee guidelines too, like:

• make time to get some advice
• still have your own ideas
• and more…

We’re creating a bunch of docs like:

• Organizer exit interview (will you be a mentor? how did your mentor do?)
• Mentor application (Will Andrea review this? We’ll have to make sure this is ok with her.)
• Mentor rating poll
• Mentee rating poll

In the near future we’ll begin curating the list of resources for new organizers, so that mentors can share this with their mentees.

All for now – thanks for listening 🙂

#organizer-mentorship-program

Our group met for the second time this past week and made some great progress.

We have added several action items to our plan, including putting together some resources for new organizers that 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. can share with them, making some modifications to the organizer application (to prompt a new organizer to seek out an appropriate mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.), and implementing an outgoing organizer interview, to ensure a succession plan is established and the incoming organizer isn’t starting from scratch.

We’ve posted an Idea Board to our shared doc folder and will continue to post more ideas like this as our conversations continue. These ideas are helping to form the outline of the entire program when coupled with what we know of other successful programs out there.

Our next meeting is this Thursday, January 10, 2013 and we are going to be creating that outline for our program and divvying our action items and ideas into that outline.

#organizer-mentorship-program

Happy New Year everyone!

Our group first met on 12/14/12. We established our ongoing meeting date/time, roles, methods of communication, and overall initiative timing.

We all agreed that there are already some great mentorship program resources available to us, including but not limited to:

• Andrea Middleton
• http://www.mentoring.org/start_a_program
• http://phpmentoring.org
• meetup.com organizer documentation
• http://plan.wordcamp.org/become-an-organizer/

Since none of us have been part of a formal mentorship program like this before, we’ll be relying on these experienced resources to help guide our program development. Luckily, we’ve all been organizers for large WordCamps and have all informally mentored other new organizers, so we have that experience to pull from.

Our group has two main objectives:

1. Setting up the new organizer mentorship program itself, including establishing the system to match 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. with mentees.
2. Pulling together resources, rules, and expectations for the mentors in the program.

We did make a note to consider international issues with respect to 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. organization, since the “WordCamp” concept isn’t as familiar in some areas of the world as the US. Our program will ensure inclusion of input from international organizers and special attention to their specific issues.

We have been on hiatus for the holiday season but will reconvene on Thursday, January 4.

If you have input for our group feel free to comment here and we’ll add it to our discussion list. Thanks!

#organizer-mentorship-program