Proposal: Updates to the Mentor Program

Table of Contents


@devinmaeztri and I have been working on ways to make our current mentorMentor 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. program more flexible and inclusive, and here is our proposal.

The goal is to define the information around existing and new roles so contributors know what to expect when signing up. Then, to have a balanced set of tasks that get the necessary work done without making it overwhelming.

Updated Expectations, Requirements, Etc. for Our Contributor Roles

The information in the blue boxes below applies to all mentorsMentor 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..

Basic Information for Mentors

The information in this box applies to all mentors.

Expectations

  • Help other organizers have a great time planning events
  • Help organizers avoid problems before they become problems
  • Help make events easier to organize and improve attendee experience

Time Commitment

  • At least 4 hours a month, depending on your desired level of involvement.

Qualifications

  • Successful lead or co-organizer of the type of event you want to mentor — both financially and in team management
  • No previous incidents or conflicts with the Community Team. This includes any incidents and conflicts within the WordPress project sphere and any events you were involved in.

Requirements

  • Finish the appropriate training courses and pass the quizzes
  • Exhibit appropriate communication skills
  • Be organized and reliable
  • Be able to meet with event organizers and other community members when necessary on 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/., Google Meet, and/or Zoom, your choice

Help Path

  1. Check the handbook
  2. Next, ask your fellow Mentors
  3. Ask the Mentor Advocates/Community Guides
  4. Ask a Community DeputyDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. (if position remains)
  5. Ask a Super DeputySuper deputy Super Deputies are Deputies who can perform extra tasks on WordCamp.org like creating new sites and publishing WordCamps to the schedule./Community Advocates
  6. Email support@wordcamp.org

Mentor Roles

To better support the community, we are proposing that we add three new roles to our Mentor program. Two would operate similarly to our 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. Mentors: 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. Mentors and do_actiondo_action do_action hackathons are community-organised events that are focussed on using WordPress to give deserving charitable organisations their own online presence. Learn more on doaction.org. Mentors

The third addition would be Mentor Advocates, or Community Guides. This third role would oversee the mentor program as well as take on event mentorship responsibilities if they choose. If Community DeputiesDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. are moved into this role as Community Guides, then we would also be able to consider dividing up tasks like vetting.

Combining our DeputiesDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook., Super DeputiesSuper deputy Super Deputies are Deputies who can perform extra tasks on WordCamp.org like creating new sites and publishing WordCamps to the schedule., and Mentors into one program with a single-application Contributor Ladder is being discussed in this post. You are welcome to leave your thoughts. And note, regardless of what’s decided, our suggested updates can flex to fit either contributor option.

Mentor Tasks

Similarly to above, all mentors will perform the common tasks in this blue box:

  • Answer questions from meetup organizers when you can. If you don’t know the answer, follow the Help Path
    • Offer advice on procedure
    • Share knowledge based on past experience organizing
  • Keep up-to-date on what’s happening in the Community Team
    • Learn about new tools, developments, and decisions made by the Community Team
    • Participate in the monthly Community Team meetings
    • On the third Thursday, attend the monthly asynchronous Slack check ins

Additionally, each role will also have a unique set of tasks, which are listed below. Currently the resource are available for all of the proposed tasks. Many of the future tasks would be simple to add if deputies are moved into the mentor oversight role.

Meetup MentorsProposed tasks:
– Check in with your list of meetup organizers at least 1x/year to determine the 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. status (possibly at least once over video)
– Update the Meetup spreadsheet with the status of your meetups
– Assist in finding new meetup organizers as needed

Possibly future tasks:
– Do an initial vetting of Meetup applications using a new list/process (without access to HelpScout or the tracker)
– Process Venue Support requests (if it can be done outside of the tracker, possibly a first round)
do_action MentorsProposed tasks:
– Similar to WordCamps (Cate needs to update)

Possibly future tasks:
– Do an initial vetting of do_action applications using a new list/process (without access to HelpScout or the tracker)
WordCamp MentorsProposed tasks:
– Check in with your WordCamp organizers at least 1x/month
– Report about your WordCamp’s progress both as part of the monthly Community Team meeting and on the monthly Make/Community Post

Possibly future tasks:
– Help check venue agreement including the terms and conditions before signed by WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each.
– Do an initial vetting of WordCamp applications using a new list/process
Mentor Support or
Advocates or
Community Guides
Additional requirements:
– Successfully held two of the individual mentor roles
– Consistently worked toward the good of the community
– Participates regularly in Community Team discussions and decision making
– Completed ALL organizer-related courses and finished the tests

Proposed tasks:
– Answer the questions of other mentors when you can. If you don’t know the answer, follow the Help Path.
– Report about the progress of events you are mentoring both as part of the monthly Community Team meeting and on the monthly Make/Community Post

Possibly future tasks:
– Assign tasks for vetting
– Support other mentors as they vet applications
– Vet meetup, do_action, and WordCamp applications as they come in
– Process Venue Support requests (if it can be done outside of the tracker, possibly a first round)
– Vet new mentors
– Onboard new mentors

Now it’s your turn.

We’d appreciate feedback on these ideas. While we hope to begin implementing many of them as soon as possible, it’s good to remember that this is an organic project that will evolve over time. Things can be tried and undone or adjusted as needed down the road.

Please leave your thoughts below by 28 March 2023.

If you’d like to learn more about Combining Roles to Create a New Contributor Ladder, follow that link. Add your feedback to that conversation, too!

#mentors, #mentorship, #mentorship-programs, #updates

How about centralized weekly updates ?

With the polyglots we have resumed the weekly update on https://make.wordpress.org/updates/ . I would be great if other teams are willing to add a weekly (or at least regular) update there too. It should be short, but indicate what the teams are busy with. About 5-6 teams are already on it, join us to get a kind of central repository of all what is going on around here on WordPress.

Pascal.

#updates, #weekly-updates

“WordCamp (and Meetup) Status Doc” retooled

Hi Community DeputiesDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook.! 🙂
For better tracking purposes, I’ve retooled the “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. (and 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.) Status Doc”, so from now on, please add your name and the current date in the corresponding column of the spreadsheet for that specific WC or Meetup application (as you can see in the screenshot below). Thanks! 🙂

status-doc-screenshot

#community-management, #meetups-2, #updates, #wordcamps

Meetups Update

Some 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./meetup.com news:

  • I have been training @chanthaboune and Petya on processing meetup applications. Am hoping that in another couple of weeks we’ll be ready to roll that out to start training more people to help process them (I want to get Josepha and Petya done first so they can then train the next round of folks).
  • It was too late to bump up the number of 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. for the quarter so we’ll be at 120 through the end of March. Right now we are using 113, so we’ll need more room based on the queue. Which is probably not a huge deal because….
  • There are a number of groups that were created in the past year that never really went anywhere. In some cases it might just need a new organizer, while in others it turns out there’s just not enough demand in the area. We’ll be contacting groups that have been inactive for a few months to see what’s up and possibly retire the group if no one wants to step up to organize events.
  • Some recent roll-ins include New York, Des Moines, Marietta (Atlanta area), and Bucharest.
  • Over the next two weeks we are hoping to have tho orientation hangouts with all the people who’ve been in the queue (they should all have been contacted at this point and it’s just a matter of scheduling/playing email tag).
  • Meetup.com has removed (for any new groups moving forward) the setting that allows any member to announce events. This is frustrating because letting anyone organize events is kind of the cornerstone of our program, and this puts the group organizers in the position of having to approve suggested events (members can still suggest events), which creates a sense that the approving organizer is somehow responsible for the event, which isn’t the case. We’ll have to create some new documentation to reflect this change, and will likely want to send an email to all group members about organizing events when we send out survey results.
  • We’ve started sending out the annual survey links to groups on the chapter account. Since we have to customize the links by hand and meetup.com restricts how many messages you can send per day (this really just is not set up well for a chapter program), it might take a little bit to get them all out. We’ll let them run for two weeks then collate and post results (and compare to last year).
  • A lot of meetup groups have outdated organizer rolls due to someone moving, people moving on from organizing, etc. We’ll ask remaining organizers to a) identify a main point of contact for each group, and b) clean up the organizer list so that only current org are listed so that members have accurate information about who to contact.
  • Another year, another attempt at monthly communications to the groups to help promote contributor drives and such. The main question on this is should the communication be an email to the organizers (who might not pass on the info and/or who would only pass on to attendees (usually less than 5% of membership list), an email to the members (is a once-a-month email from WordPress too much?), a monthly post on the group’s discussion board, or something else?

All of these things to say, oh, comunity hub, how anxiously we await your birth. 🙂

#meetups-2, #updates

@sabreuse There hasn’t been a community team post…

@sabreuse: There hasn’t been a community team post over on /updates since January 31st, despite the fact that the past few weeks have been a flurry of activity for us. Are you still up for team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts./updates? If your schedule’s gotten too busy, we can take updates off your plate for now and have someone else post them.

#team-rep, #updates

WordCamps Update, December 19, 2013

This update includes activities since mid-October, the last time we posted to /updates. 🙁

  • published the dates for 7 WordCamps: Dayton, Asheville, Miami, Atlanta, Norway, Prague, and St. Louis
  • added 5 WordCamps to the pre-planning list: Connecticut, Nashville, Hamburg, Netherlands, and Slovakia
  • 151 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. videos published to WordPress.tv
  • 1825 WordCamp tickets sold
  • 15 WordCamps were held: in Malaga, Boston, Sofia, Nepal, Cape Town, Kenya, Porto, Denver, Edmonton, Orlando, Sao Paolo, London, Raleigh, Sevilla, and Las Vegas

#updates, #wordcamps