Tag Archives: #WPContributors

Naoko Takano 7:28 am on September 22, 2023
Tags: #WPContributors, , , , , , ,   

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: #WPContributors, , , , ,   

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: #WPContributors, , , , , ,   

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: #WPContributors, , ,   

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 12:00 am on July 12, 2023
Tags: #WPContributors, 5ftf, , five-for-the-future, mentorship-cohort-july-2023,   

Announcing the Inaugural Cohort of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program!

I feel excited and proud to announce that the Inaugural Cohort of the Experimental WordPress Contributor Mentorship program is formally launching today (July 12th)!

Organized by the Contributor Working Group of the WordPress Community Team, the mentorship program pilot is a four-week event between July 12th and August 9th, 2023. Participants (mentees) will asynchronously work together in a cohort with a group of 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. to build a strong foundation in the WordPress project and make initial contributions to the contributor team of their choice. This will be made possible through cohort-based and personalized 1:1 mentorship, guided courses, and live online workshops. A brief overview of the program can be found in the flowchart below:

A flowchart visually explaining how mentees learn about WordPress contributions in the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program.

Originally formed in 2021, and relaunched in 2023, the Contributor Working Group of the Community Team aims to improve the contributor experience of the WordPress project. Currently, the group is focusing exclusively on building this mentorship program as an experiment, before embarking on other projects.

The inaugural cohort contains a diverse group of 13 contributors from all over the world, who are assigned to 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. each, with a focus on contributor team interest, geographic/language alignment. These folks were chosen from around 50 applications we received from aspiring contributors all over the world. We also have seven Make Teams participating in our initial cohort to onboard team members into their teams.

The Plan of Action

Our group has a four week program, with our week officially kicking off today (July 12th).

  • Week 1 and Week 2 (July 12th through July 25th)
    During this week, mentees will be oriented to the project. They will learn about the project through mentorship, some pre-designed courses, and certain workshops which we will be hosting. Mentees will also work with their mentors to get a broad guidance about the program, and also decide the teams that they wish to contribute to.
  • Week 3 and Week 4 (July 26th through August 9th)
    By now, mentees will have received an overview of the project, and in the coming weeks, the focus will be on onboarding them to the Make/WordPress team of their choice. Mentees can attend onboarding workshops organized by team representatives, and get support from team representatives to make contributions to the teams of their choice.

By the end of the four-week period, mentees will have picked up a good overview of the WordPress project, and will have made some initial contributions to the Make/Teams of their choice. Ideally they will be set up for success and will get a chance to continue contributing to the WordPress project as per their bandwidth and availability. The USP of this cohort is that it aligns with the WordPress 6.3 release, which will offer mentees to get an inside view of how a WordPress release gets out in the wild.

This program is a cross team effort, and I would like to take a moment to thank and credit everyone involved in making this project a reality!

Mentors

Our Mentors offer 1:1 support to each contributor in our cohort. These mentors check-in with mentees each week to offer them support and guidance on the program and to answer any questions that they may have about the same, while offering them guidance and direction on our program. Here’s a list of mentors in our current cohort, with each mentor being assigned to one participant/mentee.

  1. Aditya Kane @adityakane
  2. Arthur Casirye @thehopemonger
  3. Birgit Olzem @coachbirgit
  4. Cate DeRosia @mysweetcate
  5. Felipe Santos @foosantos
  6. Ganga Kafle @kafleg
  7. Javier Casares @javiercasares
  8. Jenni Mckinnon @ninianepress
  9. Juan Hernando @unintended8
  10. Pascal Casier @casiepa
  11. Shusei Toda @st810amaze
  12. Topher DeRosia @topher1kenobe
  13. Tor-Bjorn Fjellner @tobifjellner

Participating Make/Teams and Representatives

As part of our mentorship program, our participants will get onboarded to the Make/Teams of their choice. We have the following folks representing multiple teams, who will help our contributors get onboarded to the project. Our inaugural cohort will only have a limited set of teams – you will find below a list of teams and team representatives who will help onboard contributors to the respective teams over the course of the mentorship program.

TeamTeam Mentors
CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.@jeffpaul @mikeschroder @oglekler @francina
Community@mysweetcate @unintended8
Documentation@milana_cap @ninianepress
Photos@topher1kenobe
Polyglots@tobifjellner @nao
Support@mrfoxtalbot @foosantos
Test@webtechpooja @oglekler
Training@courane01 @courtneypk @webtechpooja

Facilitators

Finally, our facilitators do all the heavy lifting of running and managing the program. I would like to take a moment to celebrate all their hard work and heavy lifting in making the program happen!

Want to join and/or follow along?

In the true spirit of WordPress and 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., all our work will happen out in the wild! As an experiment, we are sharing an option for all community members to follow along our cohort! While our group is not in a position to assign mentors to everyone, the activities and tasks of our cohort will be shared in the newly-formed #contributor-mentorship channel of the Make/WordPress 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/., where interested folks can join most of our contributing sessions and onboarding sessions which will also be shared widely with our community.

Once again, big thanks to everyone involved for their hard work in building this program from ground up. This program is an experiment—our hope is to learn as much as possible from the same to improve mentorship in the WordPress project and to support and empower more contributors. If you have any feedback on the same, we would love to hear from you – you can either share the same as comments in this post, or reach out to one of the working group members or myself privately in the Make/WordPress Slack!

Watch out for more updates from the contributor working group, and our wrap-up post celebrating our cohort once the mentorship concludes!

#5ftf #five-for-the-future #contributor-working-group #wpcontributors, #mentorship-program #mentorship-cohort-july-2023

Hari Shanker R 3:45 am on June 17, 2023
Tags: #WPContributors, , , , , , ,   

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: #WPContributors, , ,   

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: #WPContributors, , , , ,   

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: #WPContributors, , ,   

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

Hari Shanker R 10:34 pm on April 25, 2023
Tags: #WPContributors, , , , ,   

Recap of Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on April 20, 2023

In attendance: @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 @nomadskateboarding 

Notes: @harishanker

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/04/17/contributor-working-group-mentorship-chat-agenda-april-20th-0700-utc-apac-emea-and-1600-utc-amer/

Meeting Start

EMEA: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1682002804642749

AMEA: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1682002817867819

A Minimum Viable ProductMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia (MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia) of the Proposed Mentorship Program 

The primary agenda of the chat was to discuss an MVP of the proposed Mentorship Program. Based on feedback from the last chat, @harishanker (I) prepared a draft plan for an MVP, which is as follows: 

  • A short cohort of new contributors (mentees) and experienced contributors (mentorsEvent 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.) are to be brought together in a dedicated space (potentially a 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 in Make/WordPress) to work together for a certain period (two to four weeks)
  • During this time, mentees will learn pre-prepared training material (we can start with existing contributor courses in Learn WordPress)
  • Each mentee will be assigned a mentorEvent 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 whom they will be having at least two 1:1 mentoring sessions (over text chat and/or video). 
  • Additionally, the group will have at least three group mentoring sessions on broad contribution topics (over text or video)
  • Optionally, they will create a three-month contribution and learning plan with their chosen mentor. 
  • Once all the courses and training sessions are complete, mentees graduate from the program, and are pointed to the Make/Team of their choosing for further contribution. Ideally, they are also connected with a contributor (or group of contributors) from the Make/Team of their choice who will go on to support them (informally) in their contributor journey. 
  • While the mentorship program will wrap up after the period, mentees can continue to reach out to their cohort and mentors for ongoing guidance and support. 

At the chat, group members shared the following feedback on the program: 

  • Folks generally were in agreement with the program, and we decided to move ahead. 
  • Starting somewhere is the most important part. It was suggested that we try something, find out what’s missing or what doesn’t work and then iterate. 
  • The fact that proceeding without everything in place is usually helpful for an MVP was also shared. As long as mentors and mentees are willing to work through the kinks and growing pains, this helps us identify where we are lacking and where we are strong. Even when we know what we are strong or weak. This intentional incompleteness will help folks provide feedback which will help us iterate further.

Next steps

Distilling feedback from this chat, @harishanker will create a detailed draft MVP document for this program that will be shared with all group members. After making any necessary changes to the document based on the feedback, the proposal will be shared in public. Based on the MVP, the group will start assigning roles and will formally start working on this program.

We also informally asked if any group members would like to be mentors, many folks signed up for the same.

At this chat, the group also decided to keep meeting on the third Thursday of each month, at the same timings (07:00 UTC and 16:00 UTC), while attempting to work asynchronously to address any group needs.

Note: In addition to the points mentioned above, there was a detailed discussion on various aspects of the program MVP. Read on to find out more about the summary of the discussion.

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