Contributor Working Group: Mentorship Kick-off chat Agenda | March 20th 12:00 UTC (EMEA) and 21:00 UTC (AMER)

As announced last week the Contributor Working Group of the Make/Community team is relaunching with an exclusive focus on building a Projectwide Mentorship Program for WordPress. The group will have its initial chat today to formally kick off work on the mentorship program.

Inaugural Meeting times

To make accommodations for as many timezones as possible, we will be holding these chats in multiple timezones:

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 joining the program: @williamsba1, @webtechpooja, @megabyterose, @tobifjellner, @wolfpaw, @soulseekah, @courtneypk, @kirasong, @tobifjellner, and @amethystanswers @nao @sereedmedia @nomadskateboarding @javiercasares @courane01 @leogopal @milana_cap @unintended8 @mysweetcate @sereedmedia @askdesign @lesleysim @adityakane @itsjustdj @evarlese @leonnugraha @prathameshp @javiercasares @jeffpaul, and @desrosj.

Agenda

1. Welcome and introductions
Who’s in the group? Let’s quickly get to know each other.

2. Clarifying Group Responsibilities
Clarifying what our responsibilities and goals are

3. Brief Introduction to the Mentorship Program
What is the proposed mentorship program? Brief discussion and brainstorming on how to make it successful.

4. Next steps and Identifying Volunteers
What are we going to do next? How will we begin working towards our goals? We also start identifying volunteers for different tasks.

5. Next meeting
When will we meet again? What regular schedule would work well?

Looking forward to seeing you at our chats!

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

#mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-agenda

Launching the Contributor Working Group: Call for Volunteers

Last month, I shared a proposal in the Make/Project blog, to revamp the Contributor Working Group of the Make/WordPress Community Team in order to build a WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program. Feedback on the proposal was quite positive! Folks supported the idea, volunteered to be a part of the working group, and shared valuable insights on mentorship for WordPress. A big thanks to everyone for their valuable feedback! 

This post aims to start building the proposed mentorship program using the contributor working group!

What is the Contributor Mentorship Program?

At its coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., the contributor mentorship program aims to provide a foundation for new and aspiring contributors to succeed in (and with) the project by helping them build necessary tools and skill set – through cohort-based and 1:1 mentorship. 

The program offers to improve the overall onboarding experience for new contributors in WordPress through effective mentorship opportunities. It is aimed at new contributors to WordPress (mentees) who will be supported by veteran 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.). Mentees learn the basics of contributing to the project by working with mentors before they start working on Make/Teams of their choice. 

By being a part of the mentorship program and having access to mentorship, newer contributors can make successful ongoing contributions to the project and stay on to become veterans. In addition to supporting the project by empowering contributors, the program also aims to impart vital skills to participants through contributing, which will support their professional choices and careers.

About the Contributor Working Group

The contributor working group is not new to WordPress. It was originally founded in September 2020 and led by @amethystanswers. The group did a lot of great work around suggesting improved onboarding flows, and organizing online contributor day events, even as the global COVID-19 pandemic brought the world to its knees. 

As I revitalize this working group in 2023, I hope to point its focus exclusively on building a contributor mentorship program based on community feedback from my proposal. Focusing on mentorship will also help the group become more effective and create a significant impact on the community.

The group will initially focus on the following tasks: 

  • Brainstorming and building a structure for the contributor mentorship program
  • Recruiting mentors and mentees to the program
  • Offering support and guidance for mentors and mentees in the program
  • Creating and improving learning content for mentees
  • Running at least one pilot version of the mentorship program in 2023

Call for Volunteers

The mentorship program is going to be an ambitious endeavor, and its success depends on support and contributions from passionate volunteers. Even though this group is tied to the Make/Community Team, its work spans the entire project. Additionally, the group plans to work closely with other Make/Teams, in order to build this program.

Like the WordPress project itself, membership to the working group is open to all. I would like to welcome everyone to join the group! Wondering if this is the right volunteer opportunity for you? You can make a massive impact on the program if you: 

  • Are excited about mentorship and have an idea about how it works
  • Have familiarity with different Make Teams and have experience working with them.
  • Possess a willingness to do outreach 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/.
  • Share a passion for helping others find ways to contribute
  • Can dedicate a few hours per month to the program, especially after the formal launch of the mentorship program. (Note: this is not a requirement – all contributions are welcome!)

Interested in joining the contributor working group? Excellent – we would love to have you with us!

Please express your interest by commenting on this blog post or by joining us for our inaugural team chat on March 20, 2023!
Alternatively, you can also DM me in the Make/WordPress Slack to express your interest (I’m @harishanker over there).

Pinging all the good folks who had previously expressed interest in joining the working group: @dpknauss, @williamsba1, @webtechpooja, @megabyterose, @tobifjellner, @wolfpaw, @soulseekah, @courtneypk, @kirasong, @tobifjellner, and @amethystanswers

Also looping in other folks who had expressed their interest in improving contributor experience for our project: @unintended8 @mysweetcate @sereedmedia @askdesign @lesleysim @adityakane @itsjustdj @evarlese @leonnugraha @javiercasares @jeffpaul, and @desrosj.

Inaugural Meeting times

To kick off work on the contributor working group – we are planning a team chat on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack, in a few days. I will also publish a separate agenda blog post before the meeting to kick things off. 

Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file which contains calendar entries for our upcoming chat. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. I will share reminders in the #community-team Slack to inform participants about these upcoming chats. 

Once again, major props to everyone for expressing interest in an exciting project like the mentorship program. Together, I hope we can all make an impact on our favorite 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. project by helping build a program that will also bring positive change to the lives of its contributors.

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

The following folks reviewed or shared feedback on this blog post: @cbringmann @angelasjin @peiraisotta

Recap of Contributor Working Group on May 19, 2021

In attendance: @amethystanswers, @tacoverdo, @chaion07, @manzwebdesigns, @gtarafdarr, @paaljoachim, @ashiquzzaman

Meeting start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1621450949003000

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2021/05/19/contributor-working-group-agenda-may-19-2021/

Announcements

New Meeting Option

We are adding an APAC time-zone-friendly option to meeting days. All meeting days will continue to be the first and third Wednesdays of each month. If you are interested in this new option, please vote on the time options by Saturday May 29. The meeting time will be included in the agenda for our first June meeting.

Thanks to @chaion07 for offering to host these meetings!

Group Focus Change

We started this group with a focus on three target areas:

Due to a variety of circumstances, we have now decided to narrow our focus further and concentrate specifically on New Contributor Onboarding for the time being. There is general agreement that this is an area we can make the most impact right now.

Group Updates

From @tacoverdo: Yoast will be having a company Contributor Day at the end of June and some will be available to help our group. There are some new contributors in the group, who may be able to try some onboarding tasks and share their experience with us.

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/. Onboarding Process

We have started exploring the Slack onboarding experience for New Contributors.

Current Experience

When someone new joins the Making WordPress Slack, they are automatically added to 2 channels: announcements and coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..

Observations

The announcements channel is the default channel, and shares general WordPress announcements and information for all contributors. There is a clear purpose for all users to be added to this channel automatically.

The core channel is for discussion related to Core Team contributions and meetings. There is not a clear purpose for adding all users to this channel automatically.

There is no welcome message, onboarding or guidance available to users specific to the Making WordPress workspace once they are set up.

Discussion and Next Steps

We started discussing opportunities to modify and improve this experience. Ideas are being collected in a Google Doc. We will continue this discussion in our next meeting and welcome all input. Once we have our ideas organized, a proposal will be submitted on 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/., and we will specifically request input from all Teams, as this affects everyone.

Next Meetings

Wednesday June 2, 2021 at TBD (Vote here) and 19:00UTC

#WPContributors

Contributor Working Group Agenda | May 19 2021

Here is the Agenda for our meeting on Wednesday, May 19, 2021 at 19:00 UTC in the #community-team channel 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/.. As always, you can add comments to the meeting afterwards, and/or add comments to the recap post.

Agenda

  1. Team Check-in
  2. Announcements
    • Modifying the current focus of our group
    • Additional meeting times
  3. Group Updates
  4. New items
    • Slack onboarding process

#WPContributors

Recap of Contributor Working Group on Apr. 21, 2021

Apologies for the severe delay in this recap. I thought I had hit publish, but it’s been sitting in draft mode for awhile.

In attendance: @amethystanswers, @paaljoachim, @chaion07, Youssef El Karmi, @ashiquzzaman, @daisyo

Meeting start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1619031710152600

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2021/04/21/contributor-working-group-agenda-april-21-2021/

Updates

This was a very light meeting.

@daisyo is looking for volunteers to get involved in Events Best Practices Documentation

@paaljoachim published 2 Learn WordPress tutorials:

  • https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/setting-up-a-local-wordpress-development-environment-for-core/
  • https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plan/testing-a-trac-ticket-or-a-github-pr/

#WPContributors

Recap of Contributor Working Group on Apr. 7, 2021

In attendance: @amethystanswers, @daisyo, @annezazu

Meeting start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1617822118403600

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2021/04/07/contributor-working-group-agenda-april-7-2021/

Goals

Two groups have passed their target deadlines. How can we help each other achieve the goals that were set? How can we modify the goals?

Is anyone feeling burnt out?

@daisyo would like to know if the Events Best Practices group would be interested in meeting in the off-weeks

Updates

@annezazu continues working with Codeable

Next Meeting

Wednesday April 21 at 19:00 UTC

#WPContributors

Contributor Working Group Agenda | April 7 2021

Here is the Agenda for our meeting on Wednesday, April 7, 2021 at 19:00 UTC in the #community-team channel 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/.. As always, you can add comments to the meeting afterwards, and/or add comments to the recap post.

Agenda

  1. Team check-in
  2. Group check-ins and updates
    • how are we doing with and feeling about goals?
  3. Any blockers?
  4. Next steps

#WPContributors

Recap of Contributor Working Group on Mar. 17, 2021

In attendance: @amethystanswers, @matthewfarlymn, @annezazu, @tacoverdo

Meeting start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1616007703004500

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2021/03/17/contributor-working-group-agenda-march-17-2021/

Group Checkins

@daisyo is looking for some volunteers to compile some questions that we might be able to ask organizers of previous contributor events (especially completely online events like 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. India.) The goal would be to help us in discussing what worked and didn’t work for these past events.

  • Input from @annezazu : Might be good to ask questions like “What resources would be helpful from your POV to engage people after a WordCamp?”, Something around desired resources AND something about what pain points/questions people get.

@annezazu my only update is the Codeable doc that I shared with the group. I plan to continue to see what we can learn from trying to create a pathway for Codeable devs to get involved in community efforts as a bit of a large “betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process.” group.

@amethystanswers created a simple Google doc with the links to our meeting recaps: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AOL6m_dB6TRxF7GCK1Y2wS694FVhQh2dGmi0EeVeGKc/edit?usp=sharing

Next Meeting

Wednesday April 7, 2021 19:00 UTC

#WPContributors

edited April 13, 2021 to correct the attendee list

Contributor Working Group Agenda | March 17 2021

Here is the Agenda for our meeting on Wednesday, March 17, 2021 at 19:00 UTC in the #community-team channel 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/.. As always, you can add comments to the meeting afterwards, and/or add comments to the recap post.

Agenda

  1. Team check-in
  2. Group check-ins
  3. Any blockers?
  4. Next steps

#WPContributors

#wpcontributors

Recap of Contributor Working Group on Mar. 3, 2021

In attendance: @amethystanswers, @annezazu, @paaljoachim, @matthewfarlymn, @daisyo, @chaion07, @vimes1984

Meeting start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1614801696123700

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2021/03/03/contributor-working-group-agenda-march-3-2021/

Group Checkins

@daisyo has time set aside to connect with team members and past organizers

@paaljoachim is working on some Learn lessons for setting up a local WP dev environment and testing and has a new make post for Testing a Gutenberg PR

@amethystanswers is working on a 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/. lesson for Learn

@annezazu is putting together a one pager for Codeable that could be repurposed on how to get involved in WordPress from a developer standpoint. This could also be a good group to gain insight from in terms of onboarding experienced developers who are new to the community.

Action Items

@amethystanswers will create a running list of meeting recaps for easy access. List will be kept in Google Drive, with a link in TrelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing..

Next Meeting

Wednesday, March 17 2021 19:00 UTC

#WPContributors