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The Diverse Speakers Training group #WPDiversity (formerly Diversity Outreach Speaker Training #WPWomenSpeak) has created a Roadmap for the length of @jillbinder‘s first contract, May 2019 – April 2020.
We are posting it here for feedback and to interest new volunteers to join the group.
Introduction
This working group helps WordPress MeetupsMeetupMeetup 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. and WordCamps develop a more diverse speaker roster via a training (workshop) that helps folks bust through their Impostor Syndrome and develop a topic, title, pitch, bio, and outline.
Goals by the end of April 2020
Improve the training based on the feedback from the feedback questionnaires results and things Jill has learned
Promote the training and results of training to WordPress community organizers and prospective speakers (identify metrics here — number of tweets/articles/pageviews)
25 workshops held in chapter meetups or WordCamps
Train 30 people to run the speaker training workshop
Train 125 people from marginalized communities to become speakers
Roadmap
Notes
“Andrea” refers to @andreamiddleton. * and bolded – Stretch goals
Ongoing (Daily or Monthly tasks)
[Admin] Checking Helpscout for new signups
[Trainers] Updating calendly with trainings and communicating to participants about them
[Trainers] Run 1-2 Trainings a month
[Promotion] Write monthly Meetups newsletter article by 10th of the month (ish)
May 2019
[Admin] Restart team (Done)
[Promotion] Create new hashtag and update everywhere (Done)
[Andrea and Jill or Team] Vocabulary for workshops vs trainings (Done)
Improving our offering based on the email questionnaires (and the ideas already in Jill’s head) (Done – not yet published)
May – July
[Andrea, Jill, team] Smoothing out our processes
June
[Material] Improving the training based on the feedback from email questionnaires and things Jill has learned
[Promotion] Create a shorter team name (Done)
[Team] Publish roadmap; Recruit more volunteers
[Trainers] Get us using new systems (calendly, require they’ve created a meetupMeetupMeetup 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 it, email questionnaire)
[Trainers] Schedule first new training(s) starting in June
[Trainers] Start giving trainings again, 1-2 times a month
[Trainers] Jill record a short video on what this is
[Andrea, Jill, Trainers / Promotion] Create new email questionnaire follow-up system and/or Zoom interviews; Send it out to previous facilitators; Start collecting case studies for marketing ?
June – July
[Translations] Translating the workshop and materials to Brazilian Portuguese and Italian
[Trainers] Contact past attendees and dormant emails (not responded in several months) to let the new speaker wranglers this year know about workshop and see if they’d like training
[Trainers] Contact past attendees to see if they’d like to take it again
[Trainers] Contact past attendees for their info for the “Past Workshops Celebration” page
[Promotion] Put the workshop into the materials for WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. Speaker wranglers and the Meetups info
[Training, Promotion] Create a “Past Workshops Celebration” page on Make WordPress that shows images, stats, and maybe stories of each workshop
August
* [Workshop] Short and long version of workshop
[Trainers] Trainings in different time zones start (to confirm with @angelasjin)
August – September
[Translations] Translated the workshop and materials to another 1-2 languages
September
* [Self-guided Training] Record 10-20 minute “how to use”
* [Self-guided Training] Have team attend a training that we record for Train The Trainers
* [Languages] Start onboarding trainers who can do other languages
October
* [Self-guided Training] Record module facilitator notes
October – November
[Translations] Translated the workshop and materials to another 1-2 languages
January 2020
* [Languages] Start offering trainings in different languages
More frequent trainings start. 3-4 time a month?
Marketing
@aurooba is taking on creating a Roadmap for Promotion. These are Andrea and Jill’s suggestions before consulting with her:
A page somewhere in the WordPress ecosystem to show pictures, stats, and maybe stories of all the places that had our workshops. A little public visibility to encourage people to send us their info.
Visual Roadmap
This is a version of the above put in a summary form so that it could be laid out visually.
We are always looking for folks who care about Diversity in WordPress (#WPDiversity). We are looking for:
Big-picture thinkers
Project management strategists
Content strategists
Marketing strategists
People who can carry out a marketing plan
Trainers (we will train you)
Folks who can do small admin tasks
Folks who can just give opinions here and there to help guide us through the big and little decisions
Translators
and more!
Comment here with your interest, write to @jillbinder on the WordPress Slack, or attend tomorrow’s meeting (2nd and 4th Wednesdays) on the #community-team Slack channel: Wednesday, June 12 @ 5pm UTC.
Look at our meetupMeetupMeetup 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. life cycle mindmap
Hashtag change
New Train the trainers content format
1. Work I’ve done since our last meeting
I put everything together officially for the long (all 5 modules) version: the modules, the slides, and more… I added in things that have been rolling around my head for a long time:
edits to the content (most particularly a new way of creating bios, some edits to the “filler words” section, and a some more)
cleaning up items that have been added by others over the years if they distracted from the main content. (Most of what people added were very good, but a couple of items were distracting.)
time recommendations to run the 5 lessons in 4 hours, like we do in Vancouver
icons to help facilitators see what is discussion, exercises, facilitator notes
when to move to the next slide
diversity notes and facilitator notes are very clearly shown now using the Training team’s suggested formatting for this
etc.
I just need to do a little more clean-up and add a few more of the Training team’s recommendations, and it’ll be good to replace on their site.
It’ll be easy to create the short version out of this.
Thinking a lot about our new processes with:
calendly
a new train the trainers content format
if we want meetupsMeetupMeetup 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. to show us their scheduled workshop before they get training, what all do they need to have from us in order to do this
(Not mentioned in meeting) Team roadmap
2. New way of reporting
Something I’d like to start trying in our meetings, and would love to know what you think: When we give the reports, I’d like to hear: What are your top 1-2 priorities right now, and give them a colour: green: on plan. No help needed. yellow: not on plan but I have a strategy to get there red: not on plan, no plan to get there, I’m lost!
Summary of discussion: Team agreed to do it.
@angelasjin Would yellow be a good place to ask for feedback on strategies? Or save questions for a later/different point as that would get us too far off updates. I just always have questions and it helps to know when is a good time to ask.
@jillbinder Anytime, and especially during reports time. I’d welcome asking for feedback anytime no matter which colour you say, but if we want to make it formal, we could say yellow.
3. Viewing what each other is working on
On that note, I’d love to have a way for everyone to know what everyone else is working on. Having it so that not only I am the one who knows what everyone is doing, helping each other manage how much we’re taking on, supporting each other, etc.
Ideas we discussed:
I list out in each meeting what each person is doing
Our current TrelloTrelloProject 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. board, where columns are the sub teams
A new Trello board, columns are team member names
A new Trello board, columns are Needs action, In progress, Done
Asana
Actioned, which is designed to see what each other is working on
We voted between
Trello where columns are Needs actions, In progress, and Done
Actioned
As the 2 long-time volunteers voted for Actioned, and I have a bias myself to try it, we are going to try it for a couple of weeks and see what we think.
(Because I was a betaBetaA 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. tester on the individual account I get the team account for free for life.)
4. Reports
What are you working on? How is it going? Do you have any obstacles?
Top 1-2 priorities: green (on plan), yellow (not on plan but I have a strategy to get there), red (not on plan, no plan to get there, lost).
To my knowledge:
@cguntur is checking our group email (helpscout) most weekdays.
@sheilagomes and @simonasimionato are working on translations.
As the team reboot is still very new, most folks aren’t working on anything yet. Several are waiting to see what they can be doing.
Andrea and I are working from the foundation up so thing will be changing. Simplifying, becoming more effective, etc. So things are on pause. We’ll have a roadmap and ideas soon.
5. Look at our meetup life cycle mindmap
Look at the mindmap revised for using event planning tool. How does this look? Anything else we can streamline? https://mm.tt/1215137447?t=YWzQsjLPqb
Miriam and I talked a bit last time about seeing if we can streamline the manual spreadsheet. Andrea and I talked about it and thought that the ideas would be great in the future once it becomes a pain point.
But right now Chandrika is used to updating it, and her job is about to become much easier once we implement Calendly for scheduling our trainings.
Summary of discussion: Team said it looks good. If anyone else has feedback, please comment here.
@aurooba It’s probably good to have a specific time when you want to reach out for ‘Long after training’
6. Hashtag change
Last time we decided that yes, we should change our hashtag from #WPWomenSpeak to #WPDiversity. So now we need someone to actually go through and make those changes.
The places the hashtag lives:
New tiny.cc url for our form (was https://tiny.cc/wpwomenspeak)
Add tag to all of our community P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. blog posts
Encourage people to start using it on twitter
Other?
@aurooba created our new http://tiny.cc/wpdiversity link during the meeting
@aurooba volunteered to make the changes to the community blog if we can get her access. It’ll either be her or @angelasjin who already has access. I will touch base on this next week.
@aurooba are there slides or anything that are included for the workshop? including the hashtag there as part of the branding will help
@jillbinder There are! And that is a great idea! Slides and handbook. As I’m redoing both of those right now, I will make a note to myself to do this, or to request someone.
@aurooba I’d love stickers lol. that’d be such great swag. A diversity wapuu!
@jillbinder Yesss! Like the Rosie the Riveter wapuu for Women Who WordPress!
@jillbinder Yeah! I think the way this might work is when we announce the meeting putting it next to the title….
7. New Train The Trainers content format
We need to redo the Train The Trainers from scratch anyway because the current training is a lot of explaining how to use the 5 lessons, and that will become moot now that it’ll be all in one…. These are my current ideas:
A quick “what is this workshop about” video
My Seattle WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. video where people can get more details about it.
A 20 minute “how to use the material orientation”.
Videos showing a class being taught online, so people can see how it’s used. (I might be interested in doing this workshop with our team..) Split up into sections of smaller videos.
Accompanying videos that have facilitator’s notes for each section.
Thoughts? Please comment on this post.
I may not respond to things until next week, after my big move to a new city.
Thanks for being here today and for being so active in the discussions!
Our next weekly Diversity Outreach Speaker Training working group chat is happening Wednesday, May 22, 2019 at 5pm UTC / 10am PT / 1pm ET. This chat will occur in the Make WordPress Community-Team Slack channel.
Agenda
Work I’ve done since our last meeting
Anyone else’s reports?
Look at the mindmap revised for using event planning tool. How does this look? Anything else we can streamline? https://mm.tt/1215137447?t=YWzQsjLPqb
Proposal for the Train The Trainers process for using Calendly (fewer steps than it was before…. I swear): * MeetupMeetupMeetup 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. fills out our form * They go into our Helpscout queue * Chandrika puts them into our spreadsheet * They get an autoresponder to choose a date in Calendly. They receive their automated Calendly info and reminders. * When they choose a date, that Trainer tags them with trainer’s name in Helpscout (to visually see who is in your event) * If participant cancels or reschedules to another training, when you get the email letting you know, update the Trainer name tag in Helpscout * If participant sends message to your personal email because of Calendly, reply in Helpscout. Paste the message in Helpscout or add a Note. * Success! Thoughts?
If we require that MeetupsMeetupMeetup 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. show us they have scheduled a Speaker Training Workshop meetup before having a Training with us, what kind of orientation info can we provide them online to make sure that they have all the info they need? So far we have a video up. We could have a meetup template. We should have more info up too.
Someone change our hashtag from WPWomenSpeak to WPDiversity in the places it lives: * New tiny.cc url for our form (was https://tiny.cc/wpwomenspeak) * Add tag to all of our community blog posts * Encourage people to start using it on twitter * Other?
Everyone is welcome. Please attend even if you are not sure how to participate.
If for any reason you can not attend the meeting live but still want to be involved please comment on the post to introduce yourself.
Please leave a comment of anything else that should be added to the agenda for discussion.
MeetupsMeetupMeetup 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. schedule workshops before taking Train The Trainers
Scheduling Train The Trainers
Hashtag
Short and Long Versions
Roadmap
Conclusion
Next Actions
Relaunching
We are relaunching! Hooray!
As many of you know, without funding I didn’t have the bandwidth for leading the team and so we took a few months pause.
I am receiving 50% of the funding. Automattic is coming in to cover half of the time I would like to dedicate to this work. 🙂 🙂 :confetti_ball: :confetti_ball:
It is great and I am so grateful!
And so we are back!
I’m still looking for another sponsor(s) for the other half… so if you know any groups who would like to make sure that this important work continues to happen, please consider introducing us.
Another nice thing about this relaunch is a) it’s giving us a chance to reboot and improve how we were doing some things, and b) Andrea and I are making dedicated meetings for help with improving what we do and how we do it.
I’m excited to share some of those ideas with you today, and also we have some discussion points of things she and I are thinking of and we’d like feedback from you.
I propose that the items we’re looking at we start convos here and then continue convos on the P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. of this meeting after. Partly because some are big topics and partly so that we get more input from more internal and external to our team.
Streamlining
Updates to our Train the Trainers more streamlined process.
Calendly
This is something we started talking about last year: increasing participants’ attendance rate at the Train The Trainers sessions, and reduce Trainers’ bandwidth needed by having an event management system that will:
allow Meetups to choose their session
give them an easy way to reschedule / cancel
give us an easy way to communicate the link and requirements
send out automated reminders
etc
@miriamgoldman
I’m a big fan of this. Anything to streamline processes to make them easier, and more inuitive.
@jillbinder
Earlier this year, I drew up a mindmap of the “MeetupMeetupMeetup 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. Life Cycle”, from sending us a message to completion and giving feedback.
The X’s on this mindmap are what items I think we’ll be able to remove once we implement this:
How does this look? Anything else we can streamline?
@miriamgoldman
If there is a way we can streamline the workshop tracker spreadsheet that would be ideal.
@jillbinder
That’s something that Andrea and I talked about and we couldn’t come up with a solution. Using a google form loses getting people into the Helpscout email queue.
Could a google form accept 2 email addresses? A gmail and our Helpscout…?
@miriamgoldman
A database driven solution would be ideal. Because we could tie in forms, track who did/ran things, etc.
@jillbinder
Love it. What else? Please keep sending ideas!
@jillbinder
Another couple of issues are people will be signing up in calendly tied to a Trainer’s email address, but:
a) we want to make sure that conversations stay in Helpscout, not in the trainer’s personal email, and
b) someone will need to manually tag those messages in Helpscout with who is their trainer so that trainers can still visually see who is in their event.
To continue looking at on P2 and in the future.
Meetups schedule workshop before taking Train The Trainers
Something else that we talked about briefly at the end of last year, that seems like a really good idea:
Having the meetups schedule their local Speaker Training Workshop before they book a Train The Trainers with us.
Currently the orientation about what this is and training how to do it are collapsed in the same training, which may explain why only 26% of those trained actually ran it last year, as well as low attendance in the Train The Trainers.
Can we have enough orientation online to then require they have booked a workshop with their Meetup to solve both of these?
As a quick solution for the orientation, we’ve put my 40 min (including Q&A) Seattle talk up on our form page.
This is a bigger topic that’ll require some thinking on how to do this.
Scheduling Train The Trainers
When should we start scheduling our first Train the Trainers?
I’m thinking about June so that we have time to improve processes, get Trainers trained up on new processes, and we have time to recruit a good number of folks into the first session(s).
Depending on my bandwidth before the second half of funding comes in, I may also jump back in to running Trainings so that I can start working on improving the content and delivery.
@miriamgoldman
June sounds fantastic. Should we have a meeting with the current trainers separately to make sure we are all on board before resuming?
I’ve done a basic onboarding for @AmyJune, and @Bhargav, but would likely need to redo it based on new processes.
@amyjune
yes – i am on board to help whenever I can
@jillbinder
Yes, absolutely. After we’ve created the systems (which might be another meeting) let’s have one to show everyone how to use it.
Maybe mid to later June so that we have the time to create those processes, try them out, learn them, teach them…?
@miriamgoldman
Agreed on that timing (for personal reasons too!)
@jillbinder
We also have more timezones covered now that our other most active trainer, @angelasjin, is moving to the other side of the world.
@miriamgoldman
Bhargav is in India, so he’ll be able to help out once he’s fully up to speed
@jillbinder
Ok. I’m going to leave when we are scheduling our next trainings as an open question on the P2 so that we can have all the current trainers discuss.
This is exciting. I’m happy we will be able to remove one of the barriers to trainings for some people, which is the time of day.
@miriamgoldman
I’ll be able to contribute more to that too, as I now work from home, and workload permitting, can do some daytime trainings for those that the eastern time zone aligns better with
@jillbinder
I imagine that we’ll be booking trainings partly on when works for trainers, and partly on the needs of our participants.
Especially once we require them to show us their booked workshop first…
Hashtag
New hashtag !
We are currently using #WPWomenSpeak. We’ve been wanting to change it ever since we started focusing less on just women and more all diversity early on in the project.
But it’s been a stumbling blockBlockBlock is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. to come up with that.
Andrea’s idea, which I didn’t like at first and then I came to really like it:
@jillbinder
My concern:
It sounds like all diversity projects!
The argument for that was:
Ours is currently the only diversity project in the WP Community space.
And if there are others in the future, it’s not a bad idea to have us all tagged together.
If really needed, we can always add a second tag later.
@amyjune
I think having one to tie all together would be alright for now
@miriamgoldman
I’m liking Andrea’s idea. And the arguments for it are sound.
@jillbinder
Cool!
After we see the rest of the discussion the P2, we can create a plan for all the spots it would need to be added/changed.
Short and Long Versions
Instead of our current “playlist” of mixing and matching the 5 lessons, what do we think of just having a short version (lesson 1) and long version (all 5 lessons)?
Originally in Vancouver we had a giant workshop of all 5 lessons. The Community team leads at the time (Andrea and Jen) really wanted it to be broken down into small lessons that people could grab and run.
But to my knowledge, there’s only been 3 ways that folks have run it:
Just lesson 1 (Impostor Syndrome and Finding a topic)
All 5
Lesson 1 and Lesson… 4? The one on being a better speaker.
@miriamgoldman
I think having it as a short and long version is fantastic, and gives the organizers more flexibility, based on their needs.
Less pressure, in a sense, to try and cram all 5 lessons in
This way, it can even be a meetup topic (for the short one)
@jillbinder
And right now I think everything feels very confusing for everyone having it in the different modules, and creates a lot of extra work for the Meetup organizers.
@jillbinder
Yeah…
So the suggestion would be offering them both, and in the short version mention that they can always grab anything they want to add from the long version.
right now we repeat all the Impostor Syndrome items in all 5 lessons just in case someone only grabs one, and that is confusing
how confusing it is to put the 5 lessons together manually
right now the slides are a bit of a jumble to try to accommodate the different playlists
people have to put all 5 handbooks together
easier to provide just 2 Meetup descriptions instead of 5 and people need to put them together manually.
and more
It’ll be some work to make this happen, and completely changes the content of our Train the Trainers vieo…
Maybe we should map out what work is all needed before we do our next Training and base the first Trainings on that…
Or we could still keep the current version for the first ones so that we’re not held back…
@miriamgoldman
I say both. Keep what we have so we can have forward momentum, while mapping out and working on these improvements.
@jillbinder
I am about to create a full “all modules” version for the Speaker Training Workshop I’m doing in Vancouver in 2 weeks.
@miriamgoldman
Lots of work yes, but will likely be ultimately worth it
@jillbinder
And I will try to keep that work down to the essentials.
Request for our team: To save on our bandwidth, anytime something looks unnecessary, please call me out on it!
Roadmap
Andrea and I are working on a Roadmap Plan for our team, so that:
everyone knows the bigger picture
new folks can onboard
we stay steered in the right direction
we’re impactful! doing important things, not busy-work
we can create a marketing/promotion plan
we can create an editorial calendar
Conclusion
Open time in the last 10 min for discussion / questions / comments / obstacles / etc
@jillbinder I’m so happy with our results last year from trying things, and I’m really looking forward to this year (my current funding contract is until end of Apr 2020) being more impactful, effective, and easier.
And also reaching many more with a solid promotion plan!
@miriamgoldman
I’m definitely looking forward to the more solid promotion plan as well!
I will definitely be bringing up our group in conversations throughout my time in Calgary and at the Women in WP Panel, so hopefully I can spark some interest and get us more people involved!
@amyjune
I can mention it my events section of my session “Inclusive content strategy” too
@simo70
In June there will be wceuWCEUWordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event.: I can try to recruit someone
Introduce Jill to sponsor(s) for other half of funding of this important work
Look at the mindmap revised for using event planning tool. How does this look? Anything else we can streamline? https://mm.tt/1215137447?t=YWzQsjLPqb
Ideas for streamlining the tracker spreadsheet while still using our Helpscout email – feedback on ideas above and new ideas?
With using Calendly, how do we keep conversations in Helpscout and not in the Trainers’ personal emails?
With using Calendly, someone still needs to manually tag those messages in Helpscout with who is their trainer so that trainers can still visually see who is in their event. Thoughts?
Jill figure out what is needed before we start up Train the Trainers again and suggest a date based on that. (Likely mid June.)
If we require that Meetups show us they have scheduled a Speaker Training Workshop meetup before having a Training with us, what kind of orientation can we provide them online to make sure that they have all the info they need?
New hashtag: We are proposing replacing WPWomenSpeak with WPDiversity. Thoughts?
Currently our workshop is in 5 lesson plans. We are thinking of making it 2 versions: short (1 lesson) and long (5 lessons). Thoughts?
After some time away, in tomorrow’s meeting we are re-launching the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training working group!
New and curious team members welcome. This is what we do: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2017/11/13/call-for-volunteers-diversity-outreach-speaker-training/ (Only now it’s all diversity, not just women.)
Relaunching! Hooray! Info about my partial funding that allows me to dedicate some time to this important work
Discussion: Updates to our Train the Trainers more streamlined process. For further discussion either in the meeting or on the P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. after:
a) When we take use the Community Team’s Calendly Pro account for scheduling Train the Trainers, communicating the link and requirements, sending out automated reminders, etc., it greatly reduces trainers’ bandwidth needed.
The X’s on this mindmap are what items we can remove.
How does this look? Anything else we can streamline?
b) Having the meetupsMeetupMeetup 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. schedule their local Speaker Training Workshop before they book a Train The Trainers with us.
Currently the orientation about what this is and training how to do it are in one meeting, which may explain why only 26% of those trained actually ran it last year, as well as low attendance in the Train The Trainers. Can we have enough orientation online and then require them to show us their booked workshop to solve both of these?
Scheduling: When should we start scheduling first Train the Trainers? (Also, because our Train the Trainers content needs updating, I’m jumping back in more actively to try out different lesson plan styles.)
Discussion: New hashtag. We are currently using #WPWomenSpeak. We’ve been wanting to change it ever since we started focusing less on just women and more all diversity. Maybe #WPDiversity?
Discussion: Instead of our current “playlist” of mixing and matching the 5 lessons, what do we think of just having a short version (lesson 1) and long version (all 5 lessons)?
Heads up: Andrea and I are working on a Roadmap Plan for our team, so that:
everyone knows the bigger picture
new folks can onboard
we can create a marketing/promotion plan
we can create an editorial calendar
See you tomorrow (May 8) at 5pm UTC / 1pm ET in the Make WordPress Community-Team SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel.
jillbinder
6:12 pm on March 13, 2019 Tags: wpwomenspeak
As the team knows, I have been on pause in our team while wrapping up the stressful last part of business school and looking for funding so I can continue this team. So today’s meeting will again be short, just reports on if you’ve been doing anything in the group, and open time for discussion/questions.
First I’ll just give a quick recap of what our team is about, for the new folks joining today and lurkers who may be watching.
We help WordPress meetupsMeetupMeetup 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. and WordCamps attract and develop more diverse speakers.
We do this with a hands-on workshop that we have available for everyone in WordPress. We also offer training on the workshop.
It can take anywhere from 1 – 4 hours to run it, depending on how many modules you run and what your time restrictions are.
The 6 countries who ran it last year went from approx 10% of fewer speakers of underrepresented groups to most of them 50% or more!
Reports!
I know that most of us have been doing less while I’ve been on pause, but here is your chance to tell us if you’ve been working on anything, if you’ve got obstacles, etc.
@cguntur
Nothing much to report from my side. HelpScout going well as usual
@jamieschmid I will be submitting my communication and domain content when I get back from wcmia!
@jillbinder @miriamgoldman wasn’t able to make it today. I have a report from her: “I’ve set up Calendly to have one-on-one train the trainer onboarding meetings. I’ve had to postpone today’s due to workload. I also need to schedule a training for morning UTC time, which I’ll schedule soon and follow up with Maria in helpscout.” She’s speaking about bringing on new trainers to our team to train the meetups on running the workshop. And the item about Maria is one of the folks in our Helpscout queue who would like a training. I’ll leave reports open if anyone wants to add anything while we go on to the next section.
Open discussion: Questions, comments, obstacles, anything relating to our group
Meet Makadia
i want to speak in meetupMeetupMeetup 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. but i don’t know about topic ?
so how can team help me ?
We have a whole workshop that helps you find a topic. Check out our first module here: http://diversespeakers.info/
May I ask what part of the world you live in, Meet?
Meet Makadia
In Ahmedabad , gujarat, India
@jillbinder Do you think you or anyone in your community might like to run the workshop for your meetup?
@bhargavmehta
Me
Due to lined up meetups I was not able to conduct.
April I have submited summary
Also have requested for One training session to recap the things. @miriamgoldman is planning out time to do that.
We allow to speak in local language you can connect with me or Ronak for more details.
@jillbinder
That sounds great, @bhargavmehta. Let us know if there is any other way we can support you.
@jillbinder In the meantime, Meet, here is a quick answer:
Thinking back to what you’ve learned in WordPress so far or what you’re going to learn soon, do you have a story to tell? Something you created that you’re proud of? Mistakes you made when you learned how to do something? An interesting way you discovered how to do something? Business or life challenges in the way of doing WordPress? The first time you did something? @lidarroy, do you have any questions about how our team can help your meetup, about joining our team, or anything else?
Meet Makadia
this questions are help me lots and thanks @jillbinder. Thanks for solving doubts.
@jillbinder Thanks all for joining today. Get in touch with me for joining the team or any team questions. See you for our next meeting the 4th week of March!
As I’ve told folks privately, today’s meeting will likely be shorter because I am doing less on the project this month while I look for funding so I can continue leading this project, as well as I’m launching my business doing this work for more technologies — my business launch night is in a week and there is a lot to do for it.
So our agenda today is short:
Reports on what you’ve been working on in our group
Open discussion / questions / obstacles / etc.
I will continue to help with anything that is in the way of what you are working on, so please do let me know about that.
I know @jamieschmid and @laryswan will need my help soon to continue working on the Communication Strategy piece.
Reports
@miriamgoldman
I don’t have much to report, as the musical took up my time lately. I’m going to be scheduling a “Train the Trainers” onboarding call soon, and I’m looking as to when I can hold another training. I’m going to do one in the AM UTC one weekend.
@angelasjin
I don’t have much to report either, just that I did a training last week which went well
@amyjune I do not have anything to report, as this is a fresh start for me. I’d like more information on the training outreach program (training to be a trainer, hahaha)
Discussion
@jillbinder Yeah Amy. We can definitely talk about that!
@amyjune
A little background for those who dont know.. I am an open sourceOpen SourceOpen 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. community ambassador who works in the drupal and wp space… I regularly attend meetupsMeetupMeetup 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., camps and conferences. I do not have “client” work, community is my focus.
@jillbinder
Amy, that is amazing. I am so honoured that you would like to use some of your community work time with us.
@jillbinder
So we have a workshop that we offer to WordPress meetups to run, that helps women and other underrepresented folks who are feeling stopped by Impostor Syndrome work through that in a hands-on way and come out feeling motivated to do a talk.
We recommend that all members start with leading it in their own city.
We have the material all ready to go.
Just like the process with meetups, you can either just take the material and run it, or you can request training from us.
(A bonus to getting training from us is if you’d like to become a trainer too, you should attend at least one.)
And then we also have a special Onboarding training where you get more of the background info on how to run a Train the Trainers session. I believe that is the piece that @miriamgoldman is talking about. She is now spearheading that process.
@amyjune
sounds good. I live in the San Francisco bay area – there are a lot of meetups here.
@jillbinder
Oh that is excellent!
So the first step would be the same as meetups, and then you can see what it is like from their side, which is to fill out our form: https://tiny.cc/wpwomenspeak
(That url will change after Jamie and Larry have helped us with our rebranding exercise. We started with a focus on only folks who identify as women but we’ve widened our scope to all diversity inclusively since.)
@amyjune
yes diversity is broad.
In fact my talk today is about Inclusive Content Strategy
I do have some experience leading trainings, so I might be an easy pupil.
@jillbinder @amyjune , one of our projects for this year will be to improve our training, so that will be one of the opportunities to help!
I’d love to hear more from you about Inclusive Content Strategy, Amy. It might even be relevant to the rebranding exercise that our Communications team is doing.
@amyjune
I love it!! I can hep where-ever and however.
@jillbinder
And then we usually have a new Trainer co-lead with an established trainer, and then let us know when you feel ready to go on your own.
Currently we run them once (sometimes twice) a month.
As we scale up to reach more meetups, we will increase the frequency.
It’s great to get more Trainers ready now for when we start later in the year.
@jillbinder
The other way to dive in deep fast is to either watch the video of our 2019 kick off or read the recap of it.
@amyjune
I don’t really have a “home” meetupMeetupMeetup 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. space, I am pretty much in a circle of 8 groups
I can watch the video.
@jillbinder
Last year we were starting everything for the first time and this year we are maintaining and improving – so there is opportunity to take on roles that you’d like to do. (edited)
@amyjune
Now is this the sort of thing we can take to spaces like the Pantheon offices, for example?
@jillbinder
Unofficially outside of this team, absolutely yes.
That is part of what I am doing in my new business, in fact.
And I know there are several companies who did our material within their teams last year.
@jillbinder
Another great thing with the video is I do a recap of what we accomplished last year before getting into the goals and opportunities for this year. ^_^
@jillbinder Thanks for being here, everyone. See you on the second Wednesday of March!
TrelloTrelloProject 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. for project management
Things we decided in our Train the Trainers call on the weekend to try out
Helping you run the workshop in your own city – questions? obstacles?
Helping a newbie meetupMeetupMeetup 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.
This month’s newsletter article
Next actions
Reports:
What are you working on? How is it going? Do you have any obstacles?
@miriamgoldman
I am working on writing out my story, and also planning an onboarding meeting for train the trainers. Obstacle is time.
@jillbinder
The story is lower priority than everything else. It’s a nice to have when you are ready and have the time. So for now I’m happy for you to focus on your other items for us.
@jillbinder
I am currently focusing mostly on picture items:
Smoothing out our communication and project management
Smoothing out our MeetupsMeetupMeetup 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. life cycle for Train the Trainers
@angelasjin
A little HS triage, working with Jill on Calendly after this meeting, Obstacle is also time.
@jillbinder @jamieschmid sent in a report that Larry and she have had a few review sessions for the communications plan and she is doing the final revision to discuss with me soon.
@angelasjin That’s awesome! Looking forward to hearing more about that plan. I think it’ll be really helpful for this group
@sheilagomes
I’ve finished the translation of the first part of the material, and will just give it a final review, but will deliver today.
@jillbinder
I’m looking forward to that. I am planning on being in touch with the Training team in their meeting hopefully tomorrow to find out where our translations should live.
@simo70
I’m starting Italian translation on the first lesson (thanks to @sheilagomes)
@jillbinder
To help our team smooth out the edges and create something sustainable and scaleable, we have now formed sub teams. The Translations team is off to a strong start. Great work!
@jamieschmid and @laryswan are working on the (to be named) Communications team(?). They will be ready to present us with exercise(s) soon for our foundation, especially the name of our group, our hashtag, and some of our internal vocabulary.
Trello for Project Management
Speaking of sub teams, you may be wondering how to see what the teams are and what everyone is working on….
There was frustration using the placeholder spreadsheet I had created for our project/team tracker, so I have now put our stuff into the much-requested Trello.
It is another experiment. Much like the rest of the WP community, I believe in trying things quickly and iterating quickly.
I feel better about it being our new placeholder (and possibly permanent solution, seeing how it goes) as now it’ll be easier to scan, folks can update on the threads how it is going, and you’ll get email notifications.
As always, I am always very open to feedback. We want to create a system that is easy for all so that it becomes invisible and we focus on the great impact we are having.
Any initial thoughts on the new format?
Each column is a team or subteam.
The spreadsheet had a line for every little task, but now the tasks are bunched into their bigger project.
Each card follows a template with the metaMetaMeta 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. info that I thought was most important:
What
Why
Deliverable
By when
The two items that I didn’t include from the spreadsheet were Road Blocks (obstacles) and KPI on each individual task.
They were starting to seem like clutter to me.
Hopefully people will communicate their obstacles as they come up.
@angelasjin
I like that for now. If I remember correctly, you can assign cards to people, but they don’t disappear from the main list. That way you have the individuals working on each item without having to type it out, right?
@jillbinder
Yes we can assign cards to people, which I have gone ahead and done. And yes, they don’t disappear like they do in HelpScout, so everyone sees everything. You can just view your own if you wish to, but that is not the default.
@sheilagomes
Looks good! And it can even be integrated with SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. for attributing tasks, as far as I remember.
@jillbinder
That is great! We’ll see how that works in our work flow. It might be useful.
Trello is also very flexible to make it whatever we want it to be. So this formatting I chose is a first guess. I’m sure that feedback will come as folks start using it.
@sheilagomes and @simo70 I’m looking forward to seeing your progress in your column. Hopefully it’ll be easier to do that now.
For example, Simona could create a new card for the Italian translation.
One of the main goals of this is to make our work more transparent to the rest of the team so we all know what we are doing. Should help with folks knowing the bigger picture, and cheering each other on and/or helping when we are stuck.
@jillbinder @simo70 I haven’t checked if you did this, but you have the option to use the Card Template if you’d like:
https://trello.com/c/FFof7NXE/3-card-template
@sheilagomes
Yes, we can upload files too, should I do it with the file I’m delivering today? It’s just a small text file
@jillbinder @sheilagomes Good question. Team, should we keep things in direct messages on Slack or start sharing on Trello?
I’ll give that a think, and let others give that a think too. For now, either way is fine with me.
Things we decided in our Train the Trainers call on the weekend to try out
Train the Trainers had a call to start ironing out our processes. It wound up being our first call of two, as we had a lot of ground to cover!
Here are some of the things that we decided:
I did up a prettier version of the Meetups Life Cycle in a mind mapping tool so that we can all look at the process, smooth it out, and @jamieschmid could create a Domain Map based on it.
It includes some of the new decisions that we made about our process.
As always, please give me feedback on anything so that it’s the most usable for us.
It’s also available to be edited directly, if you request access from me.
Some changes to our HelpScout process. HelpScout is where we answer the emails that come in from the Meetups.
In order for each trainer to manage the emails from their own scheduled training, but not have those emails disappear from the rest of the team, we are trying out giving those emails a tag with that trainer’s name and a note as to why we are tagging them.
That is something I’m communicating with @cguntur as she is the first responder.
We still need to come up with a plan for what to do with the emails that are not tagged and are asking questions that would lead to signing up for another training.
We are looking more closely at event management tools to help meetups be more likely to attend and to reduce our workload. @angelasjin and I are taking a look at Calendly Pro today to start exploring if it’ll work for us.
@jillbinder Until we have an event management tool in place, we are adding checkboxes to the sign up form where they indicate their possible interested times. I’m asking @cguntur if she can then tag their message with those trainers’ names.
And even if we have the tool in place, we might keep the checklist up as well. We shall see! Or find another way to integrate the event tool in seamlessly.
@angelasjin I added our event management tool wish list to the Trello card. (Hooray for details like that no longer getting lost!) Let’s look at that in our meeting today.
We have quite a list to get through for more items. We were thinking of using calendly to test out creating a time for the next meeting.
Helping you run the workshop in your own city – questions? obstacles?
I think that those who have shown up today are all folks who have already done it or are already in the works of doing it soon.
So this is more of a reminder to the rest of the folks on the team, as well as a reminder that if your city ran it last year, it still takes planning to do it again this year.
I myself have started the planning process for Vancouver. Even though my project work is now a few steps away from the workshop, it’s a good idea for me to stay close with the actual workshop.
@miriamgoldman
We’ve just submitted the application to Central for Ottawa, so once approved, I’ll hopefully be kickstarting planning for Ottawa in mid-March to early April. Fingers crossed.
Helping a newbie meetup
Fred Prasuhn Greetings all. I am calling on the help of the community for the Meetup I facilitate. The group began and continues to be WP newbies. YEA!!!
I enjoy helping others learn; it is the educator in me. What I need help with is Meetup topics and game plan. I would like to come up with several months of topics so I can study up as needed, recruit others to lead the discussion/teaching, and secure resources to share. Basically, the group members do not know what they do not know.
@jillbinder
Your questions are somewhat related to our meeting about diverse speakers at WordPress events, so we can give some tips from our point of view.
@angelasjin
You can also ask in the #community-events channel. There are a lot of organizers there who can share ideas for Meetup topics and event formats!
@jillbinder
Being a newbie group, I would encourage them to have some talks about what they are learning as they are learning. How they created their first …. , mistakes they made when they …., etc.
And you can also learn about topics yourself, have them learn about topics and deliver on them, reach out to other experienced presenters, or even have WordPress.tv nights where you all watch one of the thousands of great talks that have been recorded at WordCamps together and discuss them.
On the first point of developing your local speakers,
we have a workshop!
You can read more about it, get the link to the workshop, let us know if you’re planning to run it, and request training if you wish at:
https://tiny.cc/wpwomenspeak
Meetup Newsletter
I’m especially proud of the meetup newsletter article I submitted this month.
In addition to letting folks know what we do, I also did a call out for them to fill out our email questionnaire, AND I did our second “feature”, and this one is really great. Her story shows the power of our work and her quote perfectly encapsulates exactly how we help folks overcome their Impostor Syndrome and be ready and motivated to speak:
This month’s feature: Kirsten in Vancouver, BC
Diverse public speaking changes lives and local communities. Kirsten took the workshop, spoke for the first time at WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. Vancouver, got spotted by a local agency, became their first female developer, quickly became the senior developer and team lead, is still in this role three years later, and even brought on another female developer!
“It had never occurred to me before that I had anything worthwhile to offer the WordPress community. Through the workshop, I saw that I had been underestimating my experience and perspective, and I became comfortable and confident about speaking on a topic I felt would be of interest to others.” – Kirsten
Do you know an individual or a Meetup/WordCamp who have benefited from the workshop? Please contact @jillbinder on the WordPress Slack.
And with that inspiring and uplifting reminder that our efforts make a big difference, I shall close today’s meeting.
Thanks for attending, and thanks for all the great work you are doing!
@jillbinder talks to #training team to find out where Translations should live – tomorrow
@miriamgoldman reads through the message in Helpscout and checks if she can hold a Training at the time and on a day that she needs. (Jill tag Miriam.)
Team, feedback on our Trello? https://trello.com/b/xnIFkJo0/diversity-outreach-speaking-training-project-tracker
Team, should we keep documents in direct messages on Slack or start sharing on Trello?
Team, feedback on our Meetups Life Cycle mind map? https://www.mindmeister.com/1215137447?t=YWzQsjLPqb
To kick off the new year with new goals, we had a great video chat this last weekend.
We talked about where we’ve been, what items we want to maintain, where we want to improve, how we want to grow.
What We Covered and Discussed
Last Year
Ran 15 trainings
Trained 45 meetupsMeetupMeetup 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.
16 ran our workshop (as far as we know)
In the first year of running it (last year or previously) there were incredible results: Typically from 10% to 50% women speakers at their next WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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.
We tracked speaking by email or in person with 55 meetups in 26 countries
It was fulfilling: “I’ve really enjoyed the work we do in this working group, and can see its impact. It is super inspirational!” -Angela Jin Community Organizer at Automattic
We Are Here
We have the workshop
We have a message and a form
The Train The Trainers team runs 1-2 trainings a month
We have a (good enough for now) training video
Most of our interest comes from:
The monthly Meetups newsletter
Talking with folks at WordCamps
Motivated team members who run them in different cities
Where We Are Headed
In 2018: 16 meetups* (* plus non-meetups
By end of 2020: 100+ meetups a year (There are 700+ meetups (800+?))
2019 Goals
Maintaining what we have
Improving what we have
Scaling up to reach more
2019 Maintaining
Bi-weekly Wednesday meetings
Maintain our tracking spreadsheet
Answer MeetupMeetupMeetup 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. requests in Helpscout
Improving our offering based on the email questionnaires (and the ideas already in Jill’s head)
Create better training content and record a better video
Project management system
Promote and reach many more meetups!
More frequent trainings
Trainings in different time zones
Translating the workshop and materials
Trainings in different languages
Before Who Is Doing What: Your First Steps
Fill out the new welcome questionnaire https://jill249.typeform.com/to/Ye0NIe
Take our training
Run it for your meetup
Roles, Leaders, Subgroups
Larry content strategy
crafting top level messaging
expanding messaging to more than women
audio, video, canva, etc.
train the trainer
Sheila translations
organize translations
organize office hoursOffice HoursDefined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time.?
I’m working with a project manager classmate at my business school to work out how to improve our communication and results. These are the mock-ups we came up with for a future project management system:
Our First Steps
Putting the workshop into the materials for WordCamp Speaker wranglers
Putting the workshop into Meetups info
Changing our name, hashtag, and how we refer to our pieces (Jamie!)
Train the Trainers work on our processes
Reaching out to dormants and those who ran it last year
@JillBinder is putting out a doodle poll for a Train The Trainers zoom call
@MiriamGoldman is creating a Trainers onboarding meeting
@MiriamGoldman is writing up her journey and a testimonial tomorrow
@JillBinder is putting together who volunteered with which roles @Simo70 when you volunteered to do trainings in Italian, was that the main workshop or the Train The Trainers?
@SheilaGomes and I talk about translating newsletters, before I submit the next one around February 10
Everyone new & returning please fill out the welcome form: https://jill249.typeform.com/to/Ye0NIe (edited)
