Leading a contribution day

First up, thanks for being amazing and taking time to run a design section at your contribution day. This guide hopefully will allow you to do that easily.

Why #Why

It is really important we have design represented at the contribution days. It is a way for us to get new contributions and also get to meet each other.

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Before the event #Before the event

• Let us know in the Slack channel #design that you are going to be doing this. This way we can support you. If you tell us the time we may even be around to support remotely – please ask if you need this.
• Ask for anything that needs help on. We have weekly meetings on Thursday 20:00 UTC, coming to those and asking for what needs doing and letting us know, would get you instant feedback.
• Ask the organisers of the contribution day how many people you will have at the day. This way you an know what to expect.
• Familiarise yourself with the following handboook pages:
  • First steps: this will help you get people up and running.
  • Areas to contribute: this will help you work out what tasks people can do on the day.
• Write a few sentences you can say as an introduction about what the design team does, should you get asked to say that at the start of the day. You can find some useful content in our about page.
• Get a list of a few tasks for contributors to do, ready to take to the day. Make sure these tasks include a range of tasks – not all design contributors will know code and thats totally OK.
• Work out a plan for the day. Here is a suggested format:
  • Brief welcome and introduction: be careful to not make this a talk, do not speak too much during the day at contributors, help and guide them.
  • Setup sessions: at some contribution days there will be at the start sessions on trac and/or setting up a local environment. If this is an option, give it to you contributors. Not all design contributors need it or will want it, but some will. Make sure they know its optional as you can contribute without.
  • Communication: Get everyone set up on Slack and subscribed to the make blog.
  • Begin your session: your role will be to support their contributions. As a lead of the day, you will unlikely get much contributing done, thats OK as your contribution is helping all these people – thats an incredible contribution.
  • Write the tasks out: you can either do this on a whiteboard(if have one), with post-its, or digitally in the Slack channel #design. Some may join your team later in day and this means they can catch up. Also, it saves you repeating things all day.
  • The end: at the end of the day you may be asked to summarise what your team did. Take a few minutest before the close to have a list of things ready.

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On the day #On the day

• You should have at least a few tasks people can do.
• You should have your plan, follow it and you will be OK.
• Remember you are the welcoming committee to the team.
• Say thanks to all contributors at the end, get their names to share with us and even take a photo to tweet and then share! Its awesome to see each other around the world contributing.
• Celebrate once its all over as you just did an incredible thing!

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After #After

• If you took names, write a short post back in #design to tell us all how many contributed, who and what you did. Then we can celebrate with you.