Marketing Team Notes — September 18th, 2019

Slack timestamp

Agenda

1. Attendance thread
2. Notetaker
3. New person thread
4. Celebration thread
5. Task-lead update time
6. Collaboration time: we will continue fleshing out some content ideas for digital citizen week
7. Any other business

1 – Attendance (others may have contributed async)

Marcus Burk, @OGleckler, @nullbyte, @jenblogs4, @webcommsat, @harryjackson1221, Daria Gogoleva, Yashwardhan Rana
@Dhruvpandya, @Felipeelia, Maziar, Michelle Ames

2 – Taking notes

  • @webcommsat suggests using headings and subheadings to make it much easier to follow, better for members to find items, and improve 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)
  • Suggestion for a way forward to make it easier for both the reader and the person taking notes to avoid just copying large chunks from 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/. without reviewing or checking personal data. Proposed use of H2 headings for the main subsections of the meeting and H3 heading for each topic/card. 
  • Suggestion for a meeting notes template to make creating meeting notes less time consuming and easier for an editor to review.
  • A check added to the process to remove any personal references for data management compliance (eg if someone is unwell) prior to minutes being published. Specifically to make sure these don’t go out on the RSS feedRSS Feed RSS is an acronym for Real Simple Syndication which is a type of web feed which allows users to access updates to online content in a standardized, computer-readable format. This is the feed..
  • Having a structure that members can follow would also support @meadahbatool in her great encouragement of new people to be involved in taking the minutes.
  • Thanks to @webcommsat for working on notes from this meeting and its sub meetings.

Comments: 

  1. @yvettesonneveldveld: Good point @abhanonstopnewsuk
  2. @siobhanseija: Absolutely true. Thanks for your input @webcommsat.  I know you’ve mentioned it all before, and it has been noted. It’s in the plans we have for restructuring some processes, like the notes. As we’re a bit short on hands/hours sometimes, we haven’t gotten around to actually fleshing it out yet.
  3. @nullbyte I will look into it and add some feedback. I am currently just observing how the team works.
  4. @webcommsat: It is valuable to be able to raise the feedback from new members at the last few contributor events, and even better that they can read about what is happening to help them in the future. Thanks @siobhanseija for the reply and to everyone at Zurich and Brighton who raised these suggestions again there.  Siobhan, if there is anything that members can do to help in the interim while the new process comes in, I am sure we would have enough people who could help do this and be ready to lend a hand or several.
  5. @yvettesonneveld requested @webcomms to assist with the notes to help develop an idea of what they could look like, the team members can add further suggestions to create a better instruction and a checklist for someone in an editorial role? 

Action: @webcomms to look at the backend of the site to see how a template could work or formatting guide which could be copied for each meeting to save time. 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’s advice may be needed. 

3 – New Person Thread

Nothing to note.

4 – Celebration Thread

Purpose:

This is where you can share your #MakeWordPress Marketing successes of this past week. What did we get done and what are we proud of overall?

Responses: 

  1. @yvettesonneveld: our team is creating more front-facing content.
  2. @webcommsat: I led the Marketing table 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. Zurich last weekend. We did a number of tasks at the 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/. and during the conference day of the event itself including:
    1. onboarding new contributors
    2. bringing in the expertise from other Make teams to help with fact-checking on some of the marketing cards
    3. continuing the work on tasks shared with community and WordPress.tv
    4. identifying feedback and input onto a number of tasks and the Contributor Orientation Tool
    5. and some even continued working on tasks together the day after the conference too
    6. the 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. cards are being updated. Huge input into sustainability document and the marketing videos on WordPress.tv, as well as ways of improving further the Make WordPress marketing onboarding document.
    7. Particular thanks to @yvettesonneveld for helping with log-ins and welcomes and to all those who took part during the few days. So many updates, it will take a while to summarize them all. Growing the community and helping people get involved, well done everyone. If you view the update on the slack channel from Friday, you can read more about some of the things that were worked on. I will add more names here later in the meeting or feel free to add yourself if you were part of the amazing team who took part in Zurich. 
    8. @yvettesonneveld response: You onboarded some wonderful people again, @webcommsat! Thanks for your amazing work!
  3. @michelleames – We started working on content/posts for digital citizenship week!

5 – Task-Lead Updates

WordPress 5.3 Launch Content on WP Marketing 

Task-Lead: @miker
https://trello.com/c/oxkheE1l/286-wordpress-53-launch-content

Marketing team’s input includes: 

There will be multiple rounds of feedback and review, and the full release is expected in a couple of months. Encourages team members to read the release blog posts as are a great way to stay up with what is going on with WordPress. The blog posts also tend to be really detailed, and a lot of the marketing team role is taking that and focusing it for distribution. (@miker)

Update:

The sub marketing group met on Friday to discuss the overall layout and content, and have started a draft!I Thanks to @miker @jenblogs4u @marybaum @Daria_Gogoleva @Marcus_Burk @webcommsat for participating, and to @felipeelia for feedback from the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team! 

Also contributions from the marketing table at WordCamp Zurich, led by @webcommsat and all those who have contributed async. Feedback for the marketing team as a whole from the Contributor Day and onboarding: these kind of sub groups working in the main Marketing slack are very helpful for new members and those from other teams to discover more about potential ways to contribute, to shadow how projects work in the team, google docs updates etc, and encourage future involvement.

Collaboration doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PW52syWz1bksFInmgczZA5OKhEGjM2dXGwNA6A5tl-M/edit#
Plan (outline from the briefing by @Miker): 

  • a few additional features have been added to the collaboration document post Friday’s meeting
  • this document is to be shared with the release team for further feedback
  • at the marketing team meeting, the aim is to review the document and share it with the wider members for further feedback
  • feedback on specific features that will be released or pushed as part of the release will be shortly requested, and comments on priorities
  • comments in suggestions mode welcome from wider marketing team meetings during the meeting and async. You can add comments in “suggestion mode” in the Google document in the shared Marketing drive. Please avoid overwriting anyone else’s work by adding comments in ‘editing mode’ at this stage by accident.

Responses to document:

  • view from @felipeelia): “Template refactoring” item is part of the theme development and is something that the end user (or even the devs who wants to use the theme) will be unlikely to notice.  
  • non-Latin locales:
    • how the new version will support non-Latin locales on new themes. Something nice to highlight (@felipeelia)
  • @Daria Gogoleva info request: What do non-Latin locales include? 

New theme feature

  • Source used for the basis of the information on the theme features was Anders Noren’s in. This is in the introduction of the document (@jen4blogs4u). Text from Anders Noren on the twentytwenty theme in Make WordPress Core https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/09/06/introducing-twenty-twenty/
  • The BlockBlock Block 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. Editor will soon celebrate its first birthday in Core and with every update it grows more capable. The promise of the block editor is to give users the freedom to design and structure the… 
  • Members thought the theme could be featured in broader, briefer terms. Potentially reference streamlined css and as much modern CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site.
  • previous release notices have noted the arrival of the new theme but have not contained theme detail. The release achievements are the focus of the release notice. The new theme will have its own detailed description on the download page (@jen4blogs4u
  • Action to consider: the discussion in the sub team has tended to view this as a single project, it may need to be looked at as multiple projects. It seems as if we are discussing both as a single project, so I wanted to bring that up. @miker to raise this specifically for feedback 
  • It is believed that all theme releases will be part of a broader WordPress release. Generally there is one theme a year (@miker)

Mobile features promotion

  • Option if the theme is not the main focus, then focus on improved mobile features as a headline. Significant number of improvements in this release. (@miker)

Video to potentially accompany upcoming release

Purpose/ Task: @miker working on a personal project for a POC for a video that could work with some minor tweaking for the upcoming release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF10xlyAhXU&feature=youtu.be

Members gave feedback and asked about what teams could assist on this to include it in the promotion.

6 – Digital Citizenship week content planning

Task lead: @yvettesonneveld

https://trello.com/c/sq89mgQv

Working document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TgBuCxzbPZ4d7pKO_D-wnLrmXi69Xdu2ITUYjHrgHiQ/edit 

Task at the meeting: consider audiences we could target with content. Digital Citizenship Week is dedicated to encouraging good digital citizenship and improve smart and safe use of using technology.

Ideas included:

  • some content should be aimed to parents/teachers and maybe at least one article to students themselves (Michelle Ames)
  • how to reach these audiences in the first place? (OGlekler)
  • targeting information potentially into age groups (Yashwardhan Rana)
  • need to publish it and then promote through social media with good hashtags. Make sure the content has good organic SEO for keywords. SEO and catchy titles
  • potentially some infographics
  • at least one picture for social media reposts 
  • a social media swipe file creation to help contributors to Make WordPress to assist in distributing content through blogs and their own social media accounts, and to support the official channels
  • Articles will also be published on 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//news. This will also mean an automatic tweet via JetPack. Featured images requirements to be identified by Yvette

@OGlekle suggests a first article around “What is Digital Citizenship and why should it matter”?

@webcommsat suggests to keep an underlying focus on how the WP community adds to the digital citizenship information and awareness raising in this series of articles and promotions. In this way, the WP community can add real value and substance to the existing information. In the school age education setting, there is already a vast amount of curriculum-approved information in different countries and teaching specialist information by qualified professionals. So perhaps as we are developing the content ideas we can consider how the plan for each one adds to what is already out there or is likely to be being re-promoted by existing topic leaders/ organizations during the week. This will help us link back to WP and improve the likelihood of the messages being heard and used.

[update: article outlines have been completed at WordCamp Nijmegen Contributors Day. @yvettesonneveld, task lead for this project, will check in with the internal client, @chantaboune, and discuss next steps.]

7 – Any Other Business

Survey

In reply to a conversation a few weeks ago, @Maziar: prepared an initial draft proposal for thinking about social media use by the Make WordPress marketing team: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15Y3EF-B-RU0YwB-_3iO1XVPMVtOkRqbD4GwK7Xrddv0/edit

@Maziar mentioned he’ll continue to work on a survey to be shared on social media. 

Yvette clarified: the idea of the initial strategic brainstorm was to get a feel among current contributors for what direction the marketing team should go. The idea behind the survey was to make sure those who had ideas but were shy to share them in Slack or a document could still do so in a survey. 

Therefore, adding suggestions for questions to the survey will be helpful, but a survey like that will not be promoted on social media. Potentially, we could ask new contributors to fill it out so that we could see trends? 


Promoting sustainability at WordCamps card

https://trello.com/c/DkVqaHCN

@webcommsat: Quite a lot of work on this in the last few months. Thank you to everyone and from other teams who have provided input. @BreannMcDede and I can look at the latest updates. We will be taking three queries identified for advice to @andreamiddleton in the next few weeks.

Any new or existing members who would like to help with the case studies, get in touch.

Updates on Twitter were also put out at Zurich. Please do share the thread. They have been tagged MakeWordPress too. https://twitter.com/nonstopnewsuk/status/1172883393798909953?s=21