Dev-squad GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ triage: Thursdays 07:00 UTC
The Training Team nominated and voted on a number of motivated and dedicated contributors to the team. The new Team Representative nomination, voting, and vetting period is a special time where folks in the community affirm work ethic and confidence, and the outcome of these votes ensure fresh leadership and new perspectives guide the team.
It’s been amazing to watch the growth the team has experienced last year, and the rise in leadership in various individuals. This year, the Training Team keeps 2023 Team Representatives Benjamin Evans and Destiny Kanno, and adds one new Team Representative; Laura Adamonis.
This is a post to share more about your newly nominated Team Reps!
Laura Adamonis lives in Greensboro, North Carolina with her husband and has two kids. Laura got started in WordPress in 2022 after looking for a career change that would provide a flexible and remote work environment. She started her agency, Add A Little Digital Services, in 2022. Laura started contributing to the training team in 2022 by co-hosting. She continued to co-host and then became a content creator in 2023.
Laura has a background in design and education that she brings to the training team. She is a previous Montessori teacher and was the robotics coordinator for the Greensboro Science Center where she taught robotics, engineering and coding.
Laura is a co-organizer for the Triad WordPress MeetupMeetupAll local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. and is a contributor to the DEIB, photo, and coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. teams.
Benjamin Evans is from Fukuoka, Japan, where he lives happily with his wife and puppy. Ben started making sites with WordPress in 2014. After teaching technical subjects to both undergraduate and postgraduate students for 5 years, Ben made a move to join Automattic in 2019. Since joining, Ben helped create a Japanese support team, created employee education curriculum, and worked on new employee training before becoming a Community Education Manager in 2022.
Ben has been a Co-organizer of a local Meetup group, has spoken at WordCamps, been a Training Team table lead for Contributor Days, and is a frequent Online Workshop facilitator on Learn WordPress.
In his non-working time, Ben likes to travel, play the flute, take long drives, and read books.
Destiny Kanno is from California, USA, and currently lives in Tokyo Japan with her husband and Formosan Mountain Dog. Destiny is currently Head of Community Education at Automattic, but she got started with WordPress in 2016 while working for the Japanese digital agency ASA Digital before joining Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2017. Her professional journey has allowed her to experience the various faces of WordPress inclusive of its end users and developers, enterprise customers, and 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.
Destiny became more involved with the WordPress community in November 2021, and began dedicating more of her time to the Training Team specifically in early 2022. Outside of the Training Team, Destiny is also a BlackPress Co-Organizer, a Japanese WordPress community member, and the Sponsors Team lead 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. Asia 2024.
In her free time Destiny enjoys traveling, making music, watching films, and dancing.
Nomination Results
Over the course of three weeks the Training Team voted for their three nominees. Below are the results of the vote.
While the voting helps inform the vetting and final decision process, it is not the only way the current representatives evaluate the candidates. As noted in our Team Rep handbook page, the 2023 reps evaluated the three candidates using the following criteria as a guide:
After the voting period is over, the current team reps will review the candidates in descending order from the highest votes and evaluate their eligibility based on the following criteria:
Whether or not they have been a Training Team Representative within the last 2 years.
Diversity of the team repTeam RepA Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. group as evaluated through the Team Values.
Based on the above, we jointly decided that Laura Adamonis best fits the above criteria.
Within the past year Laura has moved from the Performing step in our contributor Ladder to the Leading step, and continues to contribute to the team as a Content Creator Faculty Member who creates video tutorials and hosts Online Workshops for the wider WordPress Community. With her outstanding commitment, the 2023 Team Representatives are excited to invite her to the team and look forward to working alongside her in this capacity.
Once again, we give huge thanks to our offboarding 2023 Team Representative @webtechpooja for her amazing dedication to the team and thoughtful collaboration with her fellow co-representatives.
The new Training Team Representatives are delighted to be serving the community in this capacity this year and look forward to what we will all accomplish together.
You can reach out to the Reps in the #training channel in the Make WordPress SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..
I am delighted to announce that the feedback on the proposal to host Learn videos on YouTube has been overwhelmingly positive: Proposal: Hosting Learn videos on YouTube.
Contributors express excitement about the benefits:
Improved analytics
Potential for a broader audience reach
Opportunity to showcase outstanding work in Learn videos
Emphasis on utilizing YouTube’s accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (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) features is particularly appreciated:
Translations of subtitles
Hopes for accelerated expansion into non-English communities
The benefit of having more flexibility and control is well-received.
The general agreement is that this transition has the potential to:
Boost traffic
Improve the overall user experience.
In the future, YouTube video URLs will be embedded in content instead of WordPress.tv URLs and the necessary updates will be made to the Handbook. We are currently revising our content guidelines to match our vision for learning pathways and align with the proposed Learn website information architecture.
For assistance, content creators can reach out to @psykro or @west7 if needed.
GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ labels have been reduced from over 120 to just 27.
Issue templates have been reduced from 9 to 5.
3 workflows have been set up to automate tasks:
Anyone can now self-assign issues by typing //assign in a issue comment.
Anyone can send their issue to the relevant project board by typing either //dev, //content, or //handbook when submitting feedback.
Faculty members can add content development checklists to their issues by typing either //tutorial, //online-workshop, //lesson-plan, or //course in either the issue itself or in a comment.
2 new handbook pages have been published to document these changes:
How We Use GitHub and other handbook pages have been updated to reflect these changes.
Learn more at next week’s Online Workshops
@bsanevans will be hosting two Online Workshops next week to demonstrate these changes live, and answer any question folks may have. These Online Workshops are a perfect opportunity for:
Training Team Faculty and contributors who have been contributing to the team and want to get up-to-date with these latest changes.
New contributors interested in contributing to the Training Team and wanting to know how we use GitHub.
Any contributor from other Make WordPress teams interested in implementing GitHub processes to their team, too.
Come sign up to these workshops from the links below. Times are shown in your local timezone. A recording will be published after the event for anyone who could not attend.
While these changes bring much needed refinements to the Training Team’s processes, there’s always room for further improvements. If you have any feedback, feel free to comment below, or bring them up directly in the Training Team any time.
Meeting recap notes are one of the best ways to get started contributing to a team, and you can find details on how to write notes in this handbook page.
Matrix set up and testing: @bsanevans requested feedback from users. @amitpatelmd asked the reason for changing to Matrix from Slack. He got reply, it’s 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. and WordPress has much control on it.
What stats would you like to see at the end of the year?
Team reps are looking to collect and publish some stats about the team, and Learn WordPress, at the end of the year. This might include things like: 1. Number of unique visitors to Learn WordPress 2. Number of content published/translated in the year 3. Number of active contributors in the team
Who represented the Training Team at Word Camps or Local Meetups this year? – Some user shared their experience on Word Camps.
Call for Guides in Guide Program – The Guide Program is seeking experienced contributors to help guide new Training Team members in their contribution journey. If you are an experienced Training Team contributor and would like to be a Guide for new contributors, please complete the application form!
@sumitsingh asked – How can I assign myself in issues and reviewer here? @bsanevans told – Currently admin can assign someone to the thread. Automation process is going on and then anyone can self-assign them. @sumitsingh is joining as @faculty-translation-coordinator soon.
@devmuhib wants to make a tutorial on How to publish training team meeting notes? @bsanevans told to create the tutorial and publish on learn.wordpress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/.
@bsanevans want to take two online workshop to introduce new features on GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ with training team members. He got a good number of interested people for that.
You can see all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.
As we work towards launching the Learning Pathways in 2024 we will need to create a new set of content creation guidelines that enable the Learning Pathways to scale, with a clear process for developing, reviewing, and updating content.
I would therefore like to propose that we create a new Handbook section which will include the following pages:
Lessons
Lesson Creation Process
Lesson tasks
Creating a lesson
Lesson Review
Publish your lesson
Adding the Lesson to Learn.WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/
Creating Lesson Module Quizzes/Activities
I have created a draft Google doc containing these initial pages, as well as content that has been drawn primarily from our existing documentation on Tutorials, but with some added sections drawn from other handbook pages.
I would like to call on all members of the Training Team to review this new set of handbook pages and share their feedback on the different sections.
You are welcome to share your thoughts in the comment section on this post or use the Google Doc comments feature.
I will leave this post and the doc open for feedback and comments until Tuesday 19 December 2023, after which I will add the new pages to the Training Team handbook.
For those newly joining us, the WordPress training team helps people learn to use, extend, and contribute to WordPress through synchronous and asynchronous learning, as well as downloadable lesson plans for instructors to use in live environments via learn.wordpress.org.
We’ve had one new person join the channel recently. Let’s get introduced: @faisalahammad
@piyopiyofox asked: What is your interest in Learn WordPress and the Training Team? Also, what do you enjoy outside of WordPress? @faisalahammad is a content creator and he thinks he can be a part of WordPress community to share my knowledge with other learners. @bsanevans encouraged him to contribute in the Training Team where he can make the content listed in our Learning Pathways content outline.
If you’re not sure how to get started with us yet, I recommend checking out our onboarding link above or our newly introduced Guide Program.
The Guide Program will connect newcomers such as yourselves with seasoned contributors who provide guidance, answer questions, and help you navigate the contribution process with confidence.
Meeting recap notes are one of the best ways to get started contributing to a team, and you can find details on how to write notes in this handbook page.
Team repTeam RepA Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. nomination closed on November 14th. Current team reps will next contact nominees and work on creating a poll for voting on our newest Team Reps.
Looking for volunteers
Looking for Learning Pathway Content Creators.
Training team needs help creating lessons for the Designer, User, and Developer pathways, which have been defined in this document. Please comment on this thread or reach out to @west7 if you’re able to assist.
The goal is to complete these three pathways by July 2024.
Other News
The Recap: The first Learn WordPress course cohort — please read this post to learn more about how our first cohort went!
@psykro received props from @piyopiyofox for creating the program and for the first cohort to completion? But he thanked all the cohort applicants for taking part, as well as his “teaching assistant” @bsanevans for his help and insights during the cohort.
6.4 is out and was the first release where we had the Training Team as part of the release squad.
@piyopiyofox requested feedback from @courane01, @courtneypk on how the process went for them and what they’d like to see happen for future releases? @courtneypk – thinks It would be good for us to write something up to share for future releases.
Translation and reviews can be run through some sort of AI system like ChatGPT. We can ask reviewers to perform. Additionally, we can also ask it to give content update recommendations for the content creator.
@digitalchild wants to experiment with how to make this easier and everyone appreciated that.
Localized content not getting reviewed in a timely manner– an AI review ahead of a native speaker review could be a good first step toward making progress.
The idea is to create a page in the handbook that lists opensource, or free, video editing tools content creators can use when making content for Learn. We could also create Tutorials, or host Online Workshops, showcasing how to use those tools.
@digitalchild will make a form to send out to all creators. He’ll collect a spreadsheet of all the tools, to then categories and publish.
You can see all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.
Earlier this year we launched a new initiative called dev-squad. The initial goal of dev-squad was to hold weekly, 30-minute triage sessions to help move PRs and newly opened bugs forward. These triage sessions can focus on either PRs or bugs and do not have to cover both in a single session.
The initial sessions were planned to be held on Tuesdays at 06:00 UTC and Tuesdays at 22:00 UTC, to allow members across different timezones to run triage sessions. After testing these times for about 6 weeks, the meeting time was moved to Thursdays at 07:00 UTC.
Since then, we have managed to run several successful triage sessions, clearing the PR list and triaging any new bugs. However, there are currently some problems.
We don’t have any official documentation so that anyone could potentially run these sessions.
The weekly sessions are currently hosted by one person, and this is not sustainable.
Currently, membership is limited to Training Faculty Admin members only, which limits the number of participants.
We do not actively encourage new members to take part in or run sessions.
Therefore, I would like to propose that we set the following short-term goals for dev-squad, to grow its membership, and make it more sustainable and successful.
Timeline: by Friday 29 December 2023
Goals:
Document dev-squad triage sessions
General format
Process of triaging pull requests
Process of triaging new bugs
Adding triage updates to weekly training team meetings
Invite other training team contributors to participate in triage sessions
Open dev-squad membership to all training team members
Add interested participants to GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ with the relevant permissions to label issues
Work towards having more than one triage session host
Set up a rotation of session hosts
Plan the host rotation for the first 4 sessions of 2024
Are you interested in joining dev-squad, to help keep the new PR and bug issue list clear? Comment on this post and let us know how you would like to help or join the next dev-squad triage session in the #meta-learn channel on Thursday at 07:00 UTC.
The end of the year is nearly upon us, which means it’s a good time to review our 2023 goals once more and check in on how we are doing.
Outlined below are the goals we have completed, what is currently in progress, what’s on hold / being re-evaluated, and the details of each goal’s current state.
To date, we have completed 11 goals, while 5 are still in progress and 2 are on hold / being re-evaluated.
We have an open GitHubGitHubGitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ issue for this collaboration – Help Training Team develop a strategic marketing plan for promoting Learn WordPress learning pathways #249
✅ Individual Learner survey (tied to Needs analysis)
🚧 Establish monthly recurring onboarding Online Workshops in different timezones for training team roles
To date, we have not been able to consistently offer monthly onboarding sessions for our 5 contributor roles.
What’s next?
We plan to revisit the onboarding information, especially the content creator side to validate it’s clear and up to date
This will carry over to 2024
✅Create a dev road map for the Learn siteLearn siteThe Training Team publishes its completed lesson plans at https://learn.wordpress.org/ which is often referred to as the "Learn" site.
🚫 Test out a course creation cohort method that will work as a group to create one course together.
Team reps agreed that we should re-evaluate this goal as getting consistent content creators on board should be higher priority
✅ Work more closely with AccessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (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).
We worked more closely with Accessibility with the addition of WordPress Playground to the Learn WordPress site (see Slack thread)
We see this evolving into a new, specific, accessibility goal (Ex. make sure new content on Learn is accessible)
🚧 Figure out a method to manage localized content translation.
What have we done to progress this goal?
Reached out to 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. re: staging site which is not possible at the moment. Looking into a sandbox site
Docs team is also working on localization and we can meet with them to discuss their plan
We’d like to revisit this conversation with the team and loopLoopThe Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. in Documentation as well since they are also working on localization
✅ Nurturing the Locale Ambassadors program (making sure people who show up have people they can connect with).
