Please note this was a video chat so the notes are a combination of verbatim quotes and attempts to summarize as people talked through ideas. If anything attributed to you is incorrect, please leave comments below, and feel free to add anything you felt was important but left out.
Attendees by the names on the video chat:
@estes.chris (Chris Estes
@melindahelt (Melinda Helt)
@donkiely (Don)
@juliekuehl (Julie Kuehl)
@coachWP (Scott Becker)
@aimeegc (Aimee?)
@bethsoderberg (Beth Soderberg)
@pbarthmaier
Topics
Leadership structure
Three people leading team meetings
Beth Soderberg
Melinda Helt
Julie Kuehl
They will be sharing duties at leading meetings
Two Notetakers
Chris Estes
TBD
Beth Soderberg said we will start updating WordPress Updates site
Discussion of Update site, which all teams are supposed to update. Our team has been a little rogue and we’re one of the newest teams. Only in the last year or two have we had the ability to make updates and as we’ve gained legitimacy as a team. One of the things we need to do to keep that legitimacy is to post updates regularly.
Team Goals
This is something we’ve lost site of. We’ve been very effective when we have a goal. When we don’t have one we tend to flounder about. A lot of people have been overwhelmed and as a result we’ve lost site of many of the goals we’ve had set for us.
Organize our website and migrate to Learn.WordPress.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/
From Beth Soderberg pulling an old P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. Post
Yearly Goals:
1. Content flow solution
2. More solid copyediting process (ties into 1)
3. Proper handbook (ties to 1 + 2)
4. Outreach to local groups
5. An accessibility 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) workshop
Melinda recommended putting one person as a POC for each goal. Also to create teams for each goal.
Julie: We’re missing project manager.
Beth: We also need to have migration Moving the code, database and media files for a website site from one server to another. Most typically done when changing hosting companies. to move to learn.wordpress.org
Scott: We need a way of giving results of testing. Several members remember discussing that at WordCamp 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. 2015.
Julie: There’s an argument to be made that this is part of the content flow.
Discussion of slides, arguments pro and con.
We have a history of disagreement over the issue of slides. It’s caused a lot of stress for people in the group who have had to deal with his over the years.
Julie: We have a lack of on boarding materials that act as a form of knowledge management, including an actual flowchart of the content flow.
Julie: We’re using our handbook to store our lesson plans, which is wrong, and maybe all of this should go into the handbook.
Conrad: A tool we’ve started using is called Air Table which takes Trello 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. and creates relational databases.
Julie: That’s completely legitimate but we need to go even further back and figure out what’s not working. I don’t think we as a team are solid enough in what we’re trying to do and how we’re going to do it to choose a tool to solve that problem.
Melinda pointed out that we need to keep everything as centralized as possible, such as using P2, despite it’s failings.
Beth: We need to scrap it all and start from the beginning:
What do we need in our handbook
How do we fit them into workshops
Melinda: Take a project (accessibility for example) and have people make the pieces needed to complete that project.
Conrad/Aimee: Suggestion to make a content audit. Build on that, categorize with goals in mind.
Pbarthmaier: We should harness questions of Conrad and Aimee because they have a fresh view.
Conrad: Offers to make a spreadsheet of what we have and will incorporate testing results from Scott Baker.
Julie: Likes the idea but wonders if we need to do that before deciding on goals.
Aimee: Chicken and egg thing. Get the information and then see how it fits with what we have.
Melinda concurred because of the “hot mess” spreadsheet, incomplete items in handbook. We’re going to need the audit for each stage. There may be pieces out there we don’t know we have.
Aimee: Agrees with Julie that you need the structure but that you also need to keep your mind open regarding the goals and whether to fit the content into the goals or alter the goals.
Julie: We need to have the checkboxes in the audit (content finished, version, correctness).
Beth: Thinks we need to go through content first.
Conrad: Agrees and thinks he can check some of those boxes.
Beth: Conrad will have Edit access to the whole training site.
Beth suggested taking out Outreach to local groups
Conrad recommended taking out accessibility workshop
Julie recommended folding that into general workshops
Aimee: That’s more of a curriculum.
Scott: I had to make agendas when I did it and if I didn’t know WordPress so well it would have been more difficult.
Drafts have to be on make. Drafts cannot be on Learn. Only finished products can be on learn.
Beth wanted to point out that many of the problems we have exist because of how well we’ve done at forming a team and creating content. “Startup problems” as Julie called them.
Melinda: Post the notes and add comments to the notes and maybe next week do a slack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. meeting and push the next video mention out further.
Julie asked if anyone was particularly good at creating flow charts as we go through the content audit. Aimee offered to work on that. Beth offered to help Aimee understand which pieces are involved.
Aimee: would like to know from each of us what we do. This will help us to understand what we’re doing and how that fits within the goals.
Beth: I think that what we do at this point is “not much.” And that’s because we don’t know what to do. This has been a rough year for individuals on this team. Auditing what we do right now — we need to step back and reset. I think we’ve lost whatever process we have.
Julie: We can come up with a process and just start using it.
