Recap of August 8, 2017 meeting

1. Content flow and process (see Aimee’s post on this for quick reference)

  • Talked about item 1 and 4 in the post first
  • Item 1:
    • David’s share—copyediting a lesson used to be what group meant by “content flow.” Content flow is slightly bigger now to include the idea generating and pitching of lessons, then testing lessons and getting/using that feedback
  • Item 4:
    • Beth: general consensus on what the process should be or is, but implementation is where we’re getting stuck. Different people come and go, and they interpret the process differently. This creates inconsistency and confusion around what is most recent and up to date and the final choice
    • Scott and Melissa: Yes. We need to just state what is, and include that as a handbook page to clarify how to implement/improve documentation
    • Julie: we need to lock down a process to be THE process. We suffer from the open sourceOpen Source Open 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. collective action inertia. The process can serve as a president/decision maker
  • Item 3:
    • Have tried all the ways to manage/own steps
    • From what I am hearing, this is closely intertwined with volunteer management and expectations in open source community
    • Content management and documentation closely linked
  • Clues to track down existing information to help with getting this endeavor to have a definitive process underway:
    • 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. board won’t work, but may have most up to date information/data
      • Consider GithubGitHub GitHub 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/—then:
        • 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/ = handbook only
        • wordpress.org = lessons
        • Github = in between
      • Copywriting plugins to manage who is managing steps is a nixed idea
      • Constrained by Make site (its reorganization disoriented many). Anything else we use must be free and open source
    • Five buckets make the top level flow
      • Vetting ideas
      • Create lesson plans + edit
      • Test
      • Combine into workshops (curricula)
      • Maintenance
      • Onboarding/Welcome wagon/who writes a lesson plan and how?

2. Inventory of what we have

  • A bit of clarifying Q&A around observations so far
    • Theme lessons are not necessarily how to develop themes that meet WP standards, they are meant to teach people how to use themes
    • WP handbook versus our team—don’t match, but we’re teaching to a simplified bar
    • To include or not include pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party lessons—there is a moratorium on them so maybe put them to the side for now
  • Observation on lack of clarity around learner levels and lack of connection to pre-requisite knowledge assets
  • Style guide says to write a script (dialogue) for the lesson plan instead of the information to cover — conversation around script v. no script
    • Verdict: we are not about scripted lessons—if you do not know what you’re doing (yet), don’t teach it!
  • Conrad suggests another section in the lesson plan template on prerequisites for the teacher as well as the learner

3. Team goals

  • Not covered today

4. Next steps

  • Conrad will continue with preliminary inventory. Should be done by Monday next week (14). Next stage is an estimated further 3 weeks
  • Aimee will continue to move forward with content flow work. Will also need to take time because of client deadlines and speaking 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. for Publishers next week
  • Other next steps rest of group can be working on:
    • How lesson plans are structured, reformulated
    • What are our goals around a usable lesson plan? (Based on experiences and insights from testing)