Hugh Lashbrooke 12:14 pm on November 6, 2020
Tags: learn wordpress ( 15 )

Setting a launch date for Learn WordPress

Now that Learn WordPress is live, we are seeing workshops being published, discussion groups taking place regularly (with plans to improve their visibility), and lesson plans being extensively audited. This is all very exciting to see and the platform is growing nicely!

The next stage is to set a date for a full, marketed launch so we can spread the word to the broader WordPress community about the excellent learning resources on offer. We have previously discussed some of the criteria we should aim for in order to make a full launch as effective as possible, and we’re well on the way to being ready for that:

Courses are busy being planned and recorded, which will allow us to provide quizzes tied to workshop content
We have an integrated workshop application form to make the submission & approval flow much smoother
Lesson plans are nearly fully audited
The home page has been updated to better surface content
We have one non-English workshop with more on the way

A few things need to be completed before we can be truly ready for a full launch:

Some dev work is required for the courses & quizzes to work correctly (read more and contribute on GitHub)
More workshops need to be recorded to fill out the first two courses (workshops in progress are being tracked in this sheet)
Quizzes need to be added to existing and new workshops – this is already being done with questions existing in the dashboard for many of the current workshops

With all of this going on, now is a good time to decide on a date we can commit to being ready for a full launch.

WordPress 5.6 is currently scheduled for launch on 9 December and I personally feel it would be fantastic if we could have Learn WordPress ready prior to that date. How great would it be to have a new feature mentioned in the 5.6 release post, that includes a link to learn about that feature on Learn WordPress?!

Of course, “ready” is subjective and we will always continue to iterate on things as time goes on, but if we can complete the items listed above then I think we’ll have things in a state ready for a full launch.

Feedback

Your feedback along the following lines will be invaluable:

Do you think we can have Learn WordPress ready before the launch of 5.6? What date do you think we should aim for?
Are there any workshops you would like to record & contribute? Maybe one for a WordPress 5.6 feature? Right now, the primary focus is on workshops for the first two courses listed in this post and currently planned workshops are indicated in this sheet.

+make.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//training +make.wordpress.org/marketing

#learn-wordpress

Hugh Lashbrooke 12:15 pm on November 6, 2020

+make.wordpress.org/marketing/
Hugh Lashbrooke 12:15 pm on November 6, 2020

+make.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//training
Courtney Engle Robertson 12:58 pm on November 6, 2020

The highest priority for the Training team is to make arrangements for the functionality and workflow tools we are lacking since our 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/ integration has been disconnected. This impacts the state of completion and building a manageable way to maintain the lesson plans within Learn.

When we know the state of those areas, we can be better positioned to assess our commitment to a launch date of Learn. @evarlese has begun research and coordination on these areas. We can open the discussion to commit AFTER our basic functionality and vital revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. to existing lesson plans (broken screenshots, omitting post details that live in taxonomyTaxonomy A taxonomy is a way to group things together. In WordPress, some common taxonomies are category, link, tag, or post format. https://codex.wordpress.org/Taxonomies#Default_Taxonomies. now, and code snippet reviews) have been completed. The team will then move into completing any lesson plans that are “almost done” per our Trello. When these tasks are completed, we will revisit writing any lesson plans.

We are only able to go as fast as contributors are willing to contribute.

See the high-level contribution areas on https://make.wordpress.org/training/2020/10/29/agenda-for-october-30-2020/ and summarized version on https://make.wordpress.org/training/2020/11/05/agenda-for-november-5-2020/.
Courtney Engle Robertson 12:59 pm on November 6, 2020

+make.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//training
Timi Wahalahti 1:03 pm on November 6, 2020

Do you think we can have Learn WordPress ready before the launch of 5.6? What date do you think we should aim for?

Yes. The reasoning for doing a launch before 5.6 makes sense, and as Hugh said it would be so exciting to see mention in the release post. That would surely set a great start for the platform!

I think it would make sense to aim to launch one week before 5.6. That essentially gives us three weeks time to make everything as ready as possible – which brings the most essential question: are there enough resources to make everyhing essential before that?

Of course, “ready” is subjective and we will always continue to iterate on things as time goes on.

I think this is really important note. We shouldn’t try to build READY ready platform, because then we just end up building this for months in future and never getting to releade point as it always feels there’s few small things to do before that.
- Angela Jin 9:33 am on November 9, 2020
  
  +1 to everything @sippis said. He captured my thoughts on this too!
- Hari Shanker R 11:08 am on November 9, 2020
  
  We shouldn’t try to build READY ready platform, because then we just end up building this for months in future and never getting to releade point as it always feels there’s few small things to do before that.
  
  “Release early, release often.” 😀
dd32 1:25 pm on November 6, 2020

+make.wordpress.org/training/
Hari Shanker R 11:14 am on November 9, 2020

Do you think we can have Learn WordPress ready before the launch of 5.6? What date do you think we should aim for?

I completely advocate a pre-5.6 release. At @sippis mentioned, it would be good to have it ready a week before the release. However, that would mean that we have barely three weeks till the launch date, which could be tricky.

So I’d suggest setting an early goal of December 1 and a stretch goal of December 5 or so.

Are there any workshops you would like to record & contribute? Maybe one for a WordPress 5.6 feature?

I’m working on a few workshops and I’ve noted them in the spreadsheet.
Carike 11:48 am on November 9, 2020
Release early, release often.
is based on an alpha and a betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. system which ensures quality control.
There are four incomplete courses publicly visible to casual users and to search engines on the Learn platform right now.

There is a big difference between waiting for everything to be perfect before releasing and not having a minimum viable productMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia.

The concerning thing here is that, while excitement is great, the team has not yet defined what constitutes a minimum viable product. That with three weeks to a proposed release date for an 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. project, where development is usually measured in years, not days.
- What are the minimum standards for content?
- What are the best practices for creating curricula?
Furthermore, the auditing tools are not adequate for collaborative development.
I cannot tell whether an audit item for a lesson plan has not been checked, or whether it is not applicable.

Screenshots for most of the lesson plans are from 2015. The tools and user interfaces have significantly changed since then.
So have best practices.
- Carike 12:08 pm on November 9, 2020
  
  Currently, it does not appear to be possible to tell exactly who made what changes to which lesson plan / workshop / course / other content.
  It is also not readily apparent who audited which component and when.
  The basic fundamental principles of audit plan design have not been adhered to. Understandably, I might add, because this critical work was done by an unsponsored volunteer who has a different specialty, rather than by someone who has experience in data architecture.
- Timi Wahalahti 5:47 pm on November 9, 2020
  
  The concerning thing here is that, while excitement is great, the team has not yet defined what constitutes a minimum viable productMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia.
  
  As Hugh mentioned in the original post, there has been a discussion outlining what is needed for a full launch. This is the same as defining minimum viable product, so your claim is incorrect.
  
  That with three weeks to a proposed release date for an 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. project, where development is usually measured in years, not days.
  
  We are talking about a website/platform which expands WordPress project, not totally new open source project. Also, Lean WordPress is a response to a decreased number of WordPress events due to covid-19. There are simply no need to sit on top of awesome content and platform too long when the need is imminent.
  - Carike 6:17 am on November 10, 2020
    
    This is the same as defining minimum viable productMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia, so your claim is incorrect.
    
    Except it is not. It is really, really not.
    That is the task, not the output.
    The request for comment deadline on the content guidelines for workshops is 27 November.
    The document for workshops hasn’t even been drafted yet.
    The suggestion that governance, oversight and quality control have no place in the defining MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia is a scary thought.
    
    There was a serious quality oversight once before in this process.
    One that was preventable because the risk of branded content was raised months before – as was the concern that content is outdated.
    And as much as it genuinely saddens (and frustrates) me to say, it will most likely happen again.
    There simply hasn’t been enough change in processes, or in attitudes / awareness.
    And when it happens, perhaps not tomorrow or in three weeks, but perhaps when the novelty has worn off, the training team will most likely be the ones called upon to explain.
Hauwa 11:34 am on November 10, 2020

Do you think we can have Learn WordPress ready before the launch of 5.6?

I’m struggling to see how we can do this as highlighted by @courane01. I can’t speak for the workshops but on lesson plans, my concern is that we rush into this without the key functionality and revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. in place.
Carike 7:14 pm on November 10, 2020

I really don’t want to write this comment, so I’ve been putting it off.

As I see it, there are two major issues when it comes to Learn / launching learn.

The first is a lack of procedures and appreciation for the importance / role of quality control.

Let’s put aside for the moment that branded content was raised as a concern / risk months ago, or that there were concerns raised publicly regarding the readiness of the lesson plans.

It should not have been that difficult to disable / deactivate courses.
“How do we add lesson plans?”
“How do we edit lesson plans?”
“How do we remove lesson plans?”
These are basic design questions (that, at least as far as editing goes still do not have a good answer).
No one should have needed to scramble to figure out how to gain access where – because these requirements should have formed part of the initial deliverable.

This is really not good for our SEO (nor is ‘creating’ 404s as we ‘fix’ these).
I know it’s a pain, but we need to be really careful around the pages/URLs we create and delete (or change the status of). Every one comes with a cost

This message was sent in the training channel on 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/. on 19 August 2020, when we were trying to deal with the fall-out caused by “zombie” courses.

That is a pretty simple request / instruction / directive.

Yet, since then, several “stubs” have been created and published publicly on Learn.

This is something that experienced developers should have known. I would personally have required login so that people can still participate in the process, but so that the search engine implications are mitigated. There are other ways to do this though, so that is not prescriptive. Any reasonable measure would have been satisfactory. The point is, this needed to be implemented BEFORE. You can’t put that horse back in the barn (or whatever that expression is).
But okay, we live and we learn.
Repeating it, after being asked not to though, seems disrespectful to the specialties and time of other team members.

Which brings me to the second issue.

There is a fundamental mismatch between the risks, rewards and balance of power when it comes to this project.

Training carries most of the risk (I’d attribute that to legacy issues that need to be sorted out – it is much easier to start from a clean slate than to clear through a backlog).
Auditing is also particularly tedious (and likely to lead to a higher burnout rate).

Yet, the community team are the “spearheads” of the project – receiving most of the attribution.
Furthermore, to my knowledge no one on the training team is sponsored, while almost everyone on the community team is.
That doesn’t seem like a fair distribution of rewards – and will most likely lead to issues (possible conflict and difficulty in recruiting and retaining new contributors) in the future.

This issue is only exacerbated by the fact that there is an imbalance of power between the teams that is similar to the imbalance in rewards.

To put it bluntly: It seems to me that the project needs fewer managers and more leaders.
Kevin Cristiano 1:23 pm on November 11, 2020

Thanks @hlashbrooke for working tirelessly on this.

I do think we should launch at or before the 5.6 release. I believe it’s best for us to launch and iterate. Based on all that I have seen on the Learn project I would believe that we’d be able to address any issues after launch. I don’t see the value in delaying.
webcommsat AbhaNonStopNewsUK 11:12 pm on November 11, 2020

Hello @hlashbrooke , It would be really useful to understand what you are seeking to be highlighted in the release post about the Learn WordPress platform. This will help us comment from the perspectives of the release marcomms team and the marketing team itself working with training.

Our understanding is that some of the training materials and marcomms materials linked to the release will not go live at the same time as the release itself. This is partly because of the challenges Courtney has highlighted in terms of the actions needed for lesson plans. Also some of the material will need to focus on likely user needs, feedback and be targeted at where users are asking for assistance once a full launch has taken place. The contributors able to help with this in terms of fact-checking, graphics etc, will also be focused on just getting the release done until launch time. So they may not have additional time to help with training workshops and extra information.

Thanks for raising the questions Hugh. We are all really excited about the platform and love how all the teams are working collaboratively together.
Andrea Middleton 10:03 pm on November 12, 2020

Please let me know if my impressions are accurate:

I see a real sense of urgency among Community team members for getting the word out about the many WordPress workshop videos & discussion groups. This makes a lot of sense, considering the team’s mission is to grow the WordPress community by helping people learn to use and contribute to WordPress. The global financial crisis caused by COVID means that people need this content now, more than ever, so I understand that urgency — and I applaud it.

It sounds like members of the Training team would rather not “officially” launch until we’re confident that the currently published lesson plans have all been audited and corrected if necessary. I’m hearing great reluctance to setting the team up for more of the criticism that came in August, around publishing outdated/inaccurate lesson plans. I’m also hearing that there’s a strong preference to hold off launch until the team has a tool for reviewing proposed revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. to current content.

All of this makes sense, though it seems to me that updating the currently published lesson plans (or unpublishing those that have not been audited & fixed) is the real barrier to a public launch, with the understanding that the team won’t be able to efficiently update other outdated content until we have a way to propose revisions and review them in a systematic and asynchronous way.

There seems to be some concern about whether we should launch before agreeing on standards for content. I’m not certain if we’re talking about standards for lesson plans or videos, though certainly having published expectations for both will help make Learn successful. My understanding is that workshop applications and the resulting videos are reviewed for quality and accuracy before publication, which seems to provide enough quality control for the volume of workshop recordings we are processing at this point. I might be missing something, but it seems that content standards might be a barrier to publishing individual lesson plans or workshops, but not to launching the site itself — as long as we don’t have any poor-quality or outdated content on the site at launch.

If I’ve misinterpreted anyone’s words from comments above, I apologize in advance, and please let me know! 🙂
- Courtney Engle Robertson 12:16 pm on November 18, 2020
  
  It it seems that content standards might be a barrier to publishing individual lesson plans or workshops, but not to launching the site itself — as long as we don’t have any poor-quality or outdated content on the site at launch.
  
  We have considerable broken links, missing images, and no logical progression or organization to the material. Workshops as a term were intended to display a grouping of lesson plans in a logical order. We don’t have a new term to use as the term workshops now applies to videos.
  
  We now also have the means to display our teaching resources (slides) in the browser. Our standard for the launch was set to downloadable as well as online, but we can work with where we are. This occurred yesterday and we will need to go back through to add links from lesson plans containing slides.
  
  I have been digging back through Training 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/., P2s, 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., 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/ and more to determine what our last procedures included, what was to be MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia in January 2020 with the Learn website, and more to ensure what is needed is included.
  
  What would help most is a cross-team deliverable with some QA guidelines from a public website visitor perspective. Of the training needs and stages of completion, what is our new MVP? Can we document what will be done by launch and what can be backlogged? We do no have clarity on shipping with lesson plans having broken images will pass (I would prefer they are resolved first, along with other broken links).
  
  @hlashbrooke indicates some additional resources may be arriving to finish cleaning the results of the lesson plan audit. I don’t know much more about how that work is going.
  
  While our GitHub integration has been disconnected, we no longer have an efficient means to track what work has been done. We are using a rough workflow involving remembering to toggle Edit Flow metadata. We have asked those making changes to leave a message in our Training Slack channel. This is not an ideal method. A better solution is in the works by 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., but will not be readily available soon.
  
  I am out of the loopLoop The 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. mostly on community workshops outside of those I personally used in my full-stack dev bootcamp class teaching WordPress. I do not feel I know what that half of the site has been working on, or have capacity on top of Training needs to wade in further there.
Carike 9:09 am on November 14, 2020

The global financial crisis caused by COVID means that people need this content now, more than ever, so I understand that urgency — and I applaud it.

I think that creates somewhat of an implication (although I am sure it is not what you intended) that the Training team do not care about users, or the severe challenges caused by COVID, or do not regard the needs of users as urgent.

I see a real sense of urgency among Community team members for getting the word out about the many WordPress workshop videos & discussion groups.

There has been a soft launch of Learn. The content is publicly accessible. I guess I am trying to understand what a hard launch would look like to the Community team. Because generally, a hard launch is understood to mean that something is at least minimally viable.
The tools needed by the Training team (revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. probably being the biggest one) are not ready. Doing a hard launch seems likely to lead to “but you launched, so you must be okay” perception from project leadership. It seems highly unlikely that the development time needed to make sure that one team is not left behind the other will be allocated once there has been a hard launch.
Development only really started engaging with the needs of the Training team after this post.

This makes a lot of sense, considering the team’s mission is to grow the WordPress community by helping people learn to use and contribute to WordPress.

And this is sort of where the problem is. Finding out how to contribute to WordPress isn’t what users need in a time of COVID. They need skills that either allow them to monetize their sites, or that makes them more job-ready. I have had a quick look through the Workshops and much of the content focuses on contributing.

it seems that content standards might be a barrier to publishing individual lesson plans or workshops, but not to launching the site itself — as long as we don’t have any poor-quality or outdated content on the site at launch.

It is also a barrier to a cohesive content strategy that puts users first.
Lesson plans, while outdated, focus more (although there are still some significant gaps) on topics that are useful to users, rather than on topics that are purely useful to the project.
- Hugh Lashbrooke 8:39 am on November 16, 2020
  
  I have had a quick look through the Workshops and much of the content focuses on contributing.
  
  As a point of clarification here, there are currently 19 workshops live on Learn WordPress. 3 of them are specifically about contributing and 5 of them are from the speaker diversity team. The other 11 are all about how to do things with WordPress – whether that’s development, publishing, or general use. There has been at least 1 new workshop published every week since Learn first went live and new content will continue to be published at that same minimum cadence.
  
  I guess I am trying to understand what a hard launch would look like to the Community team.
  
  Currently, the only people that really know about Learn are people who already in the contributor community. A ‘hard launch’ will be about pushing things wider so that we can bring people to the platform who may have never even heard of 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/ before. As active contributors, it’s often easy to forget that there are millions of people who use WordPress but have never even been to WordPress.org.
  
  Doing a hard launch seems likely to lead to “but you launched, so you must be okay” perception from project leadership.
  
  I can assure you that this is not the case with regards to Learn WordPress. This full launch is a way to get this much-needed content out to as many people as possible – it is by no means a way of saying that this project is done or that the platform is complete. There are plenty of open issues on GitHub that are not going to be ready for this full launch and will continue to be worked on continually after the fact. Learn WordPress is not going anywhere and is definitely going to be a major feature of the WordPress project going forward.
  
  Development only really started engaging with the needs of the Training team after this post.
  
  It sounds like you might have not been involved in a lot of the conversations then – we have been discussing Learn WordPress with the Training team from the very beginning and continue to do so. There are plenty of discussions in 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/., on P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. and on 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/ showing this history.
  
  In a previous comment you said:
  
  This issue is only exacerbated by the fact that there is an imbalance of power between the teams that is similar to the imbalance in rewards.
  
  I would like to be clear here that no teams are at odds on this matter or in this project – all the teams involved are working together to make this a reality, so ideas of ‘power’ and ‘reward’ for individual teams do not factor into any of this. I have had many discussions with the Training team and we are all working together to make Learn WordPress a success.
  - Carike 9:32 am on November 16, 2020
    3 of them are specifically about contributing
    
    I do not count three?
    
    Introduction to Contributing to WordPress
    
    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 Translation Instruction in Japanese (love Polyglots and glad to see this, but it still primarily serves project needs)
    
    Contributing on the WordPress Community team
    
    Organizing MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook.: Getting Started
    
    Organizing WordPress Meetups: Supporting an Online MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook.
    
    Diverse speaker training:
    
    Diverse speaker training part 1
    
    Diverse speaker training part 2
    
    Diverse speaker training part 3
    
    Diverse speaker training part 4
    
    Online stage presence
    
    Cool stuff, which I support, but it can’t be the only thing.
    I’ll also add that the following is actually part of the video description:
    
    This workshop is for people from marginalized or underrepresented groups who are thinking about speaking at WordPress events.
    
    So, it still serves the interest of the project, rather than being purely interested in the well-being of the users.
    
    Other than that, 3 videos relate directly to GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/.
    While Gutenberg is cool, it is not the most urgent, or not the only urgent thing people need to know if the urgency for launch is specifically attributed to “the current global financial crisis caused by Covid”:
    
    Intro to publishing with 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
    
    Intro to Gutenberg block development
    
    Intro to block patterns
    
    That leaves:
    
    An introduction to 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.
    
    Custom CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site. in the editor
    
    WordPress troubleshooting basics: Part 1
    
    WordPress troubleshooting basics: Part 2 (logos)
    
    How to find help with WordPress
    
    At the risk of being the witch with the broomstick, I watches How to find help with WordPress.
    I don’t believe that the topic should have been 31 minutes – and that is something that clear content guidelines are there for.
    That is the sort of topic that usually does better with more scripting, since the video content is more instructional instructional in nature (rather than conversational).
    There was a lot of repetition – and while this is understandable, you can’t set the quality for the video. Roughly 160 MB for the information presented in the video doesn’t seem to justify the R360 someone would need to spend to watch it at an Out-of-Bundle rate. Now, I know you are familiar with the relative worth of that amount, but since most people here likely aren’t, that is approximately two days of minimum wage for domestic workers in small towns.
    The target audience does not seem to be very well-defined. A small thing is that one of the examples being searched for is wp-cliWP-CLI WP-CLI is the Command Line Interface for WordPress, used to do administrative and development tasks in a programmatic way. The project page is http://wp-cli.org/ https://make.wordpress.org/cli/, but anyone who would need CLICLI Command Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress. would already be familiar with the basic search techniques (using quotes, etc.) shown in the video.
    
    It sounds like you might have not been involved in a lot of the conversations then
    
    If you go back and read those conversations, you’ll notice that I actually contributed to many of them. There are more which I read at the time, but did not comment on.
    I also commented on the P2P2 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 that asked for volunteers for a task team, but I guess I was just accidentally left of the list of people who got pinged.
    - Hugh Lashbrooke 9:42 am on November 16, 2020
      
      I forgot about including the organising events workshops in that initial count – my bad.
      
      I’d like to take a step back here to get some clarity.
      
      It’s clear from discussions with the Training team that they see Learn WordPress as a great collaboration (which has been specifically voiced to me by more than one person) and they see this as something we are working on together as multiple teams in the project. With that in mind, it feels like much of the discussion in these comments is not reflective of that reality, so I’m wondering if you perhaps have additional information that has not been shared elsewhere. If you do then please share it! I’m concerned that there’s potentially a deep miscommunication somewhere along the line, which I would very much like to see addressed so that we can all be on the same page as we work together on this, which I was under the impression that we already were.
      - Carike 11:42 am on November 16, 2020
        
        so I’m wondering if you perhaps have additional information that has not been shared elsewhere. If you do then please share it!
        
        I am sorry, but if any contributor from any team shared any confidences about anything with me, I would not reveal it to bolster my argument. That is a line I do not cross, except in truly extreme circumstances which do not apply here.
        My conclusions, based on my observation and analysis, do not coincide with yours.
        That is not to say that I do not believe that Learn concept or as a platform, or the opportunity for cross-team collaboration is not something that excites everyone. I really believe it does.
        Whether people feel trust, or whether they feel heard is a very different thing from whether they feel excited, or would like to help though. More than one thing can be true at once here.
        
        In terms of trying to offer a potential solution regardless of the above constraints, I’d say that consistency in privileges and responsibilities would likely clear up any deep misconceptions. I believe that has already been mentioned on this post though.
        
        Hugh Lashbrooke 11:50 am on November 16, 2020
        
        Whether people feel trust, or whether they feel heard is a very different thing from whether they feel excited, or would like to help though.
        
        Again, I’m not sure where the feeling of a lack of trust or a lack of being heard is coming from. As far as I am aware, everyone is on board with how things are going. I’m not asking you to divulge anything personal or private, but a project like WordPress relies on open communication, so any information you do have would be hugely valuable so we can facilitate better communication and collaboration. Without actionable feedback, any existing problems will continue to persist.
        
        No one is arguing here – we’re all on the same mission and no one is at odds. However, your comments seem to suggest that a lot of people are at odds, which is something I am not seeing and if it is the case I would love to see it resolved.
  - Courtney Engle Robertson 1:20 pm on November 18, 2020
    
    we are all working together
    
    Yes! We are definitely working together. There are areas that continue to unfold, but I do feel considerable support and that the Training team is valued well.
    
    Video workshops arriving on Learn are much like adding a new housemate. There is a discovery process on how to merge resources, a common outcome in mind, and learning all the important background around how each works. Learn has been the destination of Training lesson plans since it’s inception in 2013. Now that we are there and adding a very large and new piece into the process, there are ongoing discussions to be had for our continued success.
    
    But I genuinely see support at sorting out what obstacles kept Training from arriving on Learn for 7 years, what resources we will need long term (revision control & contribution tracking lead the way), and conversations on how to better streamline our efforts are underway. The process is messy. I look forward to a simplified process soon.
    
    Yes, the 7 years slow build to an all of the sudden soft launch came when no one was looking. It has revived the Training team out of pandemic overwhelm because we see the value in what we have.
    
    I am thankful for @carike‘s questions and input. Truly. It does spark conversations that are yet to be had.
    - Andrea Middleton 11:56 pm on November 20, 2020
      
      Yes, the 7 years slow build to an all of the sudden soft launch came when no one was looking.
      
      Hey, now. 🙂 I diligently reached out to all three of the Training team’s reps to get their ok with the soft launch of the site, back in July or August, and got a “yes, whatever it takes to get the site live is ok with me” from all of them. Sorry to quibble about this, but I don’t want anyone to have the mistaken impression that the Training team somehow didn’t agree to the launch of the site, or was unaware it was happening! 🙂
      
      It has revived the Training team out of pandemic overwhelm because we see the value in what we have.
      
      This is great to hear, because I think this team has enormous value and can make a big impact.
      - Courtney Engle Robertson 1:39 am on November 21, 2020
        
        This is true and I appreciate it. Due to the pandemic, the team hadn’t had a meeting in months. I only resurfaced just a few weeks prior after years away and did a lot of quick research on where things left off. I am so thankful for those that carried on with the work during my years away with young children. And I am very thankful Andrea and I did meet. I had reservations about picking up with the team and this support was a big help to get things going again.
- Courtney Engle Robertson 12:43 pm on November 18, 2020
  
  @carike is right on the content of lesson plans. This predates 2014 when I joined. Lesson plans were a collection of ideas. We prioritized how to be a user first, with later plans to incorporate developer-oriented content. You can find the breakdown at https://wptrainingteam.github.io/. This was our home for some years before everything imported to Learn. We have limited content beyond being a user and do anticipate working with WPDiversity to bring that content up to current as well. I can see in our 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/ layout that we could expand to have Diversity, User, Builder (one who assembles with plugins/themes but not much coding), Developer (broken down by 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/theme or frontend, backend), and other pathways.
  
  At the moment, we have halted any new lesson plan writing and any updates to lessons still in GitHub (excluding as a place to store slides until we have a more refined presentation on Learn).
  
  Our hope is that instead of general suggestions on “it would be good if we include this or that”, we move to a strategic outreach to employers in the products/services industry. This would be a way for them to participate with a clear value proposition. In an educational training environment, community advisory panels are key to the training offered in technical programs. What are the skills that employers seek from applicants? Reverse that backward to fully-fledged lessons. I am concerned about the amount of work to be done on Learn drawing attention from prospective advisory members that may not see the progress or value in its current state. We are not ready yet to kick off that outreach, but it is worth considering in determining MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia for marketing launch.
  
  The training team also has had a thorough process for how lesson plans go from a brainstorm to published. The most recent document I could find reviewing this is on a Trello board. See the PDF attachments. TL:DR; brainstorm > approval > writing > grammatical review > instructional review > ready for testing (published in team handbook or GitHub) > tested 3x with feedback > published on Learn. I am curious if there is a similar approach on video workshops.
  - Andrea Middleton 12:00 am on November 21, 2020
    
    I am concerned about the amount of work to be done on Learn drawing attention from prospective advisory members that may not see the progress or value in its current state.
    
    I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here, and I really want to! Can you elaborate a little more on what you’re trying to avoid?
    - Courtney Engle Robertson 2:38 am on November 21, 2020
      
      From a content side, not site functionality, we have a lot of work left to do since the audit. https://make.wordpress.org/training/2020/11/18/high-priority-items-before-learn-wordpress-org-launch/
      
      @webcommsat has asked for clarification on what the difference is between our soft launch and full launch (correct me if I am wrong). It would seem that after soft-launch, we wouldn’t want too much promotional effort or attention until basic content cleanup after so many migrations has occurred. Marketing has done a fantastic job at recruiting help and new contributors have been jumping in.
      
      What is the value of declaring something to be a full launch? To draw the proper media attention to get a wider audience to view the material. Do we have other goals?
      
      What is our basic criteria that would indicate why we did not do this at initial import?
      
      Training team’s audit was a discovery phase to find out things like broken images, links, and more needed to be resolved. Our method of gauging that progress was largely tied to 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/. That has been disconnected from the lesson plan content as originally envisioned. We can accommodate. We do have Edit Flow tracking and informal comments regarding progress.
- Courtney Engle Robertson 1:08 pm on November 18, 2020
  
  They need skills that either allow them to monetize their sites, or that makes them more job-ready.
  
  This is what brought me back to the training team. Participants in current our full-stack bootcamp are eligible via job retraining initiatives. Our organization and those that fund the program are seeking more explicit direction on what course content should look like and what employers need in hiring.
  
  We can and do bring in supplemental material from other training providers and have a live facilitator to handle reinforcement activities, troubleshooting, and topics that change with current events or WordPress releases (hey there changes in 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 5.5 in the middle of a WP course).
  
  Often these materials do not also make the connection back to the wider formal and informal WordPress community. I view the community as many things, but for those that are job seekers displaced by Covid, the WordPress community is professional development, moral support (informal outposts like WP Women of Color 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/.), networking for job opportunities, and training in other ways (like WordCamps/MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook.). Having ways to connect individuals with the community is invaluable for them and the community as well. Using the product is one piece, but also the value in the community, how to know what is happening, what impact that may have on our daily income-producing work, and how to have input into this process are vital.
  
  In the program I teach, we started in user lesson plans before we can advance to developing. We need a better gauge of time to expect those who are entirely new to building websites to grasp everything from start to finish, especially to show the organizations that fund our program. Realistic turn-around time for those new to web development at all levels to be job-ready is quite unclear.
  
  W3Techs indicates WP powers 39% of the internet, major job hiring platforms indicate PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. jobs (read into it that WP is a big chunk of that) have risen 834% during this pandemic.
  
  Then survey how people are actually learning WordPress in sequential order, and ask employers what they are seeing in applicants. Ask those newly hired how they learned the skills that landed the job, and what resources helped guide them. Also consider businesses that had to make fast arrangments for creating or majorly revising their websites to serve customers in new ways. These are questions I have been doing personally on behalf of my students, but would like to expand much further.
  
  There is a big need for guidance learning WordPress that has the backing of the wider WordPress community. It may also have a delightful side-effect of more clearly communicating and systematizing the teams within the whole project.
  - Carike 2:13 pm on November 18, 2020
    
    Without going over items that have already been mentioned above, after reading @courane01 ‘s comment here, I realized that the reason behind why a premature launch could be harmful for Learn has not been explicitly stated.
    
    Ideally, such an initiative would work best with buy-in from various “players” inside and outside of the industry.
    If there is a perception that Learn primarily serves the interests of the project, while coming at a perceived cost to the users and / or by not adequately serving the needs of their interest groups (even unintentionally), those stakeholders will not trust in the project and will not engage.
    First impressions do matter.
  - Andrea Middleton 12:55 am on November 21, 2020
    
    I completely agree with @courane01 about the potential for Learn to be an empowering force, welcoming or at least supporting an entirely new group of people into WordPress mastery and employment (if they so desire). I think that, as a long-term goal, aligning courses with what WordPress-based businesses are looking for in employees is an outstanding approach. I don’t think it’s something we need to do before calling more people’s attention to the site, though.
    
    In my experience, imperfection is one of the most effective recruiting tools in WordPress. I realize that bravely shipping “the best we have right now, but not what we want it to be” requires a lot of trust and confidence, but it’s something that WordPress — and every 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. project — does often. The practice that has served WordPress contributors well, for over a decade. I’m certain it’s not for everyone, but it seems to be working for us so far.
    
    I realize that Learn still has some rough edges, but if we’re not knowingly sharing false information then I don’t see how it benefits potential learners AND trainers if we keep the site “under wraps” any longer than we absolutely have to.
    
    Will we receive some critical feedback? Almost definitely — and that’s wonderful! That feedback helps us improve the product as well as grow our contributor base. Will there be things we want to improve? Always and forever! Nothing in WordPress is ever done, but that doesn’t stop us from sharing what we know can be helpful in its current state.
    - Courtney Engle Robertson 2:27 am on November 21, 2020
      
      I’ve done a good bit of research to review what Training had as MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia in January. One especially sore spot is some means for visually organizing content.
      
      https://cloudup.com/cZtAiZqmoSW shows how the staging site looks. The workshops shown below the fold are the training team’s vision for a grouping of lesson plans that flow in a logical sequence. At the moment, we do not have a great term to replace this since video workshops have made use of the term, nor a logical way of displaying it. It has been replaced by video workshops. We can adjust on our end to determine a new term, but we definitely need a logical flow. Our visual organization has been replaced.
      
      On https://learn.wordpress.org/workshops/ we see some basic filtering. The training team had proposed a similar way to filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output./sort, ideal displaying on https://learn.wordpress.org/lesson-plans/ near the nav bar:
      https://wp.invisionapp.com/share/BNP0V7QXRF8#/screens/330323718.
      
      I have submitted an issue just today as I am still juggling quite a lot. I am eager for all this to happen. I am thankful for 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 that has been quick to respond to parts of this as well.
      
      As we are 2 different teams joining forces, I would like to have a stronger game plan.
      
      I do think there is a chance that filtering and organization can occur by the proposed launch date. As such, the team is rallying to fix areas that really should not go out in a broken form (missing screenshots and broken links especially, as well as code snippets that haven’t been tested in years). I’ll be logging considerable time on this over the next few days personally, and know quite a few others are joining in for 2 sprint working sessions on November 30.
      
      I definitely am okay to ship without absolute perfection. I would feel more comfortable shipping if some of the areas that the training team envisioned as recently as January 2020 and had begun implementation on for were included as MVP.
Hugh Lashbrooke 4:22 pm on November 30, 2020

After discussions on here and then in 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/., we are aiming for a launch date of 8 December, assuming all the content and features are ready by then (which it looks like they will be!).

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