Recap for Training Team meeting August 3, 2021

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The agenda for the meeting can be found here.

Introductions and Welcome

@Michel Moraes @M.M. Tanjil Hasan Ratul @binarygary @camwyn @Yusuf Omotoso @Oliver Klee @frankremmy @Israel Barragan @Chris Badgett

News

  • UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it. Audit update:@Hugh Lashbrooke has posted https://make.wordpress.org/training/2021/07/30/learn-wordpress-user-survey-focus-groups/.  We have a short turn around time to get survey answers, so you may have found postings about this all over social media.  Thank you to @HauwaAbashiya and @manzwebdesigns who were present and able to help us get the word out last Friday.  
    • Many have been filling out the form and also sharing with their meetups and other locations as well. This is really valuable for the UX audit organization to assess where things are and were various types of visitors to Learn want things to go.
  • WCUS is coming up.  I don’t have more to say yet on that, but will do some digging to see if the organizers anticipate any team talks and/or contribution sessions similar to WCEU.
  • Translation Day is Coming Up: #polyglots kicked off a translation day last year that just kept going and going…. for about a month. It was amazing. They will have another round lasting a few weeks in September. https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/2021/07/13/wordpress-translation-day-2021-planning-call-for-organizers/@evarlese and Nao – if you have any specific ways that the Training team can further support any help for participants that are focused on translating Learn, do let us know.
  • Informal Training Team Hangout: Last week we posted a survey asking about your interest or availability for a team informal Zoom hangout. This will follow the same code of conduct that we see for WordCamps and Meetups. Please complete the survey before we finish today’s meeting if you’d like to come meet some folks, talk about whatever, and just hang out.  The intention is for this to not be a work-oriented event.
  • Friday Drop-In Work Session: Friday between 9-5EDT, we are focused on any Training team work. If you’d like to join for a Zoom group work session, @courane01 can open a Zoom room for that as well.
  • @Hugh Lashbrooke is considering starting a parallel meeting to this for APAC timezone again. Due to attendance, Hauwa and I had to drop that a few months back.

Sprint

For those of you that are new here, we are using the Sprint methodology to track our work on a monthly basis.

Based on our review last week this is what we have planned for our August Sprint:

This month I’ve broken down the Learn Content so that it is easier to identify what needs to be done at each stage of our Developmental Workflow

We are currently using 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. to track the Content on Learn

1. We have a number of lesson plan ideas in the Lesson Plan and Workshop Ideas list that need:

  • Finalize description
  • Set objectives (goals)
  • Research and add links to support and developer docs
  • Identify marketing communications
  • Carry out an SEO review.
  • Review related material on Learn

If you are interested then please let us know which card you want to work on and we can assign you to it. Please note that we are not expecting you to complete all the above by yourself, pick what bit you want to work on.


2. Next Up – You Can Help!

These 3 lesson plans are ready to be drafted but have no current owner, let us know if you want to work on one (or all) of them.

  1. Site Backup
  2. Migrate, Copy, or Clone a Site
  3. Introduction to Gutenberg

3. We have 5 lesson plans currently in our Drafts in Progress list. These all have a current owner. Please let us know if you are experiencing any issues or are unable to continue working on them.

  1. Sample content – Theme Unit Test Data, Gutenberg Blocks Data, Monster Widget @cousett
  2. Annotation options @cousett
  3. When to use browser dev tools inspector to override some information (hiding your name) @cousett
  4. Zooming in, how to crop for enough focus and context, aspect ratios @courane01
  5. How to create a blog post in WordPress 5.x @geheren

4. We have 1 lesson plan ready for Instructional Review. Let us know if you have capacity to conduct this.

Using a browser inspector @woodnet



5. We hope to introduce a section for Workshops soon, so please keep an eye out for that.

We’ve had a few new folks join lately and some of their ideas and content will get documented soon.

@binarygary, who joins us as a subject matter expert. Gary does a lot of work in 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. and also mentors entry devs on their journey in: the following is a quick rundown he has for a current mentee.

  • HTTPHTTP HTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands. Requests – understanding this is foundational (GET, POST). We are going to walk through both WP and Laravel from where the request first hits the server to the time when the request is complete.
  • Language Constructs (clean code). conditionals, loops, functions, namespacing. We’ll also explore DRY
  • DB – I actually have been realizing that a LOT of the WP devs I know have a bit of trepidation around the database. So, being able to confidently interact with the DB directly is super helpful. (Obv this is mostly MySQLMySQL MySQL is a relational database management system. A database is a structured collection of data where content, configuration and other options are stored. https://www.mysql.com/., but we are also going to talk about Elasticsearch and Redis)
  • OOP gets it’s own meeting(s) because the transition from thinking procedurally to OOP is a big shift.
  • Composer – though just a cursory exploration and explanation of how to use it. Knowing namespacing and OOP will make this really about “tooling”
  • Automated Testing – I’m planning on using cypress and using phpunit and leaving the integration testing for the future.

I also introduced @camwyn as well, who would also fit in amazingly as an SME (subject matter expert).  In years past, we’ve had others to refer to.  We’ll keep working to build back up this area of the team. They are welcome in as much as they want, but definitely encouraged as content advisors.

I invited Chris Badgette today, who has expressed interest (not tagging as it was just an hour back).  Chris is the co-founder of an LMS 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 – learning management system.  This is the thing that makes online courses possible. So – welcome friends, and here are the areas to contribute to now, and the help we really value in planning.

As a team, we haven’t had subject matter experts that weren’t also multitasking in other teams in quite a while, so this is exciting!

Subject matter experts are those who do this work, know it really well, and can help inform us what should be taught/included, what skills are needed in the workforce.


6. We can append to the content roadmap and also to Trello.  The difference?  The roadmap is more visually organized about everything there is to learn.  When we are closer to creating more of that content, it can get over to Trello.  We’ve so far kept Trello for the scope of current features in WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress..

If we have further ideas/brainstorms on content, do be sure to post here or submit through https://learn.wordpress.org/contribute.


7. If you’re interested in joining us shape the Learn platform then we have a number of functionality goals we want to work on this month:


8. And last but not least our own Training Team Goals for the month:

  1. Publish initial draft for Brand guidelines, seeking specific feedback. (awaiting further input with #Marketing)
  2. Audit Learn Functionalitly Trello board
  3. Deputy program
  4. Update Training Team and Learn Handbook
  5. Schedule Learn Stakeholder meeting
  6. Conduct a retrospective on the previous sprint.

If you want to help out in any of these areas, let us know in the #training Slack and we can assign you to a card and give you access to Learn.

Open Discussions

There is a lot going on, and lots of new contributors!

  • Feel free to let us know your areas of expertise and what format you like to help with.  Writing lessons? Recording videos? Just hanging out… we welcome it all.
  • A good reminder is the truth that sometimes it takes time to find where you can pitch in.  Based on my experience, I encourage people to ask questions rather than wait for them to get answered implicitly.
  • Asynch (asynchronous) participation in meetings is always welcomed, or skimming through agendas and recaps of meetings too.
  • Friday may also provide a great opportunity to look into getting started, collaborating, and working together on Lesson Plans.
  • It is a bit of an overload at the beginning of the month as we set out what we plan to work on. Don’t hesitate to ask us for help. We want to make it easier for you to contribute, not harder. We use are here async and also use our Office Hours to answer any questions, these are run at every Friday at 10:00 AM UTC. We plan to hold some to cover the APAC region as well so please look out for that announcement. 

Upcoming Meetings


Training Team Mission

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.

Getting Involved

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to join in, comment on posts, and participate in meetings and on projects.

Team Links:

#audit, #slides, #sprint