How to Write Meeting Agendas and Recap Posts

Thank you so much for your interest in taking notes for the Training Team! This is one of the first and easiest ways to get started contributing; this can help you orient yourself to what we’re working currently working on, find the things you’d like to do that interest you the most, and keep the greater WordPress community in-the-know.

Volunteering to create a meeting agenda or recap notes

The Training Team hosts text-based weekly meetings 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/. in the #training channel. Attendees may comment on discussion items in real-time, or asynchronously.

Meeting agendas are published in 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 are assigned the Meeting Agenda label. These are generally published in collaboration with Team Reps by contributors who have experience contributing in the team.

Meeting recaps are published as posts on the Training Team blog and are assigned the meeting-recap tag. Recaps are published at the end of the week the meeting was conducted in, to incorporate the input provided by contributors after the meeting concluded.

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Publishing Training Team Meeting Recap Posts

1. Create a new post on the Training Team’s blog.
   • To do this, go to https://make.wordpress.org/training/wp-admin and login with your WordPress.org account. If you do not have access, please request a Faculty Administrator or Training Team Representative to grant you Author access. You can get the attention of all Faculty Administrators by adding the @faculty-admin call word to a message in the #training channel in Slack
     • Example Slack message: Hi @faculty-admin. I am the note taker for this week's meeting, but I don't have access to the Team Blog. Please grant me Author access to https://make.wordpress.org/training/. Thanks!
   • Once logged in, select Post > Add New from the left sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme..
   • Please publish meeting notes by the end of the week that the meeting occurred.
2. Select the Recap for Training Team Meeting Pattern to use the training team’s easy-to-follow template

Note: Please do not use Google Docs and Google sheet link in the recap notes.

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Using the Recap for Training Team Meeting Pattern

3. Once inside the newly created post type /recap and select Recap for Training Team Meeting pattern

4. Replace the link this meeting agenda in GitHub to the link of the meeting agenda issue in this list of GitHub issues.
5. Replace the link Slack log to the first Slack message of that week’s meeting.

6. Add a list of attendees. We always ask “Who is joining us?” in each meeting. Make sure to find each attendee’s 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/ usernames in this thread. Do not use their Slack usernames.

7. Welcome the newcomers! If a newcomer has a WordPress.org username, prefer to list that so that the published 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/. links to their correct profile page. If you find someone hasn’t created a WordPress.org profile yet, then it’s okay to mention their Slack username instead.

8. Summarize the points discussed in the meeting. The idea is to condense the information to the most important parts so that it’s easy to read and get the most important points quickly.
9. Add Categories and Tags. Make sure to select categories of whatever was spoken about, and assign respective tags:

10. Notify a faculty member to confirm and publish the notes for you. Save your notes, and pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” a faculty administrator in the #training Slack channel with a link to your post draft. Once confirmed, they’ll be able to publish the post for you.
    • Example Slack message: Hi @faculty-admin. I am the note taker for this week's meeting. Please confirm my draft below and publish this once it is ready. Thanks! https://make.wordpress.org/training/wp-admin/post.php?post=12345&action=edit.

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Publishing Training Team Meeting Agendas

1. Create a new GitHub issue, using the Meeting Agenda Template.
2. Update the name of the issue to include the date of the meeting.
   • For example, Meeting Agenda June 27, 2023.
3. In the body of the issue, update each section with the relevant information
   • Confirm the time of the meeting is accurate, and MEETING_HOST with your GitHub user name.
   • Intro/Welcome: Leave this as-is in the agenda. But before the meeting starts, take note of the Slack Usernames of everyone who joined since the last meeting, so that you can mention them during the meeting.
   • News: Any relevant new information for the Training team.
     • News items are mentioned for two weeks, in case people don’t aren’t able to catch one meeting.
     • Start by copying across news items from the the previous week’s meeting agenda. Then, remove items that were also mentioned in the meeting agenda from two weeks ago. Finally, add any new items that were brought to the team’s attention either in a post or Slack conversation that were published in the last week.
     • Updates from last week's dev-squad triage session can be pulled from the #meta-learn Slack channel. Feel free to ping a dev-squad member if you cannot find a recap of that week’s triage session.
   • Open requests for review: Open GitHub issues ready for review and copy-paste the link to issues listed there, by their content type.
   • Projects update: List current projects, the username of the primary point of contact for the project, and their most recent updates.
     • You can find a list of projects on the Current Focus Areas post pinned to the top of the team blog. (If you see there is outdated information on this post, please notify a team repTeam Rep A 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..)
     • The primary point of contact for a project is generally the author of the project post.
   • Open discussions: This is where the meeting is open for any attendee to bring up a topic they’d like to discuss.
4. Submit the new GitHub issue and ask a Training Team Reps for a review.
   • You can find an example agenda here: Meeting Agenda June 27, 2023
5. One reviewed, notify the team that the agenda has been published in the #training Slack channel.
   • You can find an example announcement message here: Slack message

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Points to Remember: Recap Notes & Meeting Agenda

When taking notes or writing a meeting agenda, please:

• Examine former recap notes or meeting agendas. Former notes and agendas are great resources!
• Do not copy and paste whole Slack conversations. The meeting recap is a summary of the meeting, not a duplication of Slack.
• Please make sure you use WordPress.org IDs in the recap for attendees, acknowledgements, and notes. Only use Slack usernames for announcing new team members. All attendees are asked to provide their WordPress.org ID’s at the beginning of the meeting. If in doubt, you can ask the attendee.
• Do not include any links to Google documents or other similar areas of organization that have been referenced in the meeting as this can get hijacked when in the public domain. Instead, reference the Slack link where the document has been mentioned.
• If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask in the #training channel. We are happy to help, and your questions make our entire team better!

Last updated: October 30, 2023