Tag Archives: proposal

Courtney P.K. 9:56 pm on June 20, 2023
Tags: , mentorship, proposal   

Proposal: New Contributor Guide Program

Overview

As mentioned in the post “Recap and Next Steps: Training Team Onboarding”, an optional Guide Program (similar to a mentorship or buddy program) for the Training Team could serve to support new contributors to the team. The idea is that experienced Training Team members would serve as Guides for these new team members, regularly checking in with them as they make their first contributions to the team. They would be available as a point of contact for new contributors if they have questions while completing the onboarding program.

This program can be taken at a self-chosen pace, but it is expected that it would take no longer than a month’s time. Read on for a detailed proposal on how this program could work!

Who are the Training Team Guides?

The roster of Guides would consist of experienced Training Team members. It would make sense for Faculty members to participate, but it is not required of them. Guides could be Training Team members that have been contributing consistently to the team for at least 6 months.

For the launch of the program, Guides will be chosen from existing Faculty members (preferably part or full-time sponsored, since they can maintain their commitment and access). After launch, an application and/or nomination process can be established. Faculty members (most likely Administrators) will develop a Guide handbook and provide training and support for new Guides assisted by this handbook.

How do New Contributors learn about the Guide Program?

When a new contributor joins the #Training channel, they could be greeted with an automated message that would include offering them the option to be matched with a Training Team Guide. They would be instructed to fill out an application form to be matched with a Guide.

During the weekly Training Team meetings, the Welcome Committee can also remind the new channel joinees that they can join the Guide Program, and share the application form with them.

There will likely be more pathways for new contributors to learn about the Guide Program, but for the initial launch of this program, we will start with 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/.-based introductions.

How are new Contributors matched to Guides?

Contributors that are interested in participating in the Guide program are asked to provide the following information about themselves to ensure that they are matched with a Guide that can support them appropriately:

  • Timezone in UTC
  • Language(s) they are comfortable conversing in
  • Skills (multiple choice, based on skills utilized on the team)
  • Area(s) of contribution that they are interested in
  • Link to 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/ profile (if they have one)

This form would send the contributor’s information to the Training Team’s Help Scout inbox. Faculty Administrators then review the applications and the roster of Guides to find an appropriate match for the new contributor. Guides would be prioritized for the new contributor by time zone and language. Guides should take on no more than 4 new contributors at once.

It is recommended that Guides interact individually with the new contributors that they are paired with. However, Guides can opt to form small cohorts (up to 4 people) if they are able to arrange methods of communication and times that work for everyone if they are to connect synchronously.

How does the program work?

Regular check-ins between a Guide and a new contributor can be brief, as they will also be in constant contact via asynchronous Direct Messages (DMs) on Slack. It is recommended that check-ins are done at least weekly, but the Guide and contributor can plan the schedule that works best for them.

Suggested formats for the check-ins are below.

Before the first check in

  • A Faculty member introduces the Guide and the new contributor to each other via Slack DM or email. If the Guide is a Faculty member, they can introduce themselves.
  • The new contributor and their guide discuss the cadence for their regular check-in meetings and set up a schedule. It is preferred to do these check-ins synchronously, but if schedules do not allow, they can opt to have asynchronous check-ins on Slack.
  • Before their first check-in, the Guide confirms if the contributor has valid WordPress.org and 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/ accounts, and shares the Getting Started guide with them.

Check-in 1

  • The Guide gives the new contributor a general overview of the Training Team and a brief description of the areas of contribution.
  • The new contributor asked if they have reviewed the Getting Started Guide, if they have completed the steps, and if they have any questions.
    • Bonus: if the contributor has decided which area(s) of contribution they want to contribute to, they complete the onboarding process for that area.
  • The new contributor is also guided to attend the next Training Team meeting (Coffee Hour optional). https://make.wordpress.org/meetings/#training
  • The guide will be available to the new contributor via Slack DM if any questions arise before their next check-in (this is an expectation between all subsequent check-ins).

Check-in 2

  • The new contributor and their Guide check in to discuss the self-guided onboarding process, and they discuss any questions or concerns that arose during the process.
  • If the contributor did not decide upon an area of contribution after the first check-in, the Guide discusses the roles with the contributor to help guide them in finding how they can best apply their strengths and skills to the team.
  • The Guide gives an overview of the types of tasks that their chosen area of contribution has. The Guide can show the contributor examples of the contributions so they can see real examples of what they look like. This may be best done over a screenshare on a synchronous call.
  • The new contributor and Guide go over “Quick contributions you can make now” together.
    • The contributor expresses a quick contribution that they are interested in learning how to do.
    • The Guide walks the contributor through the process of their chosen contribution. This gives the contributor the opportunity to ask questions as they work on their first contribution along with their Guide.
    • The contributor agrees to make additional contributions before their next check-in.

Check-in 3

  • The new contributor and their Guide check in to see how their first contributions went, and if they have any learnings, concerns, and/or questions to share.
  • The Guide prepares an update to share at the next Training Team meeting to introduce and acknowledge the new contributor and their area(s) of contribution.

Acknowledgements

Guides will be expected to share a brief update on their activity with their new contributors and celebrate their contributions during Training Team meetings. This can be done asynchronously if the Training Team meeting is at an inconvenient time for the Guide.

Follow-ups

When the initial check-ins have been completed, the Guide and Contributor can choose to continue regular check-ins, and/or remain connected on the Making WordPress Slack.

It’s recommended to check in again after 3 months to evaluate how their continued contributions are going, and if they are interested in expanding their contributions (i.e., trying a new task or a different area of contribution). It also would be helpful to create a survey for new contributors 3–6 months after completion of the Guide Program to see how they are doing.

What are your thoughts?

Let’s hear what you think about this proposal in the comments! 

  • What do you think about the proposed Guide Program?
  • Do you have any suggestions for the program?
  • For experienced Training Team members: Are you interested in participating as a Guide?

Please share your thoughts by 5 July, 2023.

Thank you to @harishanker, @bsanevans, and @west7 for contributing to and reviewing this post.

#guide-program, #mentorship, #proposal

Hugh Lashbrooke 10:41 pm on September 27, 2021
Tags: , proposal,   

PROPOSAL: Ensuring high-quality video contributions to Learn WordPress

The Training Team is incredibly grateful to everyone who helped to launch Learn WordPress and has contributed valuable and solid content. Not least because Learn WordPress is going to be the first place that many people encounter in the WordPress project. Indeed, it may be the only part of the 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/ network that they ever engage with. This is due to the fact that many users will come looking for training on how to do something with WordPress and won’t have any interest in the community beyond that. If people come to Learn WordPress without any knowledge of how the WordPress community works as an open-source project, they will be expecting to find videos that match the quality they could find elsewhere.

A proposal

Learn WordPress content needs to be of high quality, but most people don’t have access to expensive recording equipment and it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to match the video quality of those who do. Production quality must not be a blocker for people contributing their skills and knowledge to the platform, so what can be done about it?

After thinking about this for a while, I have a proposal for how we can proceed that involves two areas of focus:

Distinguish between video types

The idea would be to distinguish between the highly produced videos and the community contributed ones in a similar way to how TED and TEDx talks are different from each other. This would mean there would be a separate 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. that clearly identifies which videos are produced with high-quality equipment and which ones are not. The visual distinction here would need to be discussed before we move forward with anything. My initial thinking is that there would be a section titled “Community Content” or similar that would feature the videos contributed by the community that are not of the production quality standards that are set. These production standards would need to be discussed and finalised before we implement anything here.

Collaborate on planning, but limit who can produce

The other area of focus to complement the separate video types would be to allow anyone to get involved in planning and scripting videos, but only allow approved people to actually record/produce the ones that are not included in the “Community Content” section. In practice, this could look something like this:

  1. Certain people are selected (through a public application process that anyone can submit themselves) to be approved as presenters & producers – this would have a few requirements along the lines of having access to high-quality recording equipment, being able to present well, etc. – this would need to be clearly defined and formalised with a vetting process for new applications. There would be a strong focus on building up a diverse set of voices for this group.
  2. Multiple people collaborate on outlining a video and writing a script for it – this would include anyone who would like to be involved.
  3. The finished outline and script is given to one of the approved presenters to record – this could be one of the people who wrote the script or it could be someone else.
  4. If the video is a screencast with a voiceover, we could even have a subject matter expert record the screencast and one of the approved presenters record the voiceover in order to ensure content can be written to cater to all skillsets.

The advantage of this is that anyone can get involved in creating content, even if they aren’t able (or don’t want to!) actually present/produce it, with the end result being that we have high-quality content produced to a high standard. All contributors would still be credited on the workshop video page regardless of their role in creating the video.

Feedback

Please provide feedback along the following lines:

  • Do you feel this proposal is a good way to ensure that Learn WordPress videos remain high-quality while also encouraging contributors to get involved?
  • Is there anything you would change about this proposal?
  • Do you have a different proposal to suggest?

This discussion on this post will be open until the end of the day on Wedensday, 6 October and then the comments will be summarised with a decision being made based on what is discussed.

#learn-wordpress, #proposal, #videos