Our GitHubGitHubGitHub 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/ project boards
(We have alternated our weekly team meetings according to the timezone. This week we are having the Team Meeting in the APAC timezone, and a Coffee Hour was held in the Americas/EMEA timezone at Tuesday 17:00 UTC.)
We are considering discontinuing async meetings. Please leave your comments on this Slack discussion. (Note: This link will take you away from this meeting flow.)
Daylight Savings Time ends on March 12 for AMER and March 26th for EMEA. And according to the poll, we will run the meeting at 16:00 UTC. We will change the time from the next meeting i.e. March 21.
Would anyone like to co-host the upcoming EMEA/AMER meeting on March 28 with me? Please leave your name in the comments if you want to volunteer.
Please provide your feedback on the proposed learning path. Here I would like to mention @Courtney also shared a draft for learning pathways, just before the meeting started. Here is the link 👇
This post aims to start building the proposed mentorship program using the contributor working group! If you would like to contribute or be a part of this, comment on the post.
Start working on revising and creating content for WP 6.2 on LearnWP
WordPress 6.2 Release CandidateRelease CandidateA beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. 2 will be released today at #core
The following items are other projects that team members have volunteered to take on. Would any of the project owners like to provide the team with an update?
Training Team Site GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ blocks – @Amit Patel
No updates yet, I have drafts in progress and will start sharing those when I have them a bit more finalized. With the release underway, expect a slew of updates a few days after the release.
@psykro mentioned confusion around the process of applying for team badges. @webtechpooja mentioned the team was in the process of updating handbook pages. The GitHubGitHubGitHub 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/ issue in use right now will be closed once those updates have been published.
You can see all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.
(We have alternated our weekly team meetings according to the timezone. This week we are having the Team Meeting in the APAC timezone, and a Coffee Hour was held in the Americas/EMEA timezone at Tuesday 17:00 UTC.)
Training Team goals for 2023 have been published. Please check out the team goals for this year. This will help us prioritize different tasks throughout the year.
Meeting Time Update
Daylight Savings Time ends on March 12th at 10:00 UTC and the UK and other parts of Europe change after March 26th. We created a poll for collecting votes and below result we got:
Add your thoughts to this Slack discussion. As to whether we should consistently stick to “Learn” or “Learn WordPress”, or whether both could be used interchangeably, we would be interested to hear the thoughts from the team.
Team RepTeam RepA 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. Update
Destiny will be away from March 1 – June 1 for a sabbatical. Please continue to lean on @bsanevans and @webtechpooja during this time.
Online Workshops Update
A discussion has started to include Online Workshops in the WordPress admin dashboard widgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.:: Proposal: Modify the Events and News widget to show topic-based meetups worldwide
We are looking for folks to create content related to the WordPress 6.2 release. You can find content needing creation on this GitHub project board. Here are other useful links:
Training Team Site GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ blocks – @Amit Patel. We had brainstormed on this project’s tasks and discussions on the same. Thanks, @Jamie Madden, @askaryabbas, @Sagar Ladani, @Karthick, and @Mayur Baroliya for participating in the same. We will have a few updates to share by the next team meeting.
@Amit Patel gave an update on the Training team Handbook page – Team Profile Badges. He will publish the updated version this week.
@webtechpooja started the discussion by sharing one of her celebrations’ news Holi – Festival of Colors. Also, @karthickmurugan asked about “6 of my lesson plans and handbook pages Tamil translations are waiting for a reviewer. If we find a Tamil Reviewer for reviewing those, it would be great.” Proper discussion with solutions had been provided.
You can see all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.
In 2023, the Training Team will empower users to achieve their goals with WordPress through actionable and practical learning experiences that bring the community together.
Values
The Training Team’s values are DEIB, Collaborative, Sustainable Growth, Impact, and Empathy. Folks can read more about them on our Team Values handbook page.
Goals to roll over from 2022
Listed below are goals session participants thought would be good to roll over into the 2023 goals.
Release roadmap of new content (that isn’t tied to WP releases/features)
Assess the content that has the largest impact.
Plan promotions with the Marketing Team.
Individual Learner survey (tied to Needs analysis)
Curriculum Advisory Board (working title) planning and outreach
Site functionality roadmap
Milestones
The new goals session participants would like to see the Training Team work on this year are listed below.
A fully documented process set up for folks working on content localization.
Plan a course for beginner WordPress users.
Plan promotions with the Marketing Team.
Individual Learner survey (tied to Needs analysis).
Establish monthly recurring onboarding Online Workshops in different timezones for training team roles.
Create a dev road map for the Learn siteLearn siteThe Training Team publishes its completed lesson plans at https://learn.wordpress.org/ which is often referred to as the "Learn" site..
Get involved with the redesign work happening on Learn.
July to September 2023
Release roadmap of new content (that isn’t tied to WP releases/features).
Assess the content that has the largest impact.
Test out a course creation cohort method that will work as a group to create one course together.
Work more closely with AccessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility).
Figure out a method to manage localized content translation.
Nurturing the Locale Ambassadors program (making sure people who show up have people they can connect with).
Any goals rolled over from the previous quarter.
October to December 2023
Audit Handbook.
Plan a structured way to showcase Learn WordPress content.
Curriculum Advisory Board (working title) planning and outreach.
Any goals rolled over from previous quarters.
Obstacles
What could potentially make these goals difficult to achieve, and what specific actions can be taken to overcome any obstacles? Dependencies, risks, etc.
Awareness about Learn WordPress and value proposition.
Quality/accuracy control of materials.
Keep pace with WordPress releases.
Time – Availability for existing and new: content creators, site developers, volunteer/self-sponsored contributors, and sponsored contributors.
(We have alternated our weekly team meetings according to the timezone. This week we are having the Team Meeting in the EMEA timezone, and a Coffee Hour was held in the APAC timezone at 07:00 UTC.)
A week ago, a few team members were at WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. Asia contributor day and that was a nice experience. here is some highlight:
25 contributors participated (including online)
A dozen new contributors onboarded
Started new content translations for Japanese, Arabic, and Khmer
Worked on promoting the Individual Learner Survey
Cross-team collaboration with Marketing and Docs
Discussed team goals for 2023
Marketing collaborated with Training during contributor day by drafting social media content for the resources available on LearnWP
@digitalchild looking to automate anything new that we publish going to the spreadsheet the contributors use for social promotions and ensure the theme of Learn WordPress maintains its functionality when the redesign comes our way.
Please go through it and provide feedback in the Onboarding Feedback Form which will be open for a month.
Learn.WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ website development project
We were aiming to publish 2023 goals post by March 1. But due to health issue of our team members, it will get delayed by 2-3 days. We will try our best to publish this in a week.
Due to go out as a post on the Learn WordPress website at 07:00 on March 1st. We will need to think through a subscription process to get more folks signed up for the newsletter on the Learn WordPress site. Ideally, we can give the link to Marketing to share the new updates more broadly going forward.
Meeting times
Daylight Savings Time ends on March 12, 2023 for AMER and March 26th for EMEA– let’s vote on what to do?
(This will open till March 7. We will show poll result in our next meeting, which is on March 8)
Team Reps contacts
Team RepTeam RepA 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.@piyopiyofox will be away from March 1 – June 1 for a sabbatical. During this time, please continue to lean on @bsanevans and @webtechpooja.
Online Workshops in WordPress Admin
A discussion has started to include Online Workshops in the WordPress admin dashboard widgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.: Proposal: Modify the Events and News widget to show topic-based meetups worldwide.
The Individual Learner Survey has now closed. We have had 583 responses. Project analysts @webcommsat and @salonipatel, will now review and analyse the survey data. The deadline for this is March 5, 2023. (Note this was the original deadline for analysis before the survey deadline was extended)
Other work in progress
The following items are other projects that team members have volunteered to take on.
Training Team Site GutenbergGutenbergThe 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/ blocks – @amitpatelmd
@courane01 said: “Join in on Friday’s coffee hour to learn how LearnWP uses Sensei Pro and what features we might want to consider including on the site. I’ll record and post the replay on the team site.”
General team information
You can view all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.
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.
We have recently discussed creating bite-sized content on Learn WordPress, which can easily be distributed via social media platforms and used by #marketing. This was also suggested and discussed at the Contributor DayContributor DayContributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. during WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. US 2022.
We could start by creating three 1-minute videos to get the ball rolling and then request feedback. The following folks have shown interest in creating these examples: @eboxnet, @courane01 and @west7.
We aim to have the first three examples completed by February 1 for review.
Stories or shorts
It was also suggested by @courane01 that we could also explore implementing Stories down the line. These are short videos or a collection of images, and text, which can be created on a mobile phone.
The training Team works in monthly sprints. At the end of each Sprint, we ask ourselves the following questions. Below is a compilation of the responses from the team. These are the retrospective discussions held in the #trainingSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel.
What went well?
We have good engagement/contributors from the APAC timezone as well during meetings and contribution work as well.
Now we are handling different projects with the respective project leads.
More engagement in recent online workshops.
So many online workshops in APAC-friendly time zones.
More contributors hosting and co-hosting Online Workshops.
The #training channel becomes more lively throughout the year with different discussions and requests. This activity is exciting!
We’ve seen much activity regarding dev issues on our GitHubGitHubGitHub 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/ board
What could we improve?
We could continue building the handbook so contributors have more precise guidance.
A Better and smooth onboarding experience. Am trying my best to work on this.
Is there a way we could improve engagement in the EMEA/America team meetings?
What will we do differently?
We can ease the onboarding process for newcomers and beginners.
We will definitely improve learning categorization about various tutorials, workshops, and lesson plans starting with basic to advanced levels, and make it easy to navigate and find.
GithubGitHubGitHub 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/ Pages Update
Tutorial – Develop Your First Low-Code BlockBlockBlock 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. Theme Module#3
Modules 1 and 2 are published here. You’ll notice modules #3, 4, and 5 are in draft form.
Faculty Meetings are held monthly on the 15th or the closest business day through a Training Team post
You are welcome to join the team at any time! If you are new to the Training Team, please introduce yourself in the #training channel before the meeting (or anytime!) and feel free to join us in the meeting and participate as you are able.
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.
@fike has joined the team as our newest Editor from Indonesia
The Faculty meeting is updated in the WordPress.org Meetings calendar to commence every month via P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. on the 15th (or closest business day)
Preparing for Team RepTeam RepA 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. Nominations, we should include information on what the role entails and what it is not and con use this Community Team Rep Nominations for 2023 as a guiding example (See Slack thread about moving forward on this)
Based on our Doodle, Tuesdays at 02:00 UTC seems to be the winner. We will hold our first Eastern APAC Coffee Hour during this time next Tuesday, November 22nd.
GitHubGitHubGitHub 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/ updates
Can we add a Published label and remove the Ready to Publish label to items in the Published or Closed column in our GitHub project?
Can we update our documentation to include the removal of the Ready for Review label once a piece of content has passed review?
Faculty Meetings are held monthly on the 15th or the closest business day through a Training Team post
You are welcome to join the team at any time! If you are new to the Training Team, please introduce yourself in the #training channel before the meeting (or anytime!), and feel free to join us in the meeting and participate as you are able.
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.
Summary: This post outlines the details of creating a new onboarding experience for those who join the Training Team. The need for a more effective onboarding experience was raised in recent sprint retrospectives (June & July Sprint, August Sprint), and discussed in [Discussion] Reimagining the Training Team contributor roles. This proposal brings clarity to documentation and in-person guidance used in onboarding, by focusing on four areas of expertise within the team.
Next Steps: The plan is to start building out the proposed onboarding flows from mid-November. Let’s discuss ideas and specifics in the comment section below, and come up with a concrete plan by November 18th.
Summary of Previous Discussions
The Training Team has identified that the current onboarding process for new contributors in the Training Team is confusing and in need of improvement. Points of improvement raised in recent discussions include:
Easing the onboarding process for new contributors.
Assign a point of contact for new contributors to reach out to in each role.
Prepare onboarding videos/lesson plans for each role.
Continue building the handbook so contributors have more precise guidance.
Clear guidelines for new joiners, especially for basic and Intermediate-level contributors.
The team also raised points we’d want to keep in mind as we build out a new onboarding experience:
The current list of team roles should remain, but categorized appropriately.
Opportunities should remain for contributors who only have 30-60 minutes to contribute to get involved, without having to go through a lengthy onboarding process.
Documentation regarding who is in each role would be desirable.
Proposal: Four onboarding paths
Here is a proposal that reimagines the onboarding process to the Training Team, while also incorporating all the points listed above.
Step 1: First contact
A Welcome Wrangler asking a new contributor what area of contribution would excite them
When someone joins the #training channel, or submits a contact form, Welcome Wranglers send a personal message to the new contributor. In this message, we would include the question, “Of these 4, which are you most interested in?”
Creating/translating content
Reviewing/editing content
Vetting content ideas and being a sounding board to people creating new content
Focusing on the administration that keeps the Training Team running smoothly
Notice, the answer to this question will tell us which of the 4 areas of expertise in the team the contributor is interested in:
Content Creator
Editor
Subject Matter Expert
Administrator
Step 2: Onboarding pages
Depending on their answer, folks are navigated to one of four onboarding pages in the Training Team handbook. Each page has a similar format, but includes information specific to that area of expertise.
Example of what the “Editor Onboarding” handbook page would look like
Page title: “area_of_expertise Onboarding”
Welcome Video with script
A quick overview of how this area of expertise functions in the content creation flow within the Training Team.
List of faculty members with this expertise
Introduce the faculty members as the new contributor’s mentors. Mention how to use the at-mention feature in SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. to reach all these folks at once in the #training channel.
Walkthrough of how to complete a first contribution
Ideally, this first contribution should be something people can complete in 30-60 minutes.
This would be a link to another page in the handbook titled “A first contribution as an area_of_expertise“. The page would include short videos for each process, accompanied by text explanations.
It would be nice if each page had a “Thank you video” at the end folks would watch where they see the face of a real human thanking them for their contribution.
Invitation to have the contributor add themselves to a list of contributors available to continue contributing in that area of expertise
By walking a contributor through adding themselves to a list, we give them a sense of empowerment, and a touch of responsibility. They’d be free to come back and remove themselves from the list whenever they become unavailable to contribute.
A list of roles in this expertise for the contributor to explore further
This would be a link to another page in the handbook titled “area_of_expertise roles”. It would Include video walkthroughs and step-by-step instructions for all roles currently listed in the handbook that pertain to that particular area of expertise.
Invitation to join team meetings
Step 3: Continued mentorship
This proposal stops here for the moment. But I can see the team building out additional processes for those who want to continue growing to move up the contributor ladder and/or become Faculty Members.
Other considerations
What about casual contributors who only have 30-60 minutes?
In the above proposal, we would have created a page for each expertise walking folks through a first contribution in that expertise. These would be ideal pages to share with folks who want to make a quick contribution. Making one handbook page that links to those 4 pages would make sharing easier.
Page title: “Quick contributions you can make now!”
Welcome video with script
In this video, the speaker will still ask the same question as step 1 above. This will help the contributor decide which of the 4 links below they should follow.
We could also use a similar survey to https://orientation.wp-europe.org/ to pair a contributor up with an area of expertise.
List of four “first contribution” pages
Pages are reused from the flow above, and conclude with a “Thank you video”.
Invitation to work through the official onboarding flow above to contribute even more!
How would we make sure the list of contributors is accurate?
Administrators could keep an eye on the list and send a “Hi!” message to anyone who adds themselves, just to make sure the contributor is aware of the purpose of the list. Then, every 6 months or so, administrators could touch base with all who have added their names to confirm they’re still interested in contributing for another 6 months.
How are we ensuring the contributor ladder is applied to this idea?
The current contributor ladder model is a great start, but will need to be updated as this onboarding flow is created and implemented. For example, there are currently no Content Creator roles in the very first rung of the ladder. However, there should be something a new volunteer with a passion for creating content should be able to do without having to experience other areas of expertise first. We would work out which of the Content Creator related roles could be moved down the ladder and introduced as a first contribution to those with a passion to create content.
Could we get, say, Matt or Josepha to record the Thank You videos? 😃
That is definitely something we could consider. Another idea is to record multiple Thank You videos from multiple contributors, and then show a random video each time the page is loaded.
Next Steps: The plan is to start building out the proposed onboarding flows from mid-November. Please leave any other ideas, questions or comments you have below. We will come up with a concrete plan by November 18th.
The Training Team offers many ways for contributors to create content for https://learn.wordpress.org/. This month, I’ve been processing applications people submit to become Online Workshop Facilitators and Tutorial Presenters. I realized some people may not be aware of these contribution opportunities, and wanted to take a moment to reintroduce them to the team.
What are Online Workshops and Tutorials?
Online Workshops are interactive learning opportunities, often hosted via Zoom. They are safe spaces where people can come as they are, develop new ideas, explore issues, ask questions, network over shared interests, exchange theories, collaborate on work, and thrive in uncertainty. Online Workshop Facilitators are volunteers who host these workshops and encourage attendees to join in on the topic being looked at in the session.
Tutorialsare short standalone videos that walk viewers through a process, or teach a WordPress-related concept. Tutorial Presenters are the driving force behind the creation of Tutorials on Learn WordPress, and are the voices people hear when they watch these recordings.
This sounds interesting! How can I join?
The Training Team is always looking for new contributors to facilitate Online Workshops, and present Tutorials! You can apply to become each of these roles below:
Having knowledge or experience about the topic you’ll present on is useful. But you don’t need to be an expert to apply to these roles! Let us know in the application form how familiar you are with your presentation topic, and what sort of assistance we can offer you to help you be successful. If you have any questions about joining, feel free to reach out in the #trainingSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel, and we’d be happy to answer those questions for you.
What is reviewed in the application process?
The Training Team offers many opportunities for people to contribute without the need to apply. The Online Workshop Facilitator and Tutorial Presenter roles are unique in that there is a vetting process. One reason is because the team is looking for people who follow the WordPress Community code of conduct, and honor the WordPress guidelines around licensing and trademark usage. You can read more details about the vetting processes below:
