Meeting Agenda for November 29, 2022

Please join us for our Team Meeting Tuesdays at 07:00 UTC (APAC friendly) OR Tuesdays at 17:00 UTC (AMER/EMEA friendly) OR Coffee Hour Friday at 13:00 UTC and Eastern APAC Coffee Hour Friday at 04:00 UTC in the #training Slack channel for our weekly meetings!


This Week’s Agenda

  1. Intro/Welcome
  2. News
    1. Meeting Note Takers
    2. Faculty Members Update
    3. Project Thread: Content Localization Foundations
    4. Team Rep Nominations
    5. Training Team Badges
    6. DevHub getting a new look
    7. Team Goal Setting
    8. December 23, and 30, no coffee hour on(EMEA/AMER timezone)
    9. Eastern APAC Coffee Hour Fridays at 04:00 UTC from Dec 2nd.
    10. No Meeting on December 27, 2022
    11. Choosing accessible/contrasting dark theme colors for online workshops and tutorial videos – two sets of “alternate” or “dark” colors have been finalized
    12. 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/ Pages Update
  3. Published Content
  4. Request for review
    • Tutorial – Develop Your First Low-Code 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. Theme Module#3
    • Tutorial – Comments block 
    • Lesson Plan- Template tour lesson plan
  5. Request for comments
    1. Please reach out to @bsanevans if you’re interested in making new onboarding handbook pages for the Training Team.
    2. Do we want to update our GitHub views to match the kanban board columns? (See Slack conversation)
  6. Month Retrospective
    • What went well?
    • What could we improve?
    • What will we do differently?
  7. Open Discussions

Upcoming Meetings

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.

  1. Learn.WordPress.org
    1. Lesson Plans
    2. Tutorials
    3. Courses
    4. Online Workshops
    5. Pathways to Learn WordPress
  2. Getting Involved
    1. GitHub Website Development
    2. GitHub Content Development
    3. What We Are Currently Working On This Month
  3. About The Team
  4. Our Team Blog

#agenda, #training

Meeting Agenda for November 15, 2022

Please join us for our Team Meeting Tuesdays at 07:00 UTC (APAC friendly) OR Tuesdays at 17:00 UTC (AMER/EMEA friendly) OR Coffee Hour Friday at 13:00 UTC in the #training Slack channel for our weekly meetings!


This Week’s Agenda

  1. Intro/Welcome
  2. News
    1. Meeting Note Takers
    2. Faculty Program Updates
    3. Choosing accessible/contrasting dark theme colors for online workshops and tutorial videos
    4. Project Thread: Content Localization Foundations
      • Looking for project volunteers!
    5. Reimaging the Training Team Contributor Roles
    6. Looking for feedback on these newly drafted handbook pages for GitHub Process Updates
    7. Preparing for 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. 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)
  3. Published Content
    1. Tutorial – Block Spacing
    2. Lesson Plan – the Nepali Translation of How to Create Lesson Plan
    3. Tutorial – Intro to the Site Editor and Template Editor
    1. Tutorial – Streamline your Block Theme development with Create Block Theme
  4. Request for comments
    1. APAC Coffee Hour
      • 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.
    2. Proposal: Create a new onboarding experience to the Training Team (by mid-November)
  5. November 2022 Sprint
    1. Information Sources for WP 6.1
    2. Use this site creation tool while creating content and testing WordPress 6.1
  6. Open Discussions
    • 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/ 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?
    • Please share the Individual Learner Survey with your networks and at the end of Online Workshops
    • Publishing a content update newsletter on Learn WordPress

Upcoming Meetings

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.

  1. Learn.WordPress.org
    1. Lesson Plans
    2. Tutorials
    3. Courses
    4. Online Workshops
    5. Pathways to Learn WordPress
  2. Getting Involved
    1. GitHub Website Development
    2. GitHub Content Development
    3. What We Are Currently Working On This Month
  3. About The Team
  4. Our Team Blog

#agenda, #training

Proposal: Create a new onboarding experience to the Training Team

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.
  • The Training Team’s Contributor Ladder model should be incorporated.
  • 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
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?”

  1. Creating/translating content
  2. Reviewing/editing content
  3. Vetting content ideas and being a sounding board to people creating new content
  4. 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:

  1. Content Creator
  2. Editor
  3. Subject Matter Expert
  4. 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
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 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/. to reach all these folks at once in the #training channel.
  • Walkthrough of how to complete a first contribution
    • Ideally, this would be a task listed early on in the team’s contributor ladder.
    • 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.

#onboarding, #procedures, #training-team

Become an Online Workshop Facilitator or Tutorial Presenter Today!

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.

Tutorials are 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 #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/. 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:


Thanks for reading. We look forward to seeing you join our team of Facilitators and Presenters!

#contributors, #online-workshops, #tutorials

Training Team Meeting Recap – September 6

Slack Log for APAC Meeting (Tuesday 07:00 UTC)

Slack Log for AMER/EMEA Meeting (Tuesday 16:00 UTC)

(Requires 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/. login to view. Set one up if you don’t have a Slack account.)

The meeting agenda.

Introductions and Welcome

APAC Attendees: @webtechpooja, @chetan200891, @amitpatelmd, @piyushmultidots, @askaryabbas, @piyopiyofox, @chaion07, @pitamdey, @azhiyadev, @hderashri, @aion11, @psykro, @onealtr, @courtneypk

EMEA/AMER Attendees: @azhiyadev, @eboxnet, @artdecotech, @meaganhanes, @onealtr

Welcome to the team (Slack usernames): @Idrissa Thiam@Labun Chemjong, and @kharisulistiyo

News

Faculty Members Update

Please check the faculty members’ full list here. https://make.wordpress.org/training/faculty-program-members/

See recaps published from the latest faculty meetings:

  1. August 24th / 30th Supplemental SME Meeting Recap
  2. Monthly Faculty Meeting Recap – August 30/31 2022

Individual Learn Survey

Help form the priorities for the Training team needs analysis. Survey is live, please fill out and share:
https://learn.wordpress.org/individual-learner-survey/

WCUS 2022

WCUS Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor 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/. on Sept. 11 @courane01 will be the table lead, @courtneypk will lead onboarding. There will be a live stream available for the event https://us.wordcamp.org/2022/livestream/  – Check your local WordPress community to see if there’s a watch party near you, or see if you can get one started.

Summary Update: Courses Currently in Development

Check out for the update

Launching workshops in additional Locales

@bsanevans started drafting a handbook page for localized content. He’d appreciate any feedback added to the Google Doc.

Team Structure

@bsanevans also reimagined our contributor roles in light of the Faculty Program. More details can be found in this Slack thread.

Sprint

Content published this week

Reviews requested this week (help needed):

  1. Course: Block Development
  2. Using Block Attributes – Tutorial
  3. Adding a pattern from the Pattern Directory to your theme
  4. Image Optimization (@courtneypk would like another set of eyes on her review)

Retrospective

What went well?

  • Solid amount of content
  • First online workshop in Japanese
  • Improved onboarding and process documentation
  • Moved APAC meeting
  • Learn survey is live

What we can improve?

  • Update outdated handbook pages
  • Clear guidelines for newcomers
  • How we use 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/

What will we do differently?

  • Call for audit and content update for WP 6.1
  • Sprint sweep at end of month and assigning certain issues to the sprint

Open Discussions

The deadline for applications to speak at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps 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 2023 has been extended to September 30, 2022. You now have 1 month to prepare and send in your application.


Upcoming Meetings

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.

  1. Learn.WordPress.org
    1. Lesson Plans
    2. Tutorials
    3. Courses
    4. Online Workshops
    5. Pathways to Learn WordPress
  2. Getting Involved
    1. GitHub Website Development
    2. GitHub Content Development
    3. What We Are Currently Working On This Month
  3. About The Team
  4. Our Team Blog

#meeting-recap, #training

Training Team Meeting Recap – August 30

Slack Log for APAC Meeting / Office Hour (Tuesday 07:00 UTC)

Slack Log for AMER/EMEA Meeting / Office Hour (Tuesday 16:00 UTC)

(Requires 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/. login to view. Set one up if you don’t have a Slack account.)

The meeting agenda.

Introductions and Welcome

attendance:
(APAC Meeting) – @chaion07, @webtechpooja, @bsanevans, @chetan200891, @aion11, @amitpatelmd, @tahmidulkarim, @pitamdey, @piyushmultidots, @piyopiyofox, @hderashri, @askaryabbas, @ashiquzzaman, @atomchat, @onealtr (async), @psykro (async), @courtneypk (async)

(AMER/EMEA Meeting) – @azhiyadev, @courane01, @caraya, @arasae, @manzwebdesigns, @onealtr, @eboxnet (async), @meaganhanes, @chaion07, @courtneypk (async), @atomchat

Welcome to the team (Slack usernames) Liz Dularza, Pitam Dey, Manzur, Davinder Singh Kainth, Aan Darmatirta

News

Meeting Note Takers

Meeting recap notes is one of the best ways to get started contributing to a team. Please refer to this guide to get started.

  • September 6 – @artdecotech
  • September 13 – Opportunity to volunteer
  • September 20 – @hderashri 
  • September 27 – Opportunity to volunteer

We are looking for note-takers for September, Interested? Let us know!

We’d still like a few folks to help provide access to the team site during meetings and welcome anyone along. Interested? Let us know.

Faculty Members Update

Please welcome our newest faculty member @Vagelis. He is joining our team as a content creator.
Please check the faculty members’ full list here for more details. https://make.wordpress.org/training/faculty-program-members/

Update on Individual Learn Survey

The survey is currently in progress for review.
@courane01: Once we are ready to go with it, Then I’ll integrate the survey to Learn Website and share the link here in the Training channel.  I anticipate this possibly later today.

Update on Team meetings

Meetings will be held in alternating time zones starting from September, so bear with us for today. Also, our next meeting will be in an alternating pattern. When a region is not running a team meeting, the time will be used for:

  • Office hour, bring your questions about training, Learn, content, etc.
  • Sprint/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/ issue review
  • Provide feedback on items that are currently in review

further discussion on this in a slack thread

Training Team Profile Badges

We provide training team contributor badges that reflect on the http://WordPress.org profile that acknowledges your contributions to the Training Team. Right now this handbook page is outdated. we need to update it.

Things to consider before updating it:

  1. We are no longer using Github for a lesson plan, so we should consider removing it. No PR merged for this, then how we can provide a badge
  2. What if someone reports and fixes issues on Github, and after how many merged PRs, a person is eligible for a badge
  3. We are no longer 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. boards, need to remove there

further discussion on this in a slack thread

Localized Content

@bsanevans started drafting a handbook page about how folks can create localized content for Learn WordPress. He’d appreciate any feedback people would like to add to the Google Doc in this Slack message: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RW657Q/p1660986964613769

Team Structure

@bsanevans: Secondly, I’ve been thinking about the current team structure. I’ve reimagined the contributor roles we have, in light of the Faculty Program which is going really well. This is very much a rough idea, and I’m open to any thoughts the team has. Please leave any feedback in this Slack thread I started earlier: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RW657Q/p1661838946241849

Update on August 25th / 30th Supplemental SME meeting

We had a meeting to finalize the role and responsibilities of our newly joined SMEs. Anyone can share the update on who is in the meeting?

We discussed the Github board and what can we do to make it clear to go to work for them. @piyopiyofox will soon share a post on what we discussed in this meeting on our Training team p2 post. Stay tuned for that.
further discussion on this in a slack thread

Launching workshops in additional Locales

Our first localized online workshop was done in Japanese and @Ben Evans shared his experience, if you are looking to host an online workshop in your locale, do check out this doc

Youtube channel

Please provide your feedback on this (google doc and a slack message by @courane01): https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RW657Q/p1661876931073489

Events

WCUS 2022
It is approaching near. WCUS is from Sept 9 to 11 and Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor 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/. is on Sept. 11 @courane01 will be the table lead, @courtneypk (subject to availability) to help with onboarding on location, and @webtechpooja will serve as Slack rep.

  • We will onboard new people to the training team.
  • We will promote our individual learn survey
    We could work on the Need analysis poll, according to the availability of involved folks.

This will be the first WordCampWordCamp WordCamps 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. in person for many attendees at this event. We anticipate meeting the interested folks, helping them get up to speed with what Learn is working on, learning about each other’s skills, and brainstorming additional ideas.

Sprint

The Make post has now been broken down into

  1. Learn Content
    a. Upcoming 6.1 changes
    b. Revisions
  2. Website Development
  3. Training Team administration
    These mimic our project boards on GitHub.

Content published this Week:
Creating a new header with blocks

Content available for review:
The following reviews have been requested this week

Check-ins

What went well this month?
Significant content in multiple languages was shipped., Long-time contributors re-joined. Security measures developed for Online Workshops to protect facilitators and attendees from disruptions/Zoom bombing. You can follow the conversation here.

What could we improve? 
We still need course creators’ input on how to revise the content for any feature changes in WordPress. We need to focus on creating more course content and also build out the handbook so contributors have clearer guidance. You can follow the conversation here.

What will we do differently?

We can reduce the frequency of meetings and move detailed these discussions to the team blog using the meetings only for quick discussions. You can follow the conversation here.

September sprint plan discussion

@azhiyadev: One of the suggestions we’ve had is to only post 5-10 items on the monthly Sprint post so that newcomers are not overwhelmed. We also discussed having Faculty SMEs vote on what we should be working on.
We’ve got Faculty meetings scheduled this week and it would be a good opportunity to get the SMEs to prioritize our workload for September.
One of the things I would like to see taken into consideration is the auditing of existing content especially courses as we plan what we should be working on.
further discussion on this in a slack thread

Open Discussions

There was a discussion on using tools and plugins that are not part of WordPress coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.. You can follow the conversation here.


Upcoming Meetings

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.

  1. Learn.WordPress.org
    1. Lesson Plans
    2. Tutorials
    3. Courses
    4. Online Workshops
    5. Pathways to Learn WordPress
  2. Getting Involved
    1. GitHub Website Development
    2. GitHub Content Development
    3. What We Are Currently Working On This Month
  3. About The Team
  4. Our Team Blog

#meeting-recap, #training

Monthly Faculty Meeting Recap – August 30/31 2022

Attendees

AMER: @arasae, @courtneypk, @courane01, @azhiyadev, Chris B, @onealtr

APAC: @piyopiyofox @bsanevans @onealtr @webtechpooja @west7 @amitpatelmd

Recap notes

  • Proposal to make Faculty meetings more public 
    • The team will continue working in the open
    • everything that isn’t a privacy concern should go into a public channel of some sort. 
    • The private channel is intended for logins, incident concerns, etc.
    • https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C03B11FA16D/p1659098737136069?thread_ts=1658970512.900959&cid=C03B11FA16D 
    • Amer Notes: Does this mean more conversation in the #training channel instead of the #training-faculty channel? Yes. TL;DR – Have conversations we have been having in #faculty-training in #training itself. We can use the 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/. groups in different roles if we need attention of specific groups (such as subject matter experts)
      • 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.” Groups: @faculty and it pings everyone in the faculty or if you want to ping a separate group. It’s something similar to @faculty-smes; it’s pinned to the private faculty channel.
      • If people have access to things like Learn’s wp-admin dashboard, these links can still be put into the #training channel – user permissions will keep things under wraps as far as strangers being able to access sensitive things while also allowing us to work in the open. 
    • APAC: The intention of this message was asking if we should open the faculty meeting up to the wider training team or keep these calls for faculty only?
      • Yes, keep the faculty meeting for faculty only, but continue to post agenda and notes publicly.
      • When we post the agenda for faculty meetings, we should more widely share with the training team that they can contribute to the agenda items async on the agenda post.
      • The admin will monitor the questions/comments on these posts and reroute them to the applicable faculty member
  • announcing new channel joinees
    • Is there a benefit in announcing these still to someone?
      • Amer Notes: Meant to acknowledge the team; the original purpose was to pull folks in and make them feel welcome. Marketing provides a, “Here is a good next step action item that you can do”.
        • Encourages people to step out of “lurker” mode; encourages people to join the meeting live. Alerts people to a meeting happening now.
        • Having this drop-in for faculty is useful; in terms of good “next of action” items, someone does contact them. 
      • Feels possibly like duplicated work; there’s a welcome committee. Is this just for faculty or just for joining training? Understanding is for everyone. 
      • TL;DR – People are being welcomed both in DM’s and in public.
    • Or are meeting facilitators (team reps) tracking these some other way anyway?
      • This has been helpful for team reps. Team reps go back through the week to try and see who has joined; if that exists somewhere and someone pings them, they can pick up. It’s helpful to know that someone else has already reached out.
      • Conclusion: We will continue to do this as it is helpful for the team reps.
    • APAC: One of the Welcome Wranglers will add the new channel joinee list directly to the meeting agenda which will cut the duplication of efforts.
  • Zoom disruptions
    • turned a few more security features on in our shared Zoom account
    • https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C03B11FA16D/p1659733286494459 
    • Changed:
      • Annotation to “Only the user who is sharing can annotate”
    • Turned off:
      • Whiteboard (Classic)
      • Remote control
      • Gesture Recognition
      • Allow users to change their name when joining a meeting
      • Allow participants to rename themselves
      • Show participant profile cards in a meeting
    • Turned on:
      • Mute all participants when they join a meeting
      • Hide participant profile pictures in a meeting
      • requiring authentication to join a meeting.
        • APAC: If this is a requirement, we should document the process for joining.
        • We shared feedback that this particular item feels like a barrier to entry.
        • Perhaps this could be the final step if the other changes we made are not effective.
    • APAC: Is the fact that not many people are unmuting or turning on their video detracting from the “social learning space” aspect of our Online Workshops?
      •  
  • Faculty Meeting Calendar
  • Workflow (SME’s)
    • Difficult to jump in on things like reviewing new topics because the workflow may not be clear or simple enough to manage at the moment.
    • https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C03B11FA16D/p1660112243025129 
    • https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/getting-started/how-we-work-together/#development-workflows
    • pull our GitHub issues into a spreadsheet to help SMEs better assess priority and “staleness
      • My first guess would be to use the 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/ APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.
      • https://docs.github.com/en/rest/issues
      • More specifically https://docs.github.com/en/rest/issues/issues#list-repository-issues
    • Amer Notes:
      • SME’s weren’t aware of the topics; there was concern that topics were being duplicated because there were multiple elements. We have tutorials, lesson plans, online workshops, and courses, so topics looked duplicated – it’s a different learning format that the topic is being 
      • Link to SME notes (when SMEs are supposed to jump in, when supposed to pass on to the content creators)
        • We should reach out to SMEs to figure out how they would best like to work with us.
        • Could use time during former training meetings (since they’re rotating) to work with SMEs when the meetings.
          • Go through an update notes on Github from a more synchronous setting.
      • Github session – need to know how this works in order to run a session for SMEs, then use that to generate automations. As long as a flow exists, it’s easier for SMEs to work with.
        • We would like to have more Github automations, and we can do that with the new version of Github projects
          • Code approach of automations was discouraged; it was pretty challenging. CER will reach out to Micah and Github representatives around that issue of automation in order to leverage more things.
          • All content is in one project board; still figuring out how this works. We moved into Github to make sure we can leverage the tech to better track – we want to track contributions. 
  • Hugh has secured a Crowdsignal premium account for us to use
  • Contributor badges
    • I’m not quite sure how our contributor badges are distributed– will @Tahmid ul Karim receive a badge for this merged PR? https://github.com/WordPress/Learn/pull/890
    • Here is the process mentioned to provide a badge: Team Profile Badges – Make WordPress Training
      • Amer Notes:
        • What are the steps? What are the requirements? Discussed in today’s meeting. There is a process, but it’s outdated; one of the new elements to it is because we’ve started using Github. With the pilot we’re doing with 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., that may be another way we don’t have to manually add badges. Meeting notes, pull requests… we actually do pull requests on the development side. We didn’t previously have a development board, so that is new. Pooja has made some updates to it.
          • Get faculty to approve it; need the training team to approve the badges and process there.
          • Do we have a badge for faculty? No; we should present it back to the training team, based on the updates and some of the discussions, what do you think in terms of the process?
          • We think that Pooja is working on a 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 about this (correct us if we’re wrong!) – Check with Pooja to see if she needs anything here, but no other action item needed if this is true. 🙂 Pooja is not working on a P2 post. She is only updating the Handbook page. 
  • Individual learn survey – https://learnwordpress.survey.fm/make-wp-training-team-individual-learner-survey
    • Related to Crowdsignal above, I already talked about it.
    • Courtney Robertson is working on this. She’s working on it (some login issues, need to do a password reset)
    • Make use of this for WCUS, get some good data back.
    • APAC: Should be ready to go within a week just in time for WCUS!
  • Faculty Meeting September 2022 – 5 weeks in September
    • Amer Notes: Change this in early September to 2nd and 4th weeks, fixes that issue.
    • Also, can we make sure to include zoom links integrated with the meeting calendar event, so that any faculty member can join in the meeting by following the event and zoom link
      • Amer Notes:
      • We should use our standard Zoom link
      • We may want to not have this on the main calendar because if it’s just for Faculty, we don’t want all the WordPress community. We may get flooded with folks who just want to jump in who aren’t faculty folks.
      • We could instead send invite details ahead of time, but use the general Learn training account.
      • Where is the repeating event? If that’s a private invite, we can replace the link in there (Action Item: ask Destiny to replace the link with one scheduled on Zoom) – Destiny replaced this, but note that the event is modifiable by any guest on the invite so no need to wait for any one person to make changes.
        • Have the date in the general team calendar
        • Zoom link should just be on the invite.
  • Content Errors
  • WordCamp Asia Call for Speakers – Do we want to do a session where we promote the Training Team, the Learn WordPress site, and explain how folks could get involved? (Original Slack convo)
    • Oneal and Pooja are on the speaker’s selection team; they’re trying to get more speakers to apply. Call for speakers is yielding a lower return. Focus on speakers from Asia. A lot of applications may come in at the last minute.
    • Some folks who might be interested: Jamie, Mike Schroeder, Destiny, Ben, and others are all living in Asia. They will probably have more to say on this. 
  • APAC walk on: Pooja is working on a process improvement for first time WordPress contributors.
    • We suggested Pooja connects with Courtney PK around this

#faculty-meeting

June & July 2022 Sprint Retrospective

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 following the retrospective discussions held in the #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/. channel:

What went well?

  • Training team goals and strategy call – Faculty members meet once a month to discuss the progress.
  • Lots of Online Workshops are running on Learn WordPress Online Workshop meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. group.
  • The development roadmap post seems to have gathered a lot of good feedback and should provide us with a great list for future development content.
  • New Faculty members joined our team and doing a fantastic job.
  • Our #training channel is now 24 hours awake. People are joining from different timezones, and there is always someone to answer questions that are being asked.
  • Other locale content is also available on Learn WordPress. We had our first Greek Lesson Plans published.
  • A great deal of content was created and published.
  • Conversations and sorting through a lot of logistics about how our team creates.
  • PR submitted for Lesson Plans landing page.
  • Work is continuing on 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. Theme Creation course. and a public frame for the overall block theme (low-code) course was created, with complete lesson objectives and linked lesson plans, and the frame for each lesson plan is in Learn now. That went really well and It will allow people to submit course frames of their own in the future.

What could we improve?

  • Finish the 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/ automation/actions soon, so contributors can find it easily.
  • Team role implementation, so new contributors will also have a clear picture of their assigned task, it would be helpful when faculty size increases and new faculty members will join our team.
  • Tutorials in different languages will help more people across the world.
  • Additional online workshops in APAC-friendly time zones are a great way to get more involved.
  • We can ease the onboarding process for newcomers and beginners.
  • Identify a few faculty members for welcoming duties.
  • We can set priority on Github issues more precisely and the Role of a GitHub Wrangler is becoming more important now as we get more contributors. Having a few folks who can focus on sorting GitHub issues consistently would be beneficial.
  • We still need to ship the individual learner survey.
  • Creating a formalized Needs Analysis survey.
  • The training team needs more people in the copy editor, reviewer, and auditor roles. More folks ready and excited for those roles are probably the next step to getting content moving smoothly from draft to published.
  • As a team, we cited potential blockers and data metrics we would like in our annual goals. We are unsure of the progress on the data metric sources. and would like to be more data-driven in our decisions for larger changes. 
  • We would love to see more wranglers for specific team roles. So our new contributors could know the point of the contact person.
  • We would like to see more synchronous interactions outside meeting times. and would love if folks working on courses had a set time (time zone dependent) to gather and exchange ideas and feedback before submitting for a formal pre-publishing review.
  • Making the post more visible, perhaps as part of the weekly meetings or when onboarding new folks would help too.
  • It would be excellent to have onboarding videos/lesson plans for each role.
  • More than one contributor will work on tutorials. Like someone will write the script, another will record than another help in editing this someone else will finish making this pretty.

What will we do differently?

  • An innovative way to present lesson plans and make concepts looks easy with examples and scenarios.
  • Call for content creation/review or run Online Workshop.
  • We should run more onboarding processes in different time zones, so more contributors can be onboarded to help us.
  • Something like primary, secondary point of contact. When the primary is not available secondary can take over.
  • Onboarding Online Workshops for the roles.
  • Work with #meta on tracking contributions.

#retro

Training Team Meeting Recap – August 2

Slack Log for APAC Meeting (Tuesday 07:00 UTC)
Slack Log for AMER/EMEA Meeting (Tuesday 16:00 UTC)
(Requires 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/. login to view. You can set one up if you don’t have a Slack account yet.)

Here is the agenda for these meetings.


Introductions and Welcome

Attendance APAC Meeting: @webtechpooja @bsanevans @kafleg @hderashri @west7 @amitpatelmd @chaion07 @onealtr @digitalchild @courtneypk

Attendance EMEA/Americas Meeting: @eboxnet @courane01 @webtechpooja @caraya @onealtr @arasae @courtneypk @azhiyadev

Welcome to the newcomers who joined the Training team in the last week: @theholidayatlas @eddymedia @rashmimathur @vkrish @bhupendra2909 @fox289

Meeting Note takers


News

Wider community

There have been some bigger discussions happening in the wider WordPress community which will have effects on the work we do in the Training team. Check out these discussion, and make sure to leave any thoughts you have on the respective posts.

Information Sources for 6.1

@courane01 began auditing 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/ change logs and CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets related to the upcoming core 6.1 release. She’s been able to connect the topic issues 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/ project board. We could use support from course creators to track areas that need to be updated/revised related to WP 6.0 (already shipped) and the upcoming changes in 6.1.

Lesson Plan landing page will be updated!

The team has been discussing a visually organized way to navigate the Lesson Plans. We’ve landed on a conclusion, and are just waiting for a code review on the updates. Keep an eye out for the updates to go live soon!

We welcomed new Faculty Members!

We recently onboarded additional members to our Faculty Program. If you’re interested in joining our dedicated team, come check out the Faculty Program section of our handbook. We’re particularly interested in seeing more join from APAC regions.


Sprint

We’ve come to the end of our June and July 2022 Sprint and will be publishing a retrospective in the coming week. We took some time to share stats, wins and other feedback in the meetings.

What went well?

What could we improve?

  • Clarification, increased participation, and better onboarding to our different team roles.
  • Assign priority on GitHub issues more precisely.
  • Ship the Individual Learner Survey.
  • Become more data-driven in our decisions.

What will we do differently?

  • Improve general onboarding flow for newcomers.
  • Create material to clarify and introduce each team role.
  • Improve communication around GitHub issues and what contributions are appreciated.
  • Work with 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 on tracking contributions.

Open Discussions

Collecting feedback from Online Workshop facilitators and attendees

@bsanevans suggested setting up an optional feedback form for workshop facilitators on the After an Online Workshop handbook page. Faculty administrators would have access to the form submissions, and would act on any actionable feedback.

@caraya suggested also collecting participant feedback – perhaps anonymously. We’re still considering what method would be most effective.


Upcoming Meetings

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.

  1. Learn.WordPress.org
    1. Lesson Plans
    2. Tutorials
    3. Courses
    4. Online Workshops
    5. Pathways to Learn WordPress
  2. Getting Involved
    1. GitHub Website Development
    2. GitHub Content Development
    3. What We Are Currently Working On This Month
  3. About The Team
  4. Our Team Blog

#meeting-recap, #training

Block Theme Development Course – Update

The inclusion of Full Site Editing in WordPress 5.9 opens up a brand new way for WordPress users, builders, and extenders to create Block Themes, right from the WordPress dashboard. In addition, the Create Block Theme 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 provides a way for a 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. Theme that has been created in the Full Site Editor to be exported as a child themeChild theme A Child Theme is a customized theme based upon a Parent Theme. It’s considered best practice to create a child theme if you want to modify the CSS of your theme. https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/., or a brand new theme, ready to be installed on any other WordPress site.

Block themes are a new WordPress design/development tool, and there are folks out there who are keen to learn how to utilize the power of FSE in building themes for themselves and their clients. At the moment there is limited knowledge available on Learn WordPress to help WordPress users to level up on the possibilities with FSE. Therefore, one of the training team goals for 2022 is the creation of a course on how to create Block Themes

This post serves to summarize the progress of this course, the research that has taken place to determine the structure of this course, and the proposed next steps.

Background

At the beginning of this year, @daisyo and @arasae started working on an outline to create a low code block theme course. 

This outline was drawn from two sources.

The first was a series @daisyo recorded with @welcher:

Creating a Block-Based Theme with Daisy Olsen

The second was a series of social learning spaces, hosted by @daisyo and @arasae

Zero to Block Theme

In May @daisyo was required to take a step back from her involvement in planning this course, to focus on her developer relations work and her upcoming workshop at WordCamp Europe. At around the same time, I joined @arasae to assist with working on completing the course outline, with a focus on getting the course outline wrapped up, and the course published. 

In my review of the current outline, and the content already created, I thought about the audience for this course, and I proposed that there are two types of WordPress users who would benefit from such a course, but that it might be necessary to split the course into two.

  1. A low-code block theme course, which guides a non theme developer through the process of creating a new block theme from scratch – like Twenty Twenty Two, Blockbase – exploring design best practices, creating the required initial files, editing the global styles, creating required templates, and template parts in the Full Site Editor, and exporting that to a new theme.
  2. A supplementary course that is focused more on experienced theme developers, takes a theme created as described above and covers more advanced topics. This would include a more detailed dive into elements of block themes, a detailed look at how to utilize and configure theme.jsonJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML., how to programmatically edit templates and template parts to push the block theme past what is possible with FSE, and how to extend an FSE designed theme. 

Current Status

Currently, @arasae and I are in the process of researching and refining the outlines for these two courses, with a focus on course #1. As we have some knowledge gaps and some questions on the process of creating block themes, we have set up meetings with existing block theme developers to gather feedback so that we may find answers to our questions, and to help us plan the outlines for each course. 

Next Steps

Once we have created those outlines, we will be publishing them on separate 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/ issues which we’re using to track course progress.

We expect the outline for course #1 to be completed by July 22nd, and the outline for course #2 to be completed by July 29th. 

Once the outlines are published, we will start creating separate Github lesson plan issues for each of the items of content that will be required for each item in the outlines.

We will also post regular updates to this blog, for folks who would like to contribute. We look forward to including contributions from the WordPress community in building these different pieces of content out because like a child, it takes a village to create a course.

Thanks to @arasae and @daisyo for helping with the research for this post.

#block-theme-course, #learn-wordpress, #training, #training-team