We don’t really have a team, so much as I and some people from other teams work together across multiple teams, so I have been terrible about posting updates b/c a lot of the stuff that I work on actually happens via another group. Sorry. That’s changing. I’m doing a big catch-you-up summary today on all the things that got posted about in individual posts here and there (at least the ones important enough to stand out), and next week @sabreuse will be taking over with weekly updates for the team.
What we’ve done (and not done):
- Andrea Rennick was going to head up a welcome wagon program. We created an irc room at #wordpress-contribute and some volunteers signed up to staff it during specific hours. What we didn’t get around to: documentation for how to direct people to the appropriate contributor groups (some volunteers weren’t very familiar with most of them) and welcome pages content for the main make site (which currently just has rss feeds), which we were waiting on before announcing the Welcome Wagon as a real thing. Since Andrea has stepped back from the team for now, will be looking for someone else to head this up and breathe some life back into it.
- Women’s trainings pilot workshops (troubleshooting wp). Did one in DC and one in San Diego. Possibly going to do a shortened version before WC Montreal in conjunction with the Ladies Learning Code organization. Main need to move forward with this is more volunteers to create and codify curriculums so we can roll them out. Need to go back and make learn.wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ a real site to house all this stuff instead of the temp placeholder signup pages we put up (design props to Mel Choyce).
- Andrea Rennick withdrew as 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., and Amy Hendrix has stepped up to fill her shoes, though not necessarily working on the same programs, as Amy has been more interested in working on the diversity stuff (and was one of the curriculum developers and workshop teachers for the DC pilot).
- Meetup.com relationship. Got the Foundation-sponsored account up and running, and rolled in a couple doven groups. Aaron Jorbin was going to take over management of the meetups program (via Events group) and solicited feedback from 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. organizers, but didn’t move forward with it and fell victim to Busy Life Syndrome. Aaron let us know 5/14 that he wouldn’t be able to take over meetups after all. Will be trying to figure out best plan to move forward in the coming week.
- Attended a bunch of WCs to solicit new contributors, get contributor feedback, pimp the diversity initiative, etc.
- Applied to be a mentoring organization for Google Summer of Code. Was accepted and given as many slots as we requested. We are currently in the student selection period.
- Registered as a mentoring organization for the Gnome Outreach Program for Women, reviewing applications for summer there as well. Need to raise some money to cover the costs of this one.
- There’s been a lot of crossover with the Events group (i.e., the WordCamps group), so I work with @andreamiddleton a fair bit there.
- Set up the 10th Anniversary event via Meetup Everywhere. Put a 10th anniversary tshirt in the swag store at cost until the anniversary, and having wp10 stickers printed and sent to party organizers. Setting up a site at wp10.wordpress.net that we’ll hopefully launch next week after some design and meetup 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. magic hits it. David Bisset is helping out there.
- Signed us up to be a mentoring organization at the Grace Hopper Open SourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. Day in Minneapolis in October to guide the Women in Computing conference attendees in becoming first-time contributors.
- Have connected with other open source project community managers around their diversity programs (where they exist), ongoing. Still have a few more projects to reach out to.
Immediate future:
- Working on make.wordpress.org page design and content. Got started with Isaac and George Stephanis, have recently picked up again with Mel Choyce from where we left off. Want to get the make homepage to a place where it’s useful before we start a major push on new contributor initiatives. Taking lots of inspiration from Mozilla.
- Select and announce students for GSoC and OPW.
- Finish the wp10 site and communicate with organizers.
- More WordCamps and conferences, including AdaCampSF in early June (both Andrea M and I are attending).
- Regroup on meetups plan and trainings.