Maedah Batool 2:24 pm on October 18, 2019  

Marketing Team Notes — October 16th, 2019

Slack Timestamp Link For Meeting

1) Attendance

Meeting Attended By: @maedahbatool, @mikerbg, @harryjackson1221, @yvettesonneveld, @Gtarafdar, @oglekler, @Matthias Bathke, @jeffpaul, @nullbyte, @Ryan B., @aurooba, @vishalmukadam, @Dijana Muzhdeka 

Notes taken by: @maedahbatool

2) Celebrations/Successes This Week

2.1) Digital Citizen Week

3). Main Tasks On Agenda This Week

3.1) Digital Citizen Week

Progress:

  • The first two articles have been published. For the next pieces, the team plans to be more specific brief with an overarching messaging strategy.
  • So far, we have received great feedback on the first two articles, which is more important.
  • The first article has been translated into Portuguese and will likely be translated into more languages.
  • Also, it’ll be great if you spread the word across your social media profiles.

3.2) 2019 WCUSCD Tasks/Organization

Progress:

  • Important notice to all those who are helping with this: First of all thank you for your contributions. Please use suggestion mode in the doc, to be sure you are not overwriting anybody else’s work!
  • A lot of great work was done last year and we are hoping the same this year as well. Looking forward to helping bridge the gap between other teams even more.

3.3) WordPress 5.3 Launch Content on WP Marketing

Progress:

  • Huge props to everybody who contributed to this! Special thanks to @jenblogs4u, @marybaum, @mapk, @Daria Gogoleva, @OGlekler, @jeffpaul, @aurooba.
  • Thanks to @francina and @chanthaboune for their leadership and review for the releaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software.. And thanks to @melchoyce, @ryebell, @karmatosed from the design team.

3.4) Diversity Speaker Training Marketing

Progress:

  • Most of the plan is figured out and are starting to set up timelines for the items.
  • @Daria Gogoleva has offered to help and we’ll be recruiting via the Diversity Speaker team for more people to help out too!
  • We are quite hopeful to include lots of these items drafted by the end of January and some we’d love to get drafted by the end of November.
  • Moreover, specific tasks will be added in the Trello card so people can see concretely what they can help out with, etc.

4) New Business

4.1) Community Awareness on the Tide Project

@jeffpaul shared his two cents on behalf of the #tide team, who are continuing their struggle with awareness of the sub-project and in result lack much in the way of contributions from the community.  

What is Tide?

Tide automates the running of tests against plugins and themes in WordPress.org directory, currently focused on identifying PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. compatibility.  The use case there is to help site owners (and hosts, etc.) have a level of comfort that a site’s plugins and themes could function if upgraded to PHP 7.*.  Site owners and hosts should still test before updating their PHP version, but Tide gives a data point to consider in that decision.

Tide also captures any errors and warnings from running WordPress Coding Standards against 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 and themes, the thinking is to display this in the WordPress.ORG plugin and theme directories or within a developer-specific console to help highlight areas where a plugin/theme could/should be improved as well as to provide site owners information when trying to decide if a plugin/theme is “right” for their usage.  Code quality has yet to become a data point in those decisions, but ideally should be.  The long term hopes here, and part of the naming for Tide is that if site owners start expecting high-quality code in their plugins/themes, then developers will learn to pay more attention to WPCS and ensure their code adheres accordingly.  Thus, “a rising tide raises all boats” sort of philosophy that Tide could help improve the quality of the code across the WP ecosystem.

Is it something for WP Marketing?

  • It is definitely an area where the marketing team can step in and workaround. Also, it aligns well with our objectives for WCUS, where the macro-level objective is to create some processes for more consistently sharing the “stories” from various make teams.
  • There’s an opportunity to help the Plugin and Theme Review teams to automate some of their review processes, an example being that they could create two review queues.  
  • One queue could be plugins/themes with more than X number of errors/warnings as reported by a Tide scan, and one with less than X number of errors/warnings; essentially the review team could more closely review the high error/warning queue or even automatically reject those submissions and require the number of errors/warnings are reduced before coming back into the review queue. 

Next meeting

Wednesday 23 October 2019, 14:00 UTC.

Thanks to everyone who took part in today’s meeting and has worked on tasks during the last week.

Maedah Batool 1:58 pm on October 16, 2019  

Marketing Team Notes — October 9th, 2019

Slack Timestamp Link For Meeting

1) Attendance

Meeting Attended By: @maedahbatool, @mikerbg, @harryjackson1221, @yvettesonneveld, @aurooba, @oglekler, @maziar, @dariagogoleva, @yashwardhanrana, @webcommsat

Notes taken by: @maedahbatool

2) Main Tasks On Agenda This Week

2.1) WordPress 5.3 Launch Content on WP Marketing

Progress:

  • Thanks to @mapk, @chanthaboune, and @francina for reviewing and commenting on the previous draft.
  • The current draft has two versions at the moment and it looks good.
  • But version 3 which is right at the top is the most recent one.
  • There are a lot of comments, to review, and we have been approaching this in a collaborative approach. We welcome all feedback, just please use comments or suggestion mode so we don’t overwrite anybody’s work.
  • For the 5.3 drafts, there are some comments regarding the Expanded Design Flexibility section in particular.
  • The request was made to shift this into a list view, and any suggestions and feedback are welcomed.
  • We are reviewing changes now from the last round of feedback. We will still need at least one more round to review the changes, but that feedback has been coming quickly after sharing new drafts.

2.2) Diversity Speaker Training Marketing

Progress:

  • @aurooba has prepared a draft of a marketing plan and linked to in this doc.
  • Currently looking for suggestions and/or the go-ahead to start creating some of these items (which will then be up for approval of course).
  • The task got a go-ahead and the team will start working on it.
  • @dariagogoleva has volunteered to help with the proceedings.

2.3) 2019 WCUSCD Tasks/Organization

Progress:

  • This project has been started at the request of the team that is developing a 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/. workshop for 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. US 2019.
  • The goal is to create and plan for multiple levels of tasks that appeal to people of all levels of experience, and that are most likely to be seen through to completion. 
  • @miker and @harryjackson1221 have started a conversation and scheduled some time for Friday at 1400 UTC to have a sub meeting. This allows others to contribute too before we report back to Christina Workman.

Input for WCUS talk @JeffPaul

  • In reply to a request from @jeffpaul who will be speaking on the topic of getting started as a contributor at WordCamp US
  • This will be a lightning talk and therefore the number of suggestions will be limited. He is mostly interested in task types that folks totally new to contributing could realistically achieve.
  • The general consensus is that marketing is a great way to get involved for individuals without a tech background. Currently, the skill with the least steep learning curve is copy-writing, followed by and editing.

Digital Citizenship Week

Task Lead: @yvettesonneveld

Progress:

  • A conversation with Josepha Haden has uncovered more opportunities for a clear overarching message and direct relation with WordPress and 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.. This has been hugely helpful and means we can take all the ideas in and pull this together ensuring it is keeping the focus at the center.
  • Yvette thanked all contributors for their effort and pointed out that collaborative content creation may lead to a result where the end result hardly matches the first drafts. She emphasized that outlining and drafting content is the hardest work.
  • The deadline is nearing fast and a team of editors is working on final editing.

Next meeting

Wednesday 16 October 2019, 14:00 UTC.

Thanks to everyone who took part in today’s meeting and has worked on tasks during the last week.

webcommsat AbhaNonStopNewsUK 11:31 am on October 8, 2019  

Summary meeting 2019/10/02

Meeting timestamp on Slack for full notes

Link to published Notes of 25 September 2019 meeting (as updated)

1) Attendance

Full attendance list is on 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/. at the timestamp above.

We want to thank all of our contributors who are from around the world that may not be able to attend this meeting due to time zones and conflicts. We greatly appreciate your dedication and feedback! We encourage anybody who is not able to attend this meeting to comment and participate asynchronously.

2) Notes

Notetakers: @OGlekler and @webcommsat

Progress in change to minutes and notes system (summary update from @webcommsat):

  • a new system for the notes has begun and we are moving towards this in incremental steps to assist members and help onboard a team of notetakers
  • further work and feedback gathering on what members and other team would find helpful has continued. This included a meeting with @maedah on comments on the proposed changes. @yvettesonneveld and @webcommsat have had a number of meetings to continue to review the systems to encourage participation, reduce some of the barriers and potential issues, and enable members who are in opposite time zones to contribute more via slack before and in the 24 hours after a meeting
  • last week’s notes are an example of how we are moving towards a new format which incorporates feedback, input and research on what works in similar environments. https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2019/10/02/marketing-team-meeting-2019-september-25/
  • further work is being carried out in this area. The notes do not have the WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ IDs for some members who participated, this will be re-published when known. Please add your WP.org ID in the attendance section of the meeting if it is different from your Slack ID to help note takers
  • responses in the meeting:

3) Main tasks on agenda

3.1) WordPress 5.3 ReleaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software. — About Page

Task is leaded by @mikerbg

Card to organize the content

Document with the current draft

Progress:

Objectives:

  • review of the draft, refinements and cleaning up of the copy
  • feedback from the design team to make adjustments to best fit the content with the design of the page.
  • any points related to 5.3 that anybody wants to bring up in this channel? If so, please do during the meeting or leave a comment in the doc or channel the rest of the week. Please use comments or the suggestion mode so as not to erase somebody else’s work.

3.2) Digital Citizens Week (14-18 Oct 2019)

Task lead is @yvettesonneveld and and was initiated by @chanthaboune

Trello card with links to the articles

Status:

  • three articles in draft, new perspectives and suggestions encouraged. Please check signed in to Google documents and are adding comments in suggestions mode
  • in each article, you will find the outline first, and the first draft of the article next
  • please note, the last part of the article is not fully fleshed out yet, but suggestions can be added for this section too.

Objective:

  • to review what to include and identify what needs clarification. A full round of editing for style, grammar readability etc will take place later on

Next update:

  • by Friday articles 1, 3 & 4 should be ready for further edits and expecting a first draft of article 2.

4) New business

For anyone seeking additional ways to contribute, join us on Slack.

5) Contribute to documents

Shadowing and working with others in the task are a good way to start getting involved.

If anyone wants to collaborate on the documents highlighted in this meeting or on the 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. board, but is not sure how, there’s some tips on the ‘Getting started’ card on the online Trello (project management tool) board.

If you are not used to working in Google docs collaboratively, here are some quick tips:

  • if you are a new contributor you can join tasks on the Marketing Trello
  • check the status of a document with the Task Lead or a Team RepTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. as some may already be in final edit or fact check mode. Please use comments or the suggestion mode when adding comments to a document. You can also discuss with the Task lead what needs further work and they will be able to help you in areas you can contribute
  • sign in to the Google document linked on the Trello card or highlighted at the meeting with your own Google log-in. This allows others to view who is adding the comment so they can get back to you if needed. It also helps the team work together and build team spirit. If when you are working on the document, it says ‘anonymous xxx’ then you are not signed into the document
  • check you are editing in ‘suggestion mode’
  • then you can make comments to the document using the ‘plus’ sign in the right hand corner
  • please do not edit content within the main document directly without first checking with the owner of the document or have been asked to as one of the team editors
  • all documents in the team are stored in the central Marketing drive. Let one of the team reps know if you can’t access them
  • if you would like a walk through or some help using the online tools, just add a message to slack or contact a team rep, and there will be lots of help available!

(@webcommsatsat)

5) Next meeting

Wednesday 9 October 2019, 14:00 UTC.

It is aimed in future for a draft agenda to be posted in the channel on the Monday before the meeting.

Thanks to everyone who took part in today’s meeting and has worked on tasks during the last week.

webcommsat AbhaNonStopNewsUK 9:14 am on October 2, 2019  

Marketing team meeting September 25, 2019

2019/09/25

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/. Timestamp: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C0GKJ7TFA/p1569420109202500

  1. Attendance: 
    1. @mikerbg @michelleames @DijanaMuzhdeka @mapk @yvettesonneveld @karmatosed @webcommsat @jenblogs4u @nullbyte @maedahbatool @Maziar @scottjones

2) Notes

  • Notetakers: @webcommsat and @yvettesonneveld
  • Ideas:
    • in the future, attendees will be asked to add their 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/ ID to their attendance confirmation if it is different to their Slack ID. This will assist notetakers.suggestion to be trialled: members attending the meeting, if they wish, to add their local time and time zone in relation to UTC, the common time zone used in the project. This is to support awareness of time zones of participants and to aid team working.
  • Update on Notes of meetings:
    • @yvettesonneveld and @webcommsat are working on options to make the meeting notes more effective and useful for both new members, those who may be contributing async, members unable to attend and seeking to catch up on actions, other teams and external audiences.
    • in the interim, a more streamlined minutes will be produced with a link to the full notes on Slack. The Google documents notes from the last meeting were available on the drive for members to read and this link was shared. Last week’s meeting was unusual as it had virtually two sub-meetings taking place within it in addition to normal updates. The notes are therefore quite extensive. Thank you to @webcommsat

3) New members welcomed

– @mapk ; @DijanaMuzhdeka joined from her first 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/. 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. Nijmegen

4) Celebration thread

  • Slack training for supporting new contributors
    • Event: An example of a 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. based Slack training has been piloted at WP-Pompey in the UK. This will produce feedback to work in Make WordPress and community on ways to improve the onboarding / tool familiarization for new contributors. Thanks to Drew Westacott and xxx for other teams working on ideas for a template.Outcomes: Many of the useful tips shared in this training and its structure could be adapted for contributor events. Potential follow-ups: A potential marketing idea is to encourage local Meetups to do Slack training before a Contributor Day in the area to enable new attendees to benefit more and move to tasks earlier. Action: If anyone else runs sessions on using Slack which could be shared, add it to the onboarding cards on the Marketing 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.. We learnt a lot about how some of this can help at contributor events too and make slack more fun to get to grips with. (Update from @webcommsat)
  • Event: Marketing Table, Contributor Day WordCamp Nijmegen 2019 last weekend. 
  • Event: Virginia Beach WordPress Meetup 
    • Outcomes: Through marketing this is gaining momentum with attendance averaging 15 people each meeting. A good result for a new group (Update from @mikerbg)

5) WordPress 5.3 ReleaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software. – Marketing planning

5.3 Release Communication Update

This update comes from the 2019/09/25 Marketing team meeting. An agenda will be posted on 30 September for the 2019/10/03 meeting. 

5.3 Release Collaboration Meeting Objective

Objective: to use this meeting to review this document and review the proposed edits. We have had a lot of great feedback from other teams, many of whom have helpfully added content directly about their components.

On Monday, the expected Beta2 release, we will start the process over. This will be an iterative process as we approach release, but things get more and more stable as we approach the main release. (Update @miker)

Overall focus of the release

In the 2019/09/18 Marketing meeting, a number of questions were raised regarding the “main focus” of the release. This was clarified on 2019/9/20 by @francina:

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/ definitely deserves a very important place in the list of features but IMHO is not the main focus of the release. Nor is the theme, again according to me 🙂 As we said in the launch of the release cycle the focus is “polishing current interactions and make the UIs more user friendly”. If I had to sum it up, I would say that 5.3 is a release focused on enhancements, from Gutenberg, to a new default theme to media library. What do you think?

About Page Collaboration and Feedback

A major focus of the Marketing meeting was revising the current draft collaboration document. A number of feedback items have been incorporated over the last week. We reviewed the feedback and made a number of changes, while adding comments for further discussion. This is a work in progress and iterative document:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PW52syWz1bksFInmgczZA5OKhEGjM2dXGwNA6A5tl-M/edit# 

Suggestions from the team:

  • @yvettesonneveld suggested a readability check in the Hemingway app to make sure the reading level is at or below grade 8. @miker ran the current copy through the app and found it is currently at a 9th grade level;
  • @audrasjb requested a specific section be added on accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (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), which was endorsed by @francina;
  • @karmatosed raised concerns that the current document did not accurately reflect the full range of Gutenberg enhancements for the release. @youknowriad agreed and added in a list of main features, as well as starter
  • @mikerbg will compile an update on the current status of the About page to share with the major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality. team.

Images / Feature Illustration

Points on GIFs:

  • @mapk raised a number of points related to the animated GIFs currently in the About Page collaboration doc, and added specific comments directly in the collaboration doc. The GIFs were made at an earlier stage and no longer completely reflect the current stage. Feature behavior or UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. is slightly outdated in these GIFs;
  • @mapk did not think there was a formal process for creating these images. They had been created by a few of the Devs in local environments. He offered to provide the GIFs if we continue in this direction. He advised that to his knowledge there is not currently a guide or process for making these images. He has used LICEcap or Monosnap to create them in the past;
  • @webcommsat suggested the conversation on a guide for creating or requesting GIFs should be a conversation initially with the Design and the Accessibility teams. There has been information from the Accessibility team previously to help particular WordCamps before, there may be more resources. Checking with these times would be better and could potentially save time;
  • @karmatosed raised the concern that the impact of GIFs should be looked at collectively to consider their combined impact. She also stressed the importance of collaboration with the Design team on the overall direction of the design.

The conversation will be continued in the existing tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. thread: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/47708 

The meeting ended without consensus on the next steps. @mikerbg expressed that his objective was to follow the lead of the Design team, and was approaching the task with the idea that flexibility was required as there will be multiple revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. needed as we approach release.

5.3 and Social Media

As we approach the 5.3 release, we have had a number of conversations about using various social media channels to spread the message. This raised a number of questions about the current channels, and how we can interact with those:

  • a draft document was started by Maziar bringing together some of the general ideas for more proactively posting on social media. This was a starter which members were invited to add to and to make it more specific to the Marketing Team. The more time sensitive task was the survey to encourage members’ contribution and ideas (more in the minutes from last week’s meeting). Maziar working on a draft survey and to report back next meeting. 
  • For the next few weeks, we focus on helping to generate some post ideas for the 5.3 release and the Digital Citizenship week content specifically.
  • @webcommsat: We need a separate document on social media messages for the release. Perhaps this could be done on a Google sheet so that we can re-tailor messages for the different social media accounts. This would also make it easier for members to take messages and use them on their own social channels. @@mikerbg will create this doc within the Marketing google drive and share the link in the marketing channel on Slack.

This conversation is ongoing.

6) Marketing Communication and Next Steps

Background:

  • In a number of weekly marketing and more detailed meetings, work has started on ways to improve shared understanding and communication flow within the marketing team, how it communicates to other teams and wider external audiences, and responding to feedback from members, from contributor events and other teams.
  • This includes how we record meeting notes, communicate project status, and provide a roadmap of planned next steps.
  • This conversation is in conjunction with the wider strategic re-organization of marketing processes already under discussion.

Actions: @webcommsat was asked to develop some options. She is also gathering further examples and will have conversations with @yvettesonneveld and @mikerbg, @maedah, gathering input from others too, and incorporating feedback from members and at WordCamp contributor events. The main immediate action item is to treat the marketing meeting notes more as a high level overview of activity, instead of a granular “transcript” of the meeting, retaining a link to the full discussion in Slack. A summary of this will be posted at the next meeting on Wed 2 October 2019.

Mike Reid 9:03 pm on September 30, 2019
Tags:   

Marketing Agenda for Oct 2, 2019

This is the agenda for the weekly Marketing meeting for 2019/10/02 at 10 am EST (1400 UTC) in the #marketing channel.

  • Housekeeping and new member introductions
  • Discussion topics
    • 5.3 About Page – we will review the new draft (version 3)
    • Digital Citizens Week (Oct 14-18)
    • Task Lead Updates
  • Open Floor

If there is anything you would like to see on the agenda, please respond to this post or drop a comment in the #marketing channel.

Mike Reid 5:03 pm on September 27, 2019
Tags:   

Summary of WordPress Marketing Team 5.3 Discussion – Sept 25

This update comes from the 9/25 Marketing team meeting. An agenda will be posted on 9/30 for the 10/3 meeting. 

5.3 ReleaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software. Collaboration Meeting Objective

The objective was for us to use this meeting to review this doc, and review the proposed edits. We have had a lot of great feedback from other teams, many of whom have helpfully added content directly about their components.

Overall focus of the release

In the 9/18 Marketing meeting, a number of questions were raised regarding the “main focus” of the release. This was clarified on 9/20 by @francina:

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/ definitely deserves a very important place in the list of features but IMHO is not the main focus of the release. Nor is the theme, again according to me 🙂 As we said in the launch of the release cycle the focus is “polishing current interactions and make the UIs more user friendly”. If I had to sum it up, I would say that 5.3 is a release focused on enhancements, from Gutenberg, to a new default theme to media library. What do you think?

About Page Collaboration and Feedback

A major focus of the marketing meeting was revising the current draft collaboration doc. A number of feedback items have been incorporated over the last week. We reviewed the feedback and made a number of changes, while adding comments for further discussion. This is a work in progress and iterative document:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PW52syWz1bksFInmgczZA5OKhEGjM2dXGwNA6A5tl-M/edit#  

@yvettesonneveld suggests we do a readability check in Hemingway app and make sure the reading level is at or below grade 8. @miker ran the current copy through the app and found it is currently at a 9th grade level.

@audrasjb requests a specific section be added on accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (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), which @francina endorses.

@karmatosed raised concerns that the current document did not accurately reflect the full range of Gutenberg enhancements for the release. @youknowriad agreed and added in a list of main features, as well as starter copy.

@miker stated he would compile an update on the current status of the About page to share with the major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality. team.

Images / Feature Illustration

@mapk raised a number of points related to the animated gifs currently in the About Page collaboration doc, and added specific comments directly in the collaboration doc. The gifs were made at an earlier stage, and no longer completely reflect the current stage. Feature behavior or UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. is slightly outdated in these gifs.

Per @mapk, there is no formal process for creating these images. They were created by a few of the Devs in local environments. He offered to provide the gifs if we continue in this direction.

@mapk advised that to his knowledge there is not currently a guide or process for making these images, but that he uses LICEcap or Monosnap to create them in the past.

@abhanonstopnewsuk suggests we start this conversation with the Design and the Accessibility teams on what guidance/ info they have on creating GIFs.  I think I have seen something on GIFs from accessibility team before to help WordCamps before. Think it may be worth a check with them first and save a lot of time too.

@karmatosed raised the concern that the impact of gifs should be looked at collectively to consider their combined impact. She also stressed the importance of collaboration with the design team on the overall direction of the design.

The conversation will be continued in the existing trac thread: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/47708 

The meeting ended without consensus on the next steps. @miker expressed that his objective was to follow the lead of the design team, and was approaching the task with the idea that flexibility was required as there will be multiple revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. needed as we approach release.

Social Media

As we approach the 5.3 release, we have had a number of conversations about using various social media channels to spread the message. This raised a number of questions about the current channels, and how we can interact with those.

@Maziar created a doc for use as a starting point when looking at various social channels: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15Y3EF-B-RU0YwB-_3iO1XVPMVtOkRqbD4GwK7Xrddv0/edit# 

From @abhanonstopnewsuk: We need a separate document on social media messages, perhaps this could be done on a Google sheet so that we can retailor messages for the different social media accounts. This would also make it easier for members to take messages and use them on their own social channels.

@miker will create this doc within the Marketing google drive and share the link in the #marketing channel.

This conversation is ongoing.

Marketing Release Communication and Next Steps

Outside of the public marketing meeting, we have had a number of conversations about improving clarity and communication coming from the marketing team. This includes how we record meeting notes, communicate project status, and provide a roadmap of planned next steps. This conversation is in conjunction with the largest strategic re-organization of marketing processes already under discussion.

@abhanonstopnewsuk organized the conversations with @yvettesonneveld and @miker. The main immediate action item is to treat the marketing meeting notes more as a high level overview of activity, instead of a granular “transcript” of the meeting. We will still link to the full conversation 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/., but will focus the notes more on the take aways and outcomes. We will also work more to vet the information going out in the marketing notes, instead of just reposting what was said in the channel to ensure consistency with broader communication from other teams.

In addition, we are moving to publish a formal agenda in advance of the meeting. Historically, we have used the same meeting agenda every meeting, and relying on task leads to communicate activity and needed input on their specific initiatives. While this is important, and we will continue to rely heavily on individual task leads, we will be proactive communicating specific agenda items and discussions as far in advance as feasible.

This will hopefully make it much easier for other stakeholders within WordPress to be aware of where and when specific conversations will happen. The goal is for all stakeholders to be able to attend conversations relevant to their specific initiatives.

Yvette Sonneveld 9:05 pm on September 20, 2019
Tags:   

Marketing Team Notes — September 18th, 2019

Slack timestamp

Agenda

1. Attendance thread
2. Notetaker
3. New person thread
4. Celebration thread
5. Task-lead update time
6. Collaboration time: we will continue fleshing out some content ideas for digital citizen week
7. Any other business

1 – Attendance (others may have contributed async)

Marcus Burk, @OGleckler, @nullbyte, @jenblogs4, @webcommsat, @harryjackson1221, Daria Gogoleva, Yashwardhan Rana
@Dhruvpandya, @Felipeelia, Maziar, Michelle Ames

2 – Taking notes

  • @webcommsat suggests using headings and subheadings to make it much easier to follow, better for members to find items, and improve accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (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). 
  • Suggestion for a way forward to make it easier for both the reader and the person taking notes to avoid just copying large chunks from 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/. without reviewing or checking personal data. Proposed use of H2 headings for the main subsections of the meeting and H3 heading for each topic/card. 
  • Suggestion for a meeting notes template to make creating meeting notes less time consuming and easier for an editor to review.
  • A check added to the process to remove any personal references for data management compliance (eg if someone is unwell) prior to minutes being published. Specifically to make sure these don’t go out on the RSS feedRSS Feed RSS is an acronym for Real Simple Syndication which is a type of web feed which allows users to access updates to online content in a standardized, computer-readable format. This is the feed..
  • Having a structure that members can follow would also support @meadahbatool in her great encouragement of new people to be involved in taking the minutes.
  • Thanks to @webcommsat for working on notes from this meeting and its sub meetings.

Comments: 

  1. @yvettesonneveldveld: Good point @abhanonstopnewsuk
  2. @siobhanseija: Absolutely true. Thanks for your input @webcommsat.  I know you’ve mentioned it all before, and it has been noted. It’s in the plans we have for restructuring some processes, like the notes. As we’re a bit short on hands/hours sometimes, we haven’t gotten around to actually fleshing it out yet.
  3. @nullbyte I will look into it and add some feedback. I am currently just observing how the team works.
  4. @webcommsat: It is valuable to be able to raise the feedback from new members at the last few contributor events, and even better that they can read about what is happening to help them in the future. Thanks @siobhanseija for the reply and to everyone at Zurich and Brighton who raised these suggestions again there.  Siobhan, if there is anything that members can do to help in the interim while the new process comes in, I am sure we would have enough people who could help do this and be ready to lend a hand or several.
  5. @yvettesonneveld requested @webcomms to assist with the notes to help develop an idea of what they could look like, the team members can add further suggestions to create a better instruction and a checklist for someone in an editorial role? 

Action: @webcomms to look at the backend of the site to see how a template could work or formatting guide which could be copied for each meeting to save time. The 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’s advice may be needed. 

3 – New Person Thread

Nothing to note.

4 – Celebration Thread

Purpose:

This is where you can share your #MakeWordPress Marketing successes of this past week. What did we get done and what are we proud of overall?

Responses: 

  1. @yvettesonneveld: our team is creating more front-facing content.
  2. @webcommsat: I led the Marketing table 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. Zurich last weekend. We did a number of tasks at the 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/. and during the conference day of the event itself including:
    1. onboarding new contributors
    2. bringing in the expertise from other Make teams to help with fact-checking on some of the marketing cards
    3. continuing the work on tasks shared with community and WordPress.tv
    4. identifying feedback and input onto a number of tasks and the Contributor Orientation Tool
    5. and some even continued working on tasks together the day after the conference too
    6. the 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. cards are being updated. Huge input into sustainability document and the marketing videos on WordPress.tv, as well as ways of improving further the Make WordPress marketing onboarding document.
    7. Particular thanks to @yvettesonneveld for helping with log-ins and welcomes and to all those who took part during the few days. So many updates, it will take a while to summarize them all. Growing the community and helping people get involved, well done everyone. If you view the update on the slack channel from Friday, you can read more about some of the things that were worked on. I will add more names here later in the meeting or feel free to add yourself if you were part of the amazing team who took part in Zurich. 
    8. @yvettesonneveld response: You onboarded some wonderful people again, @webcommsat! Thanks for your amazing work!
  3. @michelleames – We started working on content/posts for digital citizenship week!

5 – Task-Lead Updates

WordPress 5.3 Launch Content on WP Marketing 

Task-Lead: @miker
https://trello.com/c/oxkheE1l/286-wordpress-53-launch-content

Marketing team’s input includes: 

There will be multiple rounds of feedback and review, and the full releaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software. is expected in a couple of months. Encourages team members to read the release blog posts as are a great way to stay up with what is going on with WordPress. The blog posts also tend to be really detailed, and a lot of the marketing team role is taking that and focusing it for distribution. (@miker)

Update:

The sub marketing group met on Friday to discuss the overall layout and content, and have started a draft!I Thanks to @miker @jenblogs4u @marybaum @Daria_Gogoleva @Marcus_Burk @webcommsat for participating, and to @felipeelia for feedback from the coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. team! 

Also contributions from the marketing table at WordCamp Zurich, led by @webcommsat and all those who have contributed async. Feedback for the marketing team as a whole from the Contributor Day and onboarding: these kind of sub groups working in the main Marketing slack are very helpful for new members and those from other teams to discover more about potential ways to contribute, to shadow how projects work in the team, google docs updates etc, and encourage future involvement.

Collaboration doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PW52syWz1bksFInmgczZA5OKhEGjM2dXGwNA6A5tl-M/edit#
Plan (outline from the briefing by @Miker): 

  • a few additional features have been added to the collaboration document post Friday’s meeting
  • this document is to be shared with the release team for further feedback
  • at the marketing team meeting, the aim is to review the document and share it with the wider members for further feedback
  • feedback on specific features that will be released or pushed as part of the release will be shortly requested, and comments on priorities
  • comments in suggestions mode welcome from wider marketing team meetings during the meeting and async. You can add comments in “suggestion mode” in the Google document in the shared Marketing drive. Please avoid overwriting anyone else’s work by adding comments in ‘editing mode’ at this stage by accident.

Responses to document:

  • view from @felipeelia): “Template refactoring” item is part of the theme development and is something that the end user (or even the devs who wants to use the theme) will be unlikely to notice.  
  • non-Latin locales:
    • how the new version will support non-Latin locales on new themes. Something nice to highlight (@felipeelia)
  • @Daria Gogoleva info request: What do non-Latin locales include? 

New theme feature

  • Source used for the basis of the information on the theme features was Anders Noren’s in. This is in the introduction of the document (@jen4blogs4u). Text from Anders Noren on the twentytwenty theme in Make WordPress Core https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/09/06/introducing-twenty-twenty/
  • 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. Editor will soon celebrate its first birthday in Core and with every update it grows more capable. The promise of the block editor is to give users the freedom to design and structure the… 
  • Members thought the theme could be featured in broader, briefer terms. Potentially reference streamlined css and as much modern CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site.
  • previous release notices have noted the arrival of the new theme but have not contained theme detail. The release achievements are the focus of the release notice. The new theme will have its own detailed description on the download page (@jen4blogs4u
  • Action to consider: the discussion in the sub team has tended to view this as a single project, it may need to be looked at as multiple projects. It seems as if we are discussing both as a single project, so I wanted to bring that up. @miker to raise this specifically for feedback 
  • It is believed that all theme releases will be part of a broader WordPress release. Generally there is one theme a year (@miker)

Mobile features promotion

  • Option if the theme is not the main focus, then focus on improved mobile features as a headline. Significant number of improvements in this release. (@miker)

Video to potentially accompany upcoming release

Purpose/ Task: @miker working on a personal project for a POC for a video that could work with some minor tweaking for the upcoming release: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SF10xlyAhXU&feature=youtu.be

Members gave feedback and asked about what teams could assist on this to include it in the promotion.

6 – Digital Citizenship week content planning

Task lead: @yvettesonneveld

https://trello.com/c/sq89mgQv

Working document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TgBuCxzbPZ4d7pKO_D-wnLrmXi69Xdu2ITUYjHrgHiQ/edit 

Task at the meeting: consider audiences we could target with content. Digital Citizenship Week is dedicated to encouraging good digital citizenship and improve smart and safe use of using technology.

Ideas included:

  • some content should be aimed to parents/teachers and maybe at least one article to students themselves (Michelle Ames)
  • how to reach these audiences in the first place? (OGlekler)
  • targeting information potentially into age groups (Yashwardhan Rana)
  • need to publish it and then promote through social media with good hashtags. Make sure the content has good organic SEO for keywords. SEO and catchy titles
  • potentially some infographics
  • at least one picture for social media reposts 
  • a social media swipe file creation to help contributors to Make WordPress to assist in distributing content through blogs and their own social media accounts, and to support the official channels
  • Articles will also be published on 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//news. This will also mean an automatic tweet via JetPack. Featured images requirements to be identified by Yvette

@OGlekle suggests a first article around “What is Digital Citizenship and why should it matter”?

@webcommsat suggests to keep an underlying focus on how the WP community adds to the digital citizenship information and awareness raising in this series of articles and promotions. In this way, the WP community can add real value and substance to the existing information. In the school age education setting, there is already a vast amount of curriculum-approved information in different countries and teaching specialist information by qualified professionals. So perhaps as we are developing the content ideas we can consider how the plan for each one adds to what is already out there or is likely to be being re-promoted by existing topic leaders/ organizations during the week. This will help us link back to WP and improve the likelihood of the messages being heard and used.

[update: article outlines have been completed at WordCamp Nijmegen Contributors Day. @yvettesonneveld, task lead for this project, will check in with the internal client, @chantaboune, and discuss next steps.]

7 – Any Other Business

Survey

In reply to a conversation a few weeks ago, @Maziar: prepared an initial draft proposal for thinking about social media use by the Make WordPress marketing team: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15Y3EF-B-RU0YwB-_3iO1XVPMVtOkRqbD4GwK7Xrddv0/edit

@Maziar mentioned he’ll continue to work on a survey to be shared on social media. 

Yvette clarified: the idea of the initial strategic brainstorm was to get a feel among current contributors for what direction the marketing team should go. The idea behind the survey was to make sure those who had ideas but were shy to share them in Slack or a document could still do so in a survey. 

Therefore, adding suggestions for questions to the survey will be helpful, but a survey like that will not be promoted on social media. Potentially, we could ask new contributors to fill it out so that we could see trends? 


Promoting sustainability at WordCamps card

https://trello.com/c/DkVqaHCN

@webcommsat: Quite a lot of work on this in the last few months. Thank you to everyone and from other teams who have provided input. @BreannMcDede and I can look at the latest updates. We will be taking three queries identified for advice to @andreamiddleton in the next few weeks.

Any new or existing members who would like to help with the case studies, get in touch.

Updates on Twitter were also put out at Zurich. Please do share the thread. They have been tagged MakeWordPress too. https://twitter.com/nonstopnewsuk/status/1172883393798909953?s=21


Maedah Batool 1:36 pm on September 16, 2019  

Marketing Team Notes — September 11th, 2019

Today’s Meeting

Meeting Attended By: @yvettesonneveld, @maedahbatool, @jenblogs4u, @markus burk, @Ryan Bickett, @Gtarafdar, @Daria Gogoleva, @siobhanseija, @Maziar, @miker, @abhanonstopnewsuk, @harryjackson1221, @marybaum

Notes Taken By: @Daria Gogoleva

Task Updates

  • @yvettesonneveld: I must admit that I haven’t had time to go through the survey input yet. I have blocked some time on Friday. I will create a card then, too, and get back to you all next week. We were involved in editing and publishing another HeroPress story on 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//news last Friday. Kudos to @jenblogs4u and @Ali-WPFiddlyBits.
  • @yvettesonneveld: https://trello.com/c/ZpY2v9Ew.
  • @Maziar: I’ll come back with the questions sheet and a survey about social media very soon Yvette. (Sorry but in the verge of releasing two products this month that’s why I’m delayed).
  • @abhanonstopnewsuk: I have updated various 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. cards I am involved with. Thanks, everyone for doing the work on these.

New Business Discussion

  • @yvettesonneveld: I wanted to use this time to discuss the project @chanthaboune brought up: content to post on /news around Digital Citizenship.
  • @yvettesonneveld: https://trello.com/c/sq89mgQv
  • @yvettesonneveld: Well, one of the thoughts behind posting more human interest content on /news is to show the human side of the WordPress software. We have a huge variety of users, so not all posts will resonate with everyone. Which is why, in my opinion, we should determine what audience we’d write for each article.
  • @yvettesonneveld: So, one of the questions/requests I have: who of you has experience with writing article outlines way that it is a proposal that gives an idea of what we’d like to discuss and what sort of conclusion we’re thinking about? I think that would be really helpful for Josepha and would make sure we’re not running into a direction that doesn’t feel right for her. And also helps to make sure we’re not stepping onto any toes…
  • @Daria Gogoleva: Firstly, can you please give some examples of segments what WP have?
  • @yvettesonneveld: Good question, let me name a few:
    • hobby bloggers
    • solopreneurs who build and/or maintain their own websites
    • Solopreneurs who generate revenue by offering WordPress related services
    • Business owners of small, medium & large businesses whose business websites run on WordPress who are not directly involved in managing it but have their needs and concerns
    • Employees of these businesses who use WordPress to publish content
    • Employees of businesses offering WP related services, like agencies, hosting, 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 developers, etc.
  • @yvettesonneveld: I’d suggest deciding upon different TA for each of the articles. That way we have something interesting for a wider audience.
  • @yvettesonneveld: Another approach could be to speak to the mothers and fathers of the WordPress community. How can we all help raise a generation of confident, friendly, helpful, encouraging digital citizens?
  • @siobhanseija: Here’s some info about Digital Citizenship Week: Digital citizens think critically about what they see online and learn to make their own smart choices online and in life. That means understanding the benefits and risks of sharing information, knowing the difference between a credible news source and a sponsored ad, and balancing screen time with other activities. Cultivating these skills is essential for anyone to thrive in today’s increasingly tech-driven world. But digital citizens aren’t born — they’re taught by teachers like you (source: https://www.commonsense.org/education/digital-citizenship-week).
  • @yvettesonneveld: Ideally, I’d like to share 2-3 outlines with Josepha early next week. And, once we agree on the direction we’re taking, we can start fleshing the articles out.
  • @Daria Gogoleva: maybe we should brainstorm ideas right now?
  • @yvettesonneveld: Once the copy is finished, we may want to involve the design team to get some illustrations that we can also use for content distribution.
  • @yvettesonneveld: I have found the document in the meanwhile. Please all head over here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TgBuCxzbPZ4d7pKO_D-wnLrmXi69Xdu2ITUYjHrgHiQ/edit.
  • @siobhanseija: @yvettesonneveld Do you have an idea of how many articles we’d need? And will we publish all of them in that week? Or are these things we can discuss and decide on together.
  • @yvettesonneveld: We’re looking for 5 articles. One for every day.
  • @siobhanseija: Josepha asked us, as a team, to think about blog posts WordPress could publish in relation to this week. Please check Yvette’s Trello card and thread above if that’s something you’d like to join in on!
  • @miker: Hello all, apologies for being late! I do have some updates on the upcoming 5.3 releaseRelease A release is the distribution of the final version of an application. A software release may be either public or private and generally constitutes the initial or new generation of a new or upgraded application. A release is preceded by the distribution of alpha and then beta versions of the software..
  • @miker: So the big update is that the beta1 version of 5.3 will be released in 12 days.
  • @miker: This includes the new theme Twenty Twenty (spelled out). For more information, check out this blog post: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/09/06/introducing-twenty-twenty/.
  • @miker: For this betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. release, we (marketing) have an opportunity to help create the About page, which includes the copy. This includes specifically highlighting the new features for the editor (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/). Once the beta1 is released, the other beta releases will be bug fixes (meaning the feature list will not change).
  • @miker: To align with our conversations from the past several weeks, I want us to approach the initial draft in a collaborative fashion.
  • @marybaum: Right. We have a nice opportunity to introduce some benefit-oriented language to the features descriptions since we’re Marketing!
  • @miker: First, I want to confirm the team contributing to the release. Currently, myself, @marybaum, @jenblogs4u, and @abhanonstopnewsuk have all volunteered for the release. Are there any others that would like to be included?
  • @markus burk: Would love to contribute to that
  • @miker: Well-timed @Marcus Burk!
  • @Daria Gogoleva: I could also participate but as I’m new, I need clear guidance.
  • @miker: So, right now, the features for 5.3 are almost finalized. I would like us to find time to collaborate on the content outline as a team. I think it is important we all align on the objectives for the release, and can then break the individual areas into sub-tasks.
  • @marybaum: Given that the overall focus is on polishing the UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing., I’m thinking we might want to get up to speed on the tickets that are on the milestone, to see exactly what enhancements are making it into the beta.
  • @miker: With that being said, I wanted to raise the idea of doing a 5.3 release “office hours” on Friday during the same timeslot as this meeting. My objective is for us to complete the outline, and then who will be working on each piece. My goal is to have a draft we can discuss in the meeting next week. So first off, from the 5.3 release team, does this seem viable? I know we are all volunteers and I don’t want to be too aggressive with timelines.
  • @marybaum: Maybe we could make a list of the ones that excite us as users, and start our discussion from there?
  • @marybaum: Two days from today sounds good. 9 Central, or 16:00?
  • @miker: @marybaum 9 am CST
  • @jenblogs4u: Are we meeting here or?
  • @miker: Yep @jenblogs4u, here on this channel!
  • @yvettesonneveld: I’d suggest adding any meeting times to the card description so anyone could join?
  • @miker: So for Friday, I will create the doc we will use, and add it to Trello today. I’ll post the link here in the channel shortly.
  • @marybaum: Also, the tickets in the 5.3 milestones, labeled enhancements.
  • @marybaum: Okey dokey. Here’s that ticket list of enhancements milestoned for 5.3 with the keyword has-patch: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/query?keywords=~has-patch&type=enhancement&milestone=5.3&groupdesc=1&group=type&max=1000&col=id&col=summary&col=owner&col=type&col=priority&col=component&col=version&order=priority
  • @yvettesonneveld: We’re past the top of the hour already. That went fast! Thanks, everyone for pitching in! Any questions, thoughts or concerns we can help out with? Anyone looking for (additional) ways to contribute?
  • @miker: One thing I wanted to share, looking at the tickets for 5.3 today, this one stood out: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/14459. This ticket was originally created NINE YEARS AGO and is finally making it into WP. There have been a number of people contributing to it over the years as well. To me, this is an inspiring example of what makes this community special. It takes a lot of dedication to keep on something for that long and keep pushing at it.
Maedah Batool 3:36 pm on September 9, 2019
Tags:   

Marketing Team Notes — September 4th, 2019

Today’s Meeting

Meeting Attended By: @maedahbatool, @siobhanseija, @miker, @harryjackson1221, @yvettesonneveld, @MichelleAmes, @abhanonstopnewsuk, @MarcusBurk, @OGlekler, @bseekins, @Maziar, @jenblogs4u

Notes Taken By: @maedahbatool

Slack Timestamp

New Person Thread

  • @MarcusBurk: Hi, I’m Marcus. First time here in the weekly Marketing Meeting. I’m the Head of Marketing at Inpsyde and would love to contribute regularly if I can.
  • @miker: Welcome Marcus! You picked the perfect time to get involved. Things slowed quite a bit over the summer (as things tend to do), but we are now getting ready to close out the year with a bang!
  • @JoséSotelo: Hello! would love to contribute.

Celebration Thread

  • @miker: We had like 15+ people come out to our most recent WP 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..
  • @abhanonstopnewsuk: Lots of work on identifying #wptv videos which market WordPress and the community. Had a stream of new submissions come in from WordCamps and people who have contributed previously coming back as they had a bit more time. Wonderful to see many repeat contributors to this and it continues to be shared at WordCamps and Contributor Days. Well done everyone. If you want to participate, let me know and we have lots of people who can now help you get started with it. Opportunities for translators/polyglots too.

5. Strategy Brainstorm

  • @yvettesonneveld: As we discussed before, we are looking to set our priorities for the next 6 months. Over the past few years, our main focus has been creating copy for all sorts of on and offline content. We know, however, that you all have so much more to offer than “just” copywriting. In addition to that, we have had two leadership transitions in the past year, and we may need to review our leadership structure. We’d like your thoughts on the direction of this time, and because of that, we’d like to put together a survey. During this meeting, we’ll brainstorm the contents of this survey. We’ll use the input of the strategy meeting that was held on July 24th as well. So we’re thinking about a survey that has a combination of closed and open-ended questions. I’d like to use this document to gather the questions. Here’s the doc — https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Blb8mpWwFmkET-qt6e4yEOEbedZpxY-0aGervzCW500/edit
  • @abhanonstopnewsuk: Hi @yvettesonneveld and @miker are there particular aspects which have been discussed on the purpose of this survey and key things it is trying to discover, please? This might help with people suggesting content for it. This may also help people contribute to async.
  • @yvettesonneveld: So any thoughts on how to formulate in an introduction for this?
  • @miker: How about encouraging each person to start with a single bullet point. It keeps the document from getting overwhelming and encourages people to prioritize their main point/thought.
  • @MichelleAmes: If we want to gather a lot of replies, we should post it in multiple arenas….on the .org site, on Twitter, and even on the dashboard announcements. We can also use the Meetup newsletter to share with meetup organizers to put out to their groups. And we should encourage WP companies to share the opportunity within their circles as well.
  • @yvettesonneveld: Let me give some pointers, and you could use suggestions to share thoughts? So, please feel free to either start editing, share your thoughts here on the channel, or using comments. There’s no wrong way here. There are no “stupid questions”.
  • @OGlekler: About lack of “middle man”… Maybe contributors can be organized dynamically by a group of interest with a tree hierarchy. In this case, each will have someone particular to ask questions like what to do in each case depending on what you are interested in and this can be viewed somewhere.
  • @miker: That is a pretty succinct way to describe what we are looking to do. We are looking for the best ways to organize this type of workflow. At least my vision is people can jump into the meetings, we have a list of open projects – and people pick what they can/want to get involved with. Do you have any thoughts @OGlekler on what we can do to better enable this type of system?
  • @yvettesonneveld: @OGlekler could you check out 4b, I’m trying to rephrase your thought into a survey question. Does this reflect what you have in mind?
  • @OGlekler: @miker I haven’t. It’s horrible looks like MLM…. but I think they don’t have such clarity as we need. @yvettesonneveld It’s a great question, but I had different meaning… more simple… There are jobs to be done from most important and general like “To make everyone to know and love WP” to less important like checking the document and actualize it.  So, when I like to make a job – I see clearly how important it is, what is timing, how big is work, who else is working and who is in charge. It all should work in 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., but now it must be actualized and someone, who can prioritize should do it. It isn’t interesting if no one answering you and no clarity about how actual the work is.
  • @Maziar: Does the WordPress organization ever think about the wordpress.org social media presence? The accounts I see are literally abandoned.
  • @miker: That is one of the things we are talking about! You are right that we do not have much visibility/role with those accounts, but I think this is one of the biggest things we can change.
  • @siobhanseija: At this time, we do not have access to them @Maziar. We might be able to discuss that further if we have more of a plan, I can imagine.
  • @Maziar: Absolutely! and I guess that’s one of the major points of difference how likes of Wix are trying to target(/(poach!) customers.
  • @miker: When I think of social, I think we have two main opportunities: 1). We have a number of social accounts for WP.org that are underutilized. (This includes LinkedIn, etc)
    2). We have a number of partner organizations (hosts, etc) that would distribute WP content if we had it. I think the answer to both is that we need more content created for social sharing. If we create content more regularly, I think we have the channels to distribute it.
  • @jenblogs4u: This falls in line with the need for content and social strategy, but it would be awesome to have an ongoing list of needed content topics so if someone wanted a quick project, they could pick something to work on with little or no direction. The copy could be kept in a folder and edited on a weekly basis and published as appropriate.
  • @Maziar: I agree Jen. There should be something like an editorial calendar for every week and month where we list, track, produce and promote the content for each and every day.
  • @abhanonstopnewsuk: Social communications are a big opportunity, but needs to be on-brand too and ensure they can be long term sustained. Official social responses can also often mean someone needs to be constantly reviewing them, updating them and ensuring posts are not against the principles of the project, the codes, checking against hijack of hashtags and discussions, and avoiding a sporadic approach.The community has been doing some work on official social media channels and also on where they are owned in terms of access, which I have been participating there and as some of this affects the social media document for WordCamps. I would suggest any work on posting to all WordPress.orgsocial channels (we would not be affecting WordPress.com) would need to work with this.A good start would also be on exploring the hashtags in use and what could be done more easily using these for spreading the word.In any survey questions on this marketing team posting to all social media channels, can I suggest we could include a basic line about what the current situation is? This will also mean that respondents can give a meaningful and contextual response to the questions, and feel more supported in expressing their views and giving their time.
  • @Maziar: I agree about all points Abha. We should work hand in hand with the Community team. Research hashtags also in the survey ask people what they think our situation is. I am actually excited to kickstart this project because I believe .org deserves a lot more social presence than it has right now.
  • @abhanonstopnewsuk: There are issues about social media channel rules and ownership that we just need to be aware of and avoid causing any difficulty to any processes in place to secure accounts, comply with channel rules, etc. There was some data I produced a while back on measurement and evaluation of the key hashtags in circulation and relevant to the project, trends/difficulties, usage, use of those tags for accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (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). The document should be in the Google drive. What would be useful for the survey is incorporating a question on what hashtags respondents use when posting about 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/, the contributor teams (this will also have some overlap with the group looking at contributor event communications) and the WP community. @siobhanseija @yvettesonneveld, and @Maziar. There is an appendix in the social media doc about hashtags in use, which was updated at one of the camps recently as a separate document as various parts of this have now been reviewed, and some with assistance from the channels. There have been some delays with changes in people, but thanks to London and Europe contributor days, there has been a lot of update checking work done and with professionals who work in the various channels full time. Thanks to some specialists in Ireland, some more work is scheduled on this for October and early September. The community will be doing further work on this after this as this document is for the handbook. The appendix on hashtags could be added later once the marketing survey returns more data on hashtags in use and these can be evaluated.
  • @yvettesonneveld: One not of clarification, especially regarding social media. While we may, aa a team, have the ambition to be involved in social media, and can potentially be of substantial value, let’s find a way to earn the respect and trust of those who currently have access first. I know I wouldn’t hand over social media to someone I didn’t know, like and trust either. So if we have the ambition to get involved, lets work towards building that know, like and trust. There are lots of ways to be of value without having direct access to the accounts.
  • @abhanonstopnewsuk: Excellent point @yvettesonneveld. The hashtag and analysis work can be updated and show this value. Perhaps we need to identify the areas where the marketing team can add value as you suggest. This ongoing encouragement for working more as a team and combined community across the whole project. Through this and all the amazing work being done in every corner of the project, we will never be short of material to market it! Yeah, @yvettesonneveld.
  • @Maziar: @yvettesonneveld do you mean we should not claim or request the owner of social media accounts under the name WordPress dot org?
  • @yvettesonneveld: @Maziar, yes, that. While the marketing team may seem the obvious team to manage those, those accounts existed before our team was created. I know we have lots of value to offer. but we don’t want to step on any toes either. We’ll get there. By earning know, like and trust.
  • @siobhanseija: I think what Yvette means is that we’re probably not going to get it as easily as it might sound here. A first step could be creating some content and asking “them” to publish it for a while, to earn trust and such. I think (correct me if I’m wrong @yvettesonneveld) she just wanted to say so as people are super keen to get on this, but we need to stay realistic and know it’s not as easy as just asking for it. Just to set expectations a bit!
  • @MichelleAmes: Another idea: we could do online/video focus groups based on those who may opt-in through the survey. For example, if we find data leaning in one way or another (or ambiguous) we could hold 4-5 focus groups (so we do times that work around the globe) to get more qualitative inputs.
  • @yvettesonneveld: That could absolutely be an idea. I have added some thoughts to the wrap-up section.
  • @yvettesonneveld: Any final thoughts? Ideas on how we could improve collaborate content building like this?
  • @Maziar: I’ll share my detailed proposal on how to initiate and conduct our social presence Yvette.
  • @OGlekler: Can you do a test survey before do a general one? It can raise some new questions.
  • @yvettesonneveld: @Maziar yes please on social. And I think we’d invite a small group first. If anyone has ideas on how to make that work without losing the input or having anyone have to fill out the survey twice, please share!
  • @Maziar: Ok so I’ll form my thoughts as a survey and share on social media (will get it approved here first). Just can we use different social media accounts for this not only my personal account? Maybe everyone who is interested to help in Make team can grab the survey questions and help to promote the survey.
  • @MichelleAmes: Will we create another doc (maybe in a Google form) to start to flesh out what the actual survey might look like and how it could read? I’m happy to help with this. I have a lot of experience from my master’s work on Survey Design.
  • @siobhanseija: I had only one thought that might be good for the next time @yvettesonneveld: let’s wait with commenting too much on what’s being written till afterward. Everyone should feel safe to add in any ideas and thoughts, at a later time we can look at how we’ll work it and what will actually stick. Would love to have everyone feel like they can pitch in! On that note: that is harder when we add in notes anonymously like a lot happened today. Which is also a way to make people feel safe. Tough one!
  • @abhanonstopnewsuk: I think for next time, choosing where you want people to add comments, and more importantly at this stage, questions about the area rather than its final wording, would be really helpful.Documents saved in the marketing drive can I think to be set so that everyone has to sign in to comment. I think Dwayne put some useful instructions in on this to avoid the long term issue of items being changed by those finding documents on google. Perhaps @siobhanseija might know. It may also help people start a positive dialogue on a question and together find some solutions/answers. Lots of good discussions today and ideas, and as it is still holidays for some people, more will no doubt join later on. Can we regularly publicize on slackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. in advance of these strategy discussions the date and times, and even help people by listing some of the areas to be covered or you will want them to be thinking about Yvette? Well done for all the work on this to date by everyone.
Josepha 3:57 pm on August 30, 2019
Tags: make.wordpress.org/core,   

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