Angela Jin 4:25 pm on August 11, 2020
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Tuesday Trainings: How to be an excellent discussion group leader

The Community Team is exploring a new way of connecting the WordPress community through recorded workshops and live, online discussion groups. In fact, you may have seen posts on the Community Blog lately, calling for Learn WordPress workshop presenters, reviewers, and discussion group leaders. These are all important roles in helping the WordPress community connect and learn from each other.

Today, we want to focus on the crucial role of discussion group leaders, and how they help communities grow and learn from each other. Similar to being a meetup group organizer, anyone can be a discussion group leader! 

What do discussion group leaders do?

Discussion group leaders bring everyone together by scheduling synchronous discussion times. When it is time to meet, they introduce the topic, and help facilitate the discussion. Questions that can be used for starting off the discussion will have been provided by workshop presenters. If the discussion strays too far from the original topic, discussion group leaders refocus the conversation. When conversations stall, a discussion group leader can ask a question to restart the discussion. 

Another important role of the discussion group leaders is to make sure everyone gets an opportunity to be heard. They keep an eye out for quieter participants who may want to speak, and help them feel comfortable in doing so. Similarly, discussion group leaders remind all group members to be mindful of time, so that the discussion isn’t solely held by one or just a few voices. 

What resources are available to you?

Discussion group leaders have an advantage in that they get to select the workshops for discussion! Each workshop will come with learning objectives, which can help viewers quickly understand what the workshop is about, and what the workshop presenter hopes you will learn from watching the video. Workshops will also come with some comprehension questions created by the workshop presenter. These questions are a great way to start a discussion!

Another resource could be other members of your discussion group. Even if you come to your group prepared with lots of questions and points for discussion, another participant might also have some excellent questions and discussion topics related to the workshop. Multiple perspectives will help all discussion group participants better understand the workshop material. 

Discussion Group Formats

The goal of discussion groups is to add community and interactivity back into the experience of watching workshops online. We want to create a supportive, safe space where people can connect and learn together and from each other. Because of this, discussion groups can take many different forms, and we invite you to be creative! Here are a few ideas:

  • Use Ice breakers or activities to learn about each other & create a sense of community.
  • Use the comprehension questions as a way to guide your discussion.
  • Invite everyone to share what they learned from watching the workshop.
  • Invite everyone to share any follow up questions that came up. Then, everyone can help answer each other’s questions!
  • Invite people to share how they will apply their newfound knowledge from the workshop.

The format of your discussion group isn’t limited to just one style. Get creative! Depending on the size, make up, and preferences of your discussion group, you may provide a variety of formats to help engage all kinds of learners. Don’t forget to review this handbook page which includes helpful tips and suggestions for online event hosting tools. 

Let’s brainstorm some of those possible styles now. What ideas for discussion groups do you have? Please share them in the comments below, along with any other tips for discussion group leaders!

Want to become a discussion group leader? Great! You can either start one as an organizer of your 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, or apply here. 

#tuesdaytrainings
#community-management #learn-wordpress

WordCamp.org 4:00 am on August 10, 2020
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Weekly Updates

Hello to all our Deputies, 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. organizers, 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. wranglers, and WordPress Community builders! You were probably hard at work this weekend. Tell us what you got accomplished in our #weekly-update!

Have you run into a roadblock with the stuff you’re working on? Head over to #community-events or #community-team 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/. and ask for help!

Hugh Lashbrooke 7:53 am on August 7, 2020
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Learn WordPress: Project Details and Roadmap

Since there is general agreement about the proposal for a new online content format that involves asynchronous workshops combined with synchronous discussion groups, as well as the fact that we will not be seeing any in-person events in the WordPress community for the foreseeable future, let’s make a plan for setting up the first iteration of the new format that is currently being called “Learn WordPress”.

This post is a long one, but it’s worth the read! Expand the content and read through to the end for some opportunities to get involved.

Continue reading →

#roadmap

jillbinder 9:56 pm on August 6, 2020
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Diverse Speaker Workshops Report – July 2020

The Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) normally trains WordPress 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 how to hold their own Diverse Speaker workshop in order to increase how many speaker applications they get from people from marginalized and underrepresented groups.

During the pandemic, the team is delivering the workshop to the global WordPress community online ourselves.

Each month, we are reporting at the tag #DiverseSpeakerWorkshopsReports how these workshops are going.

July 2020

July’s events consisted of a three-part workshop, one hour each day, three days in a row.

Number who attended: 20
From number of cities: 18
From number of countries: 12 (Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama, Serbia, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States)

Number who attended all 3 sessions: 3
Number who attended 2 sessions: 6

Increase in public speaking confidence after taking a workshop: 10%

Testimonials

“Before I took this workshop, I was unable to determine the best topic for my talk. Thanks to this session, I am able to tailor my talk to a 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. audience. I would recommend this workshop to anyone who is for/looking to achieve a successful talk at WordCamp.”
– Waddell “Dell” Fields, Web Developer, Author, Speaker, Trainer and Personal Coach

“LOVED the #WPDiversity Workshop! It really inspired me to bring this type of content to the WordPress Mexico community and bring more diverse groups into speaking at our Meetups and WordCamps. ¡Muchas gracias!”
– Maryl Gonzalez – Co-Founder / Lead UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it./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. Designer | Scrum/Agile PM – The App Chefs

August workshops and beyond

Love this? Come attend a workshop series!

Next one is August 18-20, with practise sessions on August 25 & 27: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/24/call-for-participants-diverse-speaker-workshops-july-august/

In September and November, we are going to be featuring intermediate public speaking topics for people of marginalized and underrepresented groups. October will be our usual beginner topics. Keep an eye out for these announcements at https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/wpdiversityworkshops/.

#diversespeakerworkshopsreports
Andrea Middleton 6:17 pm on August 6, 2020
Tags: make.wordpress.org/training,   

X-post: Update on learn.wordpress.org

X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/training: Comment on Update on learn.wordpress.org

Cami Kaos 5:53 pm on August 6, 2020
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Proposal: Managing discussion group signups

With the launch of a new series of workshops coming up rapidly, we need to find a way to manage the signup process for discussion groups. A manual process will not be ideal considering the volume of discussion groups we’re planning to see as a result of the workshops, but we don’t have a tool in use to manage signups in an automated fashion.

Proposed immediate solution to manage discussion group signups

Create a new WordPress group on Meetup.com named “Learn WordPress”  where we can post each discussion group as an individual event. This would allow us to work with a platform we’re already familiar with while allowing attendees to easily sign up for discussion groups. An additional benefit would be that the discussion groups would show up as events in the dashboard events widgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. since Meetup.com events within the chapter program are already pulled into the system. It would also allow us to limit the number of attendees for each session to a size that is reasonable to hold a discussion (20?) and allow for a waitlist of attendees  who could either join the session if people cancel or be added to the next discussion group on the topic. 

We would use the Make Meetings plugin to show all of the upcoming discussion groups on the site and link each discussion to its corresponding event on meetup.com.

We would be able to implement this immediately.

Proposed eventual method to manage discussion group signups

Create a use case specific tool (perhaps using Camptix or a fork of it so it doesn’t have to be built from scratch) to have sign-ups happen on site. The greatest benefits of this would be that everything happens in one place with no need to send attendees away to a third party site for signups and information. 

We would be able to implement this eventually.

Other ideas discussed

While I landed on proposing 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. for immediate use we also discussed scheduling and signup through Calendly and ScheduleOnce, but after reviewing each it seemed too unwieldy for our needs. I also chatted with some folx about use of CampTix but it’s only set up currently to allow one event per site. 

Questions or suggestions

  • Do you have any suggestions or input on the proposal for immediate use?
  • What do you think is a reasonable limit on the number of people per discussion group?
  • Do you have any suggestions or input on the proposal for eventual use?

We’re on a tight schedule to make this happen so I’d appreciate any feedback you have in regards to these ideas by Thursday, August 13, 2020.

#learn-wordpress, #proposal

Hugh Lashbrooke 9:47 am on August 6, 2020  

Proposal: Workshop Submission and Review Process for Learn WordPress

Since we’ve been talking about moving beyond events when it comes to online WordPress content, and there’s an application form available for anyone who would like to assist with reviewing submitted workshops, this is a good time to discuss the submission and review process for workshops submitted to the Learn WordPress platform, which is intended to be hosted on learn.wordpress.org.

This process needs to be simple enough that it doesn’t discourage people from submitting their content, and open enough so that reviewers can collaborate on the process effectively. Here’s a proposal for how this could work:

Step 1: A presenter submits their workshop details in a custom form, which saves their details as a new post in the same post type that published workshops are stored in, but in draft status. This will sound familiar to 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. organisers as it’s exactly how WordCamp session submissions work.

Step 2: Reviewers are given a user role that permits them to edit posts in the workshop post type (possibly editor or a custom user role if necessary). They can log in to review the workshop and leave notes on it as needed. These notes can be viewed by other reviewers to facilitate collaboration in the process.

Step 3: For a workshop that is approved, the reviewer would then request any additional info from the presenter (likely using the support@wordcamp.org Help Scout instance for communication), and inform them that they should go ahead and record the workshop. This means that presenters don’t unnecessarily spend the time recording content that is not going to be used.

Step 4: The recorded workshop (hosted on WordPress.tv), along with any other missing info, is added to the post and it is scheduled to be published if it passes a final review of the content itself.

This process enables collaboration between reviewers and minimises any friction in the process.

Feedback

  1. Does this process sound open and collaborative enough for this kind of platform?
  2. Is there anything that you would change in the steps outlined above?

I have also added this as an issue on the Learn WordPress GitHub repository, so any relevant discussion and points from this post will be copied over there to update that proposal.

Cami Kaos 7:30 pm on August 5, 2020
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Community Team Chat Agenda | August 6 2020

Hello Team!

Our bi-monthly Community Team chat is happening this Thursday, 6th August 2020. Meeting times are detailed below. We use the same agenda for both meetings in order to include all time zones.

Asia-Pacific / EMEA friendly: Thursday, August 6, 2020, 11:00 UTC

Americas friendly: Thursday, August 6, 2020, 20:00 UTC

Deputy/Mentor check-in

What have you been doing and how is it going?

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/. posts needing review/feedback

  • Reimagining Online Events – Angela Jin – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/13/reimagining-online-events/
  • Meetup Organizer Newsletter: July 2020 – Hari Shanker – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/14/meetup-organizer-newsletter-july-2020/
  • Tuesday Trainings: Mentor Roundtable – Cami Kaos – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/14/tuesday-trainings-mentor-roundtable/
  • Supporting Black Voices in WordPress – Jillbinder – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/15/supporting-black-voices-in-wordpress/
  • Tuesday Trainings: Open-source and the GPL in Community Events – Naoko Takano – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/21/tuesday-trainings-open-source-and-the-gpl-in-community-events/
  • Moving forward with online events – Andrea Middleton – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/23/moving-forward-with-online-events/
  • In-person events in rest of year 2020 – Timi Wahalahti – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/27/in-person-events-in-rest-of-year-2020/
  • Tuesday Trainings: Supporting Meetup groups during the pandemic – Hari Shanker – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/28/tuesday-trainings-supporting-meetup-groups-during-the-pandemic/
  • Recap of Youth Event Working Group Checkin Chat – Sandy Edwards –https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/28/recap-of-the-youth-event-working-group-checkin-chat-friday-24-july-2020/
  • The Learn WordPress applications are here! -Cami Kaos – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/03/the-learn-wordpress-workshop-presenter-application-is-here/
    https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/04/the-learn-wordpress-workshop-reviewer-application-is-here/
    https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/05/the-learn-wordpress-discussion-leader-application-is-here/
  • Announcement: Flagship Events in 2021 – Hugh Lashbrooke – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/04/announcement-flagship-events-in-2021/
  • Tuesday Trainings: It’s not always easy to just say no. – Cami Kaos – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/04/tuesday-trainings-its-not-always-easy-to-just-say-no/
  • Proposal: Asking confirmation when registering for a free ticket – Timi Wahalahti – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/04/proposal-asking-confirmation-when-registering-for-a-free-ticket/

Highlighted P2 posts

  • Building community beyond events – Hugh Lashbrooke – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/23/building-community-beyond-events/

Please add any additional items to this agenda by commenting on this post as needed.

#deputy-chat, #meeting-agenda, #team-chat

Cami Kaos 7:15 pm on August 5, 2020
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The Learn WordPress discussion leader application is here!

After much brainstorming, reflection, and discussion we’ll be adding non-synchronous workshops to our inspirational and educational content in addition to the online meetups and events we’ve all grown accustomed to over the past several months. This exciting new effort is explained and discussed in greater detail in a recent post.

Later this month we’ll begin releasing new pre-recorded content aimed at educating and engaging both new and longterm WordPress users. While the content itself is sure to be fantastic, it’s just the starting point. Once the workshop content has been made available and community members and users have watched and learned from it, we will launch a discussion group, or series of discussion groups, to greater explore the content of each workshop.

Monday, I announced the application to submit Learn WordPress workshops. Yesterday, I announced the application to review submitted workshops. Today I’m excited to share with you the application to be a workshop discussion leader.

Continue reading →

#applications, #learn-wordpress, #workshops

Timi Wahalahti 9:32 pm on August 4, 2020
Tags: , confirmation, registration, tickets   

Proposal: Asking confirmation when registering for a free ticket

In a discussion on WordCamp.org Github repository @coreymckrill brought up an idea about asking a confirmation when an attendee registers for free 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. ticket.

The discussion started from mitigating the special accommodation request notice flood, especially with larger events, but soon shifted to the direction where it was realised that it might not be so inclusive to ask confirmation only from attendees ticking the special accommodation request box.

Because free tickets don’t have money transaction that verifies the purchase and registration, our online WordCamp registrations are more open for different kind of abuses. For example, a bot registering with unwanted link as their website that will appear on attendees page, or someone doing a blackhat SEO tricks.

Adding a step of confirmation would prevent the abuse to some extent and as well work as a reminder for the attendee that they are really enrolling for an event that some team has organised with lots of love towards it.

Only after the attendee would have clicked the link directing to page that does the confirmation, their information would be shown on public attendees list.

How about ticket quantities? When attendee registers, ticket would be reserved and removed from the available pool. If confirmation page isn’t visited within 12 hours after registration, the reservation will expire, reserved ticket returns to available pool and attendee is marked with “Cancelled” or “Timeout” status.

Any thoughts? Concerns? Please share those and your opinion about wheter we should ask confirmation when registering for a free ticket or not before 2020-08-20.

#online-events, #confirmation, #registration, #tickets