Diverse Speaker Workshop in Japanese Report

In August, we held a diversity speaker training in Japanese.
We held the training on August 16th, and those who attended were invited to speak at WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Ogijima 2020 on September 6th.

Announcement (Japanese) https://ogijima.wordcamp.org/2020/diversity-speaker/

Overview

Date: August 16, 2020
Time required: 3.5 hours
Participants: 4 signups
Facilitators: Junko Nukaga @nukaga, Shusei Toda @st810amaze

Tools

We used Zoom and Miro to do the training.

As we progressed, we put sticky notes in Miro and proceeded to brainstorm topics, narrowing them down and choosing one topic.

Finally, they decided on a topic, decided on a summary of the presentation, and wrote a title and summary during the training. We also shared tips on how to make a presentation.

Scripts and Slides Translation

For the script translation, we held a meeting at WordCamp Osaka 2019 Contributor Day at first. A group of volunteers met online once or twice a month and completed the translation.

Using the Google Document’s English version, we assigned a person for each chapter, translated, and reviewed. Translation work was done on a Google Document, and the final version is now published on our Handbook page.

The slide translation was done by copying the Google Slides and replacing the English words with Japanese.

Thanks for your help, @atachibana, @chiakikouno , @hsmt , @kappasan , @mimitips, @nao , @show-ko, @st810amaze , and @udfibonacci !

Rehearsal

Since WordCamp Ogijima 2020 was an online session, we rehearsed in advance to switch screens, see the slides, and check microphones and video.

I think it’s good that we were able to thoroughly rehearse the talks because participants said that the more they practiced, the less nervous they became, and they were able to get prepared for machine problems and unexpected events.

Feedback from Participants

After the training was complete, we asked for feedback on the training itself via email. Here are some excerpts.

What was the one thing that went well?

  • Creating an outline of the speaker’s content
  • Topic selection
  • The training finished on time

What was the one thing that went wrong?

  • Title creation
  • Allocation of work time for each workpiece
  • Dictation speed (I talked too fast)
  • I didn’t know which topic to choose
  • I couldn’t look into the camera and talk

Was there anything you would like to change?

  • I want to change my lack of confidence
  • I’d like to get used to speaking publicly
  • I want to have more of variation in my slide design
  • I’m going to adjust the camera’s position better

Is there anything else we can do for you besides what you did?

  • I think it would have been very helpful to have international case studies of (easier-to-adopt) talk topics by the participants of this training
  • I would like to participate in more workshops about general tips on  presentation and slides

Did you ever feel nervous about anything?

  • Anytime I spoke
  • I was nervous when I had to present to people.

Other

  • The slides that you explained to us were straightforward to understand, and the flow of putting them into practice while listening to them was very well-planned
  • The literal translation was easy to understand, with explanations added as needed.
  • I think I could produce a certain output level, but I also wanted to think about it more and brush up on it.
  • It might have been nice to have the hands-on work given as pre-assignments

Participants’ Blog (Japanese)

Impressions as an Organizer

This was the first diversity speaker training in Japan. The training was well-received by those who took it, and one of the participants took the stage as a speaker.
I came up with the idea of using Miro as a training tool at the last minute to prepare for it, but with Miro, I can see the progress of the people I’m training with, and it also leaves traces of my training, so I can use it to look back.
We used Japanese translations of the script and slides, but there were some cultural differences. I’d like to brush it up by adding annotations and other supporting information.

And this report was completed with the help of @nao. Thank you!

#diversespeakerworkshopsreports, #wpdiversity

Contributor Working Group (#wpcontributors) Agenda for Wednesday, October 21, 2020, 19:00UTC

The votes are in! Our next meeting will be Wednesday, October 21, 2020 at 19:00 UTC.

Agenda

  1. Check-in
  2. Meeting Schedule
  3. Tools Update
  4. Recap of Group Chats
  5. Next Steps

Chat with you next week!

#WPContributors

Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on October 14, 2020

Attending: @jillbinder @cguntur @gissane @tantienhime @angelasjin @webcommsat @nalininonstopnewsuk

Start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1602694969417300

Working group Community badges proposal

https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/13/proposal-community-contributor-badges-for-working-group-members/

All attending agreed that this is a great idea. If this is something you’d like to see, we’d love your support on the post.

People asked how to get the various badges. @angelasjin shared documentation on how badges are assigned.

Workshops background

Explaining to new volunteers how our workshops work. We explained what we normally do and what experiments we have been trying during the pandemic. We had a big discussion here, answering many questions, and people shared their success stories. <3

How our latest workshop discussions have gone

In October, we tried out using the Learn WordPress discussion format.

Day 1: 2 attendees + 5 mentors + 1 assistant
Day 2: 1 attendee + 3 mentors
Day 3: 3 attendees + 3 mentors + 1 assistant

Two attendees watched the video in advance, but only one watched the correct video. (He knew this, he just ran out of time.)

Thank you to our mentors, which really helped for answering harder questions, giving tips, helping to keep the discussion going, and jumping in for getting assistance in their own talks, even:
@dani418 @allienimmons @volkswagenchick @sparklingrobots @angelasjin, @pastelito, Amina

A big thank you to the #marketing team for all of their hard work in promoting the discussions: @webcommsat@nalininonstopnewsuk, @lmurillom, and others!

Being a discussion facilitator is an easy way to help out. We have pre-written starter questions for you.

Upcoming discussions, training, and workshops planned

October 24:  Teaching meetups and WP event organizers how to hold our workshops. @miriamgoldman is playing our training videos and facilitating the group.

@angelasjin is running these discussions coming up:

I’m running an intermediate speaker series:

  • Tues, Nov 17: Improving your pitch
  • Wed, Nov 18: Intermediate online stage presence
  • Thurs, Nov 19: Story-telling: How to make a story out of a tech topic

Watch for the sign-up info coming soon at https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/wpdiversityworkshops/

People asked how they can help promote these. @webcommsat and @nalininonstopnewsuk shared:

Follow #WPDiversity on:

Volunteer opportunities

  1. Discussion facilitators
  2. Workshop mentors
  3. Workshop assistants (for background admin items)
  4. A little need: A meeting reminder-er. As far as we know, there isn’t a way to automate them on the channel we are speaking on right now. So a person who can go in and manually put reminders here!

https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/09/25/call-for-volunteers-the-diverse-speaker-training-group/

End: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1602699185035000

Proposal: Community Contributor Badges for Working Group Members

In recent years, a number of new Working Groups have appeared on the Community Team. These include:

These groups all rely on and need volunteers to help accomplish their projects, all of great value to the WordPress community!

Historically, Community Contributor badges have been assigned 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. Mentors and Community Deputies to recognize their continued contributions to the Community Team. Working group volunteers demonstrate similar commitment and support of Community Team goals and projects by spending time and effort on projects specific to working groups. 

Because of this, I would like to propose that we manually assign the Community Contributor badge to contributors who have actively participated for at least one month on any Working Group, as identified by each Working Group lead. 

What do you think? Please share your thoughts, comments, questions on this proposal by next Wednesday, October 21, 2020.

Mistakes were made: Clarifying the Meetup Newsletter selection process

Some weeks back, I posted a public announcement about selecting Mailchimp as the email platform for communicating with 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 and members. Unfortunately, the selection process lacked transparency and was not communicated properly. I’m extremely sorry about this mistake. In a bid to implement efficient connections with the WordPress organizer community during the COVID-19 pandemic, I made the call to pick Mailchimp as the selected newsletter service without finalizing the decision in an open, public discussion with other community members. This was an oversight from my end, and I apologize unconditionally. 

The idea of using a third-party newsletter service was initially proposed and accepted as a solution to address the limitations of Meetup.com emails (such as non-delivery of emails and lack of formatting options). Based on further feedback from community members, potential newsletter service features were discussed, and an initial list of 15 services was prepared. After researching these services, @hlashbrooke (who supported me on this project) and I shortlisted Mailchimp, MailJet, and MailPoet for their competitive features and pricing. Mailchimp was the final choice because it met almost the requirements, offered a native Meetup.com integration, and was affordably-priced (Mailchimp offers Pay as you go pricing, which allows us to test it out without long-term commitment). Then the decision was announced to the broader community.

Looking back, it is clear that this decision-making process (that led to the selection of Mailchimp) and the privacy implications of newsletter services should have been discussed in the open before a decision was made. Thank you and kudos to all those community members who brought this to the attention of the team. @andreamiddleton @bph @camikaos @courtneypk @francina @kcristiano @ryanmarks @sippis and anyone else who was affected by this oversight: I hope you will accept my apology. 

Maintaining transparency and openness in the community

The Community team is committed to being transparent and open in all communications. Personally, I’m taking this as an opportunity to double down on the commitment to stay transparent and open.

I’ve learned a lot by re-reading the “How decisions are made in the WordPress open-source project” section on the WordPress Contributor Training, which shares some ways to ensure transparency in the project, such as: documenting 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-person discussions, gathering specific & actionable feedback from community members on projects, and sticking to team blogs for making decisions. 

In addition to these ideas, I’d love to open a discussion about what could be done to ensure that communication and decision-making processes are transparent. Your feedback would be incredibly helpful for me personally, and possibly for other members of our community. Please comment on this post with your thoughts, by October 31, 2020. 

Once again, sincere thanks to Community team members for the time you put into mutual accountability and for your dedication to the success of WordPress community programs in these uncertain times. 

This post was written jointly by @hlashbrooke and me.

Thank you to the following people who contributed to and gave early feedback on this post: @adityakane @andreamiddleton @bph @camikaos @courtneypk @francina @kcristiano @rmarks and @sippis

#newsletter #newsletter-service #newsletter-service-selection

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!

Recap of Contributor Working Group Kickoff Meeting Oct. 6, 2020

In attendance: @amethystanswers, @angelasjin, @chaion07, @annezazu, @adavis3105, @paaljoachim, @daisy, @tara_king, @webcommsat, @matthewfarlymn, @geektutor

Group Responsibilities

It was agreed that we would focus on 2 main areas to begin with:

  • compiling onboarding resources
  • enhancing new contributor experiences

We also acknowledged that there will be lot of coordination with all of the Make Teams throughout our work.

@webcommsat invited us to work alongside efforts that the Marketing Team has already begun.

Roles and Volunteers

The top three priority roles were outlined, requesting volunteers. Leaders of each role will be determined at a later date.

Updating 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/. Handbook

The goal for this task is to have a more robust handbook for those organizing Contributor events. You would be responsible for reviewing the current handbook, ensuring existing information is current and correct, and identifying/creating additional information that would benefit an organizer of a Contributor event, particularly first-time organizers new to this experience. You will likely need to collaborate with many, if not all, other Make Teams.

Volunteers: @adavis3105, @chaion07, @matthewfarlymn, @geektutor

Collecting and documenting best practices from previous Contributor events

The goal of this task is to gather information about what worked well and what can be improved on from past events, and to see how lessons can be learned, shared and acted on. Your role would be to reach out to organizers of past Contributor events (large and small, general and specialized), make recommendations on how processes and documentation might be modified to make for continued successful events.

Volunteers: @daisy, @adavis3105

Discovering ways to improve New Contributor onboarding experiences

The goal of this task is to identify challenges new Contributors face that might prevent them from taking the next step to contributing, and find ways to eliminate or minimize these challenges. Your role will be to reach out to potential and existing contributors for their input and brainstorm ideas to improve existing onboarding practices.

@paaljoachim and @annezazu have been working on some documentation/resources in this area prior to joining the Working Group.

@webcommsat noted that Translation week has just happened and will be another new source of feedback.

@angelasjin noted that diversity and inclusion were mentioned in the comments of our initial Call for Volunteers, and this will be important aspects to consider.

Volunteers: @chaion07, @daisy, @paaljoachim, @annezazu, @geektutor

Additional Suggested Roles

@webcommsat suggested a role to work with the Marketing Team on promoting how materials are presented 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)

Next Steps

Platforms

We will use the following platforms/tools to communicate, plan, and organize:

Google Drive and Trello will be set up before the next meeting.

Prep Work

Please spend some time reviewing the existing documentation and resources that are relevant to the roles you have volunteered for.

Next Meeting

We will meet every 2 weeks on the same day/time. Our next meeting will be during the week of Oct. 18.

Please indicate your general availability on the new Doodle poll (Please ignore the dates on the poll and indicate what days/times work best for you in general.)

Poll link: https://doodle.com/poll/6pi9v9ceuqbsef5a

Poll will remain open until Oct 12 and will be posted in the next Agenda by Oct 14.

Important Note

Please know that, like every other volunteer endeavour, we appreciate your time, and your health. If at any point you feel you need to trim back your participation, or step back completely, we support you 100%. All we ask is that you let us know.

#wpcontributors

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!

Contributor Working Group Kick-off Meeting Agenda | Tuesday, 6 October 2020 UTC 19:00

As previously announced, a working group is being formed to create a comprehensive, centralized location for all Contributor information that will help encourage all Contributors and Contributor Event Planners. The responsibilities of this group will include:

  • Compiling onboarding resources
  • Providing guidance with contributor events
    • Mentoring organizers planning a Contributor Event
  • Enhancing new contributor experience
    • Discovering ways to improve New Contributor onboarding experiences
    • Being a point of contact for community members who have questions about contributing or need help taking their first step
  • Coordinating with Make Teams
    • Collaborating with Make Teams to update and expand Contributor information
    • Coordinate with similar efforts from other Teams

The individuals who volunteered for this working group are: @amethystanswers, @annezazu, @ryan, @daisyo, @paaljoachim, @francina, @geektutor, @mysweetcate, @adavis3105, @chaion07, @matthewfarlymn & @christian

Our first meeting will take place on Tuesday, October 6, 2020 at 19:00 UTC in the #community-team channel in the Making WordPress 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/. group (register for Slack here). The primary purpose of this meeting is for everyone to meet for the first time and to decide what areas each individual will focus on. Here’s an agenda we will follow, but I expect plenty of discussion branching off this:

1. Welcome and introductions
Who’s in the group?

2. Group responsibilities
What are the group responsibilities and what do they each entail?

3. Volunteers for roles
Are there any areas of the group that you would like to focus on?

4. Next steps
What are we going to do next? How will we begin working towards our goals?

5. Next meeting
When will we meet again? What regular schedule would work well?

I hope to see you there!

#wpcontributors

Discussion: Pro/paid Zoom accounts for Online Meetups

In April 2020, WordPress Community Support (WPCS) began offering the use of Pro accounts on Zoom for special events, such as the Diverse Speaker Training workshop, do_action charity hackathons, or Contributor Days. These accounts are also offered to WordCamps that need them.

For regular chapter 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. events, the Community Team has been recommending the use of free tools, and still recommend the use of these free tools as much as possible. However, I would like to explore the idea of offering the use of these Pro Zoom accounts to WordPress chapter meetup organizers.

When I brought this topic up in the Community Team chat last week, it sparked a lot of discussion, and I’d like to continue that conversation here!

  • While the current process has been working fairly well with special events, it doesn’t seem like it will scale if it is opened up to all meetup groups. What parts of this process can be improved upon and automated?
    • @brandondove asked if we can leverage the Zoom dev APIs to make this a self-service process. What do the devs amongst us think?
  • When we previously discussed community Zoom accounts, a concern that came up was how to handle password management.
    • I have been trying out 1Password Teams for the past month, which I think it would work well for any trusted deputy to be able to manage the passwords (and therefore not dependent on a small group of deputies). 1Password has offered us a non-profit discount after the free trial.
  • @tacoverdo asked a great question: Why do we need Zoom for this? Are there free/open alternatives that don’t require password sharing tools?

Let’s hear what you think!

Mentioning @sippis @jenniferswisher @kcristiano @camikaos as you all participated in the discussion 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 this discussion is open for everyone’s feedback! 🙂

#meetups, #online-events, #community-management