Training Team Meeting Recap – 6th June 2024

This meeting followed this meeting agenda in GitHub. You can see conversations from the meeting in this Slack Log. (If you don’t have a 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/. account, you can set one up.)

There were 22 attendees @bsanevans, @piyopiyofox, @devmuhib, @kafleg, @mobarak, @digitalchild, @lada7042, @west7, @zeelthakkar (async), @freewebmentor (async), @jhimross (async), @rithika3 (async), @dextorlobo (async), @jagirbahesh (async), @voboghure (async), @sumitsingh (async), @ironnysh (async), @psykro (async), @cnormandigital (async), @zoonini (async), @backpocketACE (async), and @amitpatelmd (async)

Welcome, to all the new contributors who joined the Training Team’s Slack channel in the last week:

@imrakibul, @nishitajoshi, @rithika3, @skbakar, @dhaval59, @neeldoshii, @mdasharhussain, @zabamd, @jinax, @herrfeldmann, @sohan005, @aimsinfosofts, and @developer1996

News

 Meeting Note Takers

Looking for feedback

We got some input from a Marketing team member last week. Please continue to contribute to this conversation by providing your thoughts on the post by June 13th.

The team has had an administration project board for a couple of years. With the majority of project tracking now happening on the team blog, team reps are planning on cleaning out the board, leaving just meeting agenda and handbook feedback items. Are any team members still actively using this board?

  • Faculty program retirement

We’d like to share a proposal to retire the Faculty program in its current form. This proposal was already discussed within the Faculty group, and since the overall consensus was to go ahead with retiring the program, we’re now sharing the proposal with the whole team before we move forward with any of the suggested steps.

@bsanevans has proposed the below plan to the team and team agreed on that. Below are the @bsanevans proposal:

Firstly, we wanted to give a huge thank you for all your hard work in keeping things running so smoothly. Thanks to you all, we’ve been able to set up team processes, catch up on a backlog of tasks, and set ourselves up for future success.

Over the past while, we’ve observed that the Faculty program is due for a rethink. For example, many folks in the Faculty group are no longer active on the team at all, and there are many roles that are under-used and difficult to recruit for. As well, there’s a level of administrative overhead that’s somewhat complicated, and having to be part of the Faculty program may be seen by contributors as a barrier to doing certain types of work on the team. Finally, the now-established Guide Program serves as a welcoming path for people to get more involved in the team.

We’ve been thinking of ways to streamline things to make the team run more efficiently. In turn, this should free up time to focus more on higher-impact areas.

In thinking things over, we’d like to suggest retiring the Faculty program in its current form. We propose the following steps:

  • Add a new area in the handbook, outlining the history of Learn.WordPress.org and the Training team. This section would also include the names of past team reps and Faculty members, so that folks’ contributions are visible and recognized in the context of the Training team’s history.
  • Shift the work done by the current Faculty Admin group to a smaller group of administrators, starting with the team reps. Additional admins will be added over time, while the current admin needs of the team are reassessed. We will likely look for Training team members who have made consistent contributions over the last 6-12 months.
  • Update the handbook to remove the Faculty Program section.
  • Feedback on sharing experienced content creator processes with the team

@psykro and @west7 have identified a need for content creators to view their content creation process. They plan to add the following links as additional resources to the “Create a Lesson” page. They are also considering creating an informal video recording of these processes to support visual learners. We welcome any feedback or concerns you might have regarding this plan.

Looking for volunteers

  • Tutorial deprecation

To simplify Learn.WordPress.org, two content types will be gradually phased out: tutorials and lesson plans. As a first step, before launching the new site some outdated tutorials are going to be unpublished. A redirect will be added for each one, to send visitors to the most relevant alternative content.

@west7 and @psykro have already started going through all existing tutorials to note whether they should be kept, deprecated (unpublished), or updated.

We are looking for volunteers to continue going through the rest of the tutorials to indicate the status of each (keep/deprecate/update) and a potential redirect URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org. If you are available, please make edits directly to the spreadsheet.

Note that some of this content is in languages other than English, but you could use an online translation tool to translate the tutorial title to help determine whether it’s still relevant or has a more up-to-date equivalent tutorial or lesson.

Other news

You can participate either in person or online, so click this link above to find out how to contribute :blush: 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. EU 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/. will be happening on June 13th.

  • The WordPress Project’s Video Thumbnail Generator

The WordPress project has a new handbook page on how to create video and event thumbnails. Going forward, please use this thumbnail generator for all thumbnails that need to be created for Courses, Lessons, and Online Workshops.

When using the generator, please first watch the walkthrough video shared on the handbook page. I’ll also link the video here:

All Online Workshops going forward should use the same pale blue template as this image. This is also noted in our handbook :blush:

This is a big process change for the team. So don’t hesitate to ask questions in this channel as you get used to using the thumbnail generator :raised_hands::skin-tone-3: 

After WordCamp Europe, I will be absent from the team for three months, taking a sabbatical from work and WordPress contributions. I’ll be back from September 25th, though, so don’t worry :wink:

While I’m away, @digitalchild will be stepping in as interim team lead. Please see the post above for more details.

  • Training team updates

Take a moment to read the newest editions:

  • June Content Creation Coffee Hours

This is an opportunity for anyone working on learning pathway content or anyone interested in learning pathway content to meet, discuss what content they are working on, ask questions, or find content to work on for the learning pathways. Currently, we alternate meetings between two time zones each month.

  • Using sentence case in thumbnails

I forgot to mention above… When using the thumbnail generator, please use sentence case, as discussed in this Slack thread :man-bowing::skin-tone-3:

Come and Contribute

 This week we’d love the team to focus on Topics awaiting vetting

  • See Vetting Topic Ideas for step-by-step guidance on vetting topic ideas.
  • We have 35 issues that require triaging and vetting

Find the rest of the ways you can contribute:

:arrow_right: Content ready for review

:arrow_right: Feedback awaiting validation

:arrow_right: Good first issues for developers

  • See Developing Learn WordPress for instructions on contributing to the Learn WordPress code.
  • All issues are clear for the 7th week in a row! :clap:

:arrow_right: Validated feedback awaiting fix

 Contributor Acknowledgement

  • We found out this week that the Learn news letter wasn’t sending to subscribers until now :scream: Thanks to @adamwood for identifying this issue, and fixing it in preparation for the site relaunch.

Project updates

One exciting development is that a theme switcher now lets you preview the new theme on the production siteProduction Site A production site is a live site online meant to be viewed by your visitors, as opposed to a site that is staged for development or testing., with all its data. You can try it at: https://learn.wordpress.org/?new-theme=1

Open Discussion

First of all, thank you to @lada7042 @zoonini and @west7 for adding additional meeting topics on the GitHub agenda beforehand :raised_hands::skin-tone-3: Each week, if anybody else has topics they’d like discussed, feel free to add it to the agenda so we can dedicate space for it within the meeting :wink:

And finally… Was there any other topic folks wanted to bring up today?

It’s just one more week until WordCamp Europe starts :wapuu: I can’t wait to present all the exciting things the Training Team has been doing with Learning Pathways and the site redesign :star2:

Here’s a sneak peak at the slides I’ll be using in my presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10T9Dr2Wo8t_NG6UC8vMH0abGezU7XzhxuHAi9Z2KNcw/edit?usp=sharing

And with that, I’ll close this week’s meeting. Thanks to everyone who attend live, and to everyone who attended asynchronously. See you all next week! :smiley:

You can see all meetings scheduled on this meeting calendar. If you are new to the Training Team, then come walk through our onboarding program to get to know the team and how we work. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out in the #training Slack channel at any time.

#learn-wordpress, #meeting-recap, #training, #training-team