Community Meeting (March 16) - Community Onboarding

Mon Mar 21 14:53:13 UTC 2016

A website that might be of interest in this discussion is the Transition
Network <https://www.transitionnetwork.org/> website.

While the Transition Network's focus is the environment and reducing CO2
emissions, I think the website has some great ideas about how to
"transition". I feel this idea of transitioning can be adapted to inclusive
design and building a community of practice. For example, transitioning to
inclusive practices through building of tools, knowledge sharing, community
involvement.

Taliesin

On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 11:39 AM, Taliesin Love Smith <
ts14hh at student.ocadu.ca> wrote:

> Hi Justin,
> Thanks for replying. I hadn't seen the recent notes. They cover many
> points I personally faced when I joined the program in 2014 and tried to
> get an understanding of where I could contribute. Personally, I did not
> find a way in until I went to A11y Sprint in February 2015 and met people
> from the PhET project face to face and began meeting with them directly.
> So, the Sprint was a great event fro me.
>
> One of the confusing aspects for me was, I didn't know how to connect my
> course project work (in my first year) with project work at the IDRC as
> mentioned at the bottom of the IDRC "getting involved" page. For me when I
> was starting out, I didn't realize my course work could be IDRC work.
> Giving examples or showing how that process works would be very useful. The
> benefit of working with INCD students is that they are around for 2 full
> years whereas GSoC students are only around for the summer. Of course, INCD
> students could also be GSoC students.
>
> People can be unsure of what to share at Community Meetings, so maybe even
> just making it a little more clear how to propose topics. I see there are
> many great topics on the page right now :-)
>
> Personally, I feel there is a natural fit between the work of the IDRC and
> the interests of the Inclusive Design students so developing ways to see
> these connections more easily would be wonderful.
>
> Taliesin
>
> On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 10:17 AM, Justin Obara <obara.justin at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Taliesin,
>>
>> Thanks for your feedback, I left some comments below.
>>
>> Thanks
>> Justin
>>
>>
>> On March 20, 2016 at 1:50:00 PM, Taliesin Love Smith (
>> ts14hh at student.ocadu.ca) wrote:
>>
>> Hi Justin,
>> Great article about on-ramping. I agree the 6 steps look like a good
>> recipe for getting people involved and helping them stay involved.
>>
>> Sorry I missed the Community Meeting on this topic.
>> Just wondering if the topic of on-ramping inclusive design students came
>> up?
>>
>> We sort of talked more generally about onboarding with some specifics
>> about GSoC students. I don’t believe that the Inclusive design students
>> came up as a specific point. If you have more thoughts on this, please feel
>> free to let us know.
>>
>>
>>
>> I think the Community Meeting is such a valuable platform for making
>> connections, especially in the first year of the program.
>>
>> I've only come to a few meetings, but I've enjoyed them, and would like
>> to join in more often.
>>
>> Thanks, glad you’ve enjoyed them. Hope you can make it to more. They are
>> open so feel free to come whenever you like. Also, it would be good to have
>> the Inclusive Design students leading community meetings from time-to-time.
>>
>>
>>
>> I like your idea of organizing all the intro documents, so it is more
>> clear how to get involved.
>>
>> Personally, I find the Fluid and Floe projects are quite big. A newcomer
>> doesn't necessarily make all the connections. The projects are big enough
>> that a person can get overwhelmed even at the Discovery step :-) Easing the
>> process from Discovery to Setup Tools would be awesome!
>>
>> I’m not sure if you saw the notes
>> <https://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Community+Meeting+Notes+%2816+March+2016%29+-+Onboarding+into+the+Fluid+Community>,
>> but this seems to be a theme. It’s something we’d really like to address.
>> We have some concrete first steps listed in the notes, but those probably
>> won’t fully address the issue of “how do all the projects relate”. It’s
>> something that we’re still working through and have had some ideas about.
>>
>>
>>
>> It's kind of like basic accessibility. First you need access, then once
>> you have some access you can start to figure how to engage and hopefully
>> eventually contribute.
>>
>> One of our former designers, James Yoon, once described the stages to me
>> as functional -> usable -> desirable.
>>
>>
>>
>> Taliesin
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Mar 18, 2016 at 1:15 PM, Justin Obara <obara.justin at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Github has posed a “Creating a new contributor on-ramp
>>> <https://github.com/blog/2128-creating-a-new-contributor-on-ramp>” blog
>>> post yesterday. The entire post is worth a read, and is likely things we
>>> have already discussed in our onboarding meeting and in discussion about
>>> our online presence. The thing that struck me the most was the six steps
>>> that a user usually takes when progressing into a project. Discover, Setup
>>> tools, Learn skills, Identify tasks, Get help, and Feel appreciated. These
>>> are all areas for which we have information, but as was mentioned in the
>>> meeting, they are not always easy to find. I really like the graphic they
>>> have in this post, and feel like we could make an awesome community portal
>>> along the lines of this, hood.ie and etc.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Justin
>>>
>>>
>>> On March 10, 2016 at 12:51:44 PM, Justin Obara (obara.justin at gmail.com)
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> At the upcoming community meeting
>>> <https://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Community+workshops> (March
>>> 16) we will have a discussion about how to facilitate onboarding into
>>> the community. Please come with examples, anecdotes, and etc of good
>>> practices for this that you have seen in other communities. Also think
>>> about your own experience joining the community or bringing others in, and
>>> reflect on what did and didn’t work.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> Justin
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
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