It will help you improve your skills and understand how to start this journey!
I met Riccardo at Oscal 2016 and we got to talk a lot about how to improve participation and recruitment for WikiToLearn.
So we organized a participation sprint to talk about the problems with the project and find new methods of analysis of the activities regarding the involvement of new volunteers.
As in the photo on the first day we met to talk about the problems of the project and saw a few tools together to improve workflow and track activities.
The boys have made a great report of the first day that you can find on http://meta.wikitolearn.org/WTL_Participation_Sprint:_Day_1
The first day was interesting to see how a highly trained young team of developers have created such a project.
At the same time the project needs to be better organized between the various telegram chats so they are testing alternative chat like Mattermost or Slack.
The second day was more rich because we have drawn conclusions and identified a series of activities and processes to be tested by the Core team so then by evaluating a migration from the rest of the community.
Also it is much talked use of tickets, in fact you are already planning on restructuring the various projects with the project manager.
To analyse a project is always useful to start from the same contributor with existential questions like: Why contribute? How did you hear about the project? What do you not like?
This information collected help you to understand where to act, seem stupid or implied but are not.
The second day of the report that you can find on <ahref=”http://meta.wikitolearn.org/WTL_Participation_Sprint:_Day_2″>http://meta.wikitolearn.org/WTL_Participation_Sprint:_Day_2
Volunteer vs Contributor
A distinction is needed to better analyze the roles and what we aim.
- The volunteer is the one who takes part in the various activities of the project
- The contributor is an active volunteer in specific activities
For example: Daniele is a WordPress voluntary but it is also a Core Contributor.
Be a contributor explain who is very active in that project but being a volunteer means that knowledge of the project is not at 360 degrees.
Conclusion:
The first time I made by experts on the subject of investments for an open source project and I noticed/learned/ summary that:
- Etherpad is a great tool for meetings but also for novices requires little introduction
- Always prepare in the etherpad the sample materials that is useful
- Organize an event requires the presence of all otherwise you waste time explaining things several times
- Far analyze the strengths and weaknesses of a new strategy is very important to focus on the things to do and avoid
- Analyze the kind of volunteer in his own interests to offer him the most eligible assets
- Study also the process of recruiting volunteers. Ex: Curious that you find on the internet or Curious you talked Live
- Define the types of contributors need to focus on that point to areas
- To study the flows of the assets used to analyze needs for that activity from the documentation to simplify instruments
- You should always start by analyzing the user less technical and less advanced that simplifies analysis for advanced multi-level
- Weekly meetings serve for a team to keep updated and see Project progress
- We need project managers who are experts and representatives on the status
As an “expert” study of a community must be made in more thorough way, not just try to contribute as analysis but you also have to know how you get in touch with the community and participate in its activities by new volunteers.
In this case I messed because power user I have not posed problems which instead are there and that must be addressed.
In this way it deepens the community by not only superficially study.
Let us remember that each project has a learning curve of a voluntary and that we must always start from the first point to analyze because the successive points are on your own.
