Community Relations/Onboarding New Developers
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Onboarding New Developers was a program of the Technical Collaboration team (since July 2018 Developer Advocacy team), part of the proposed Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan FY2017-18. See the content of the program in their canonical location.
We are using this page to develop and document the program.
Program structure
editSort of. Work in progress.
Outputs
edit- Understanding newcomers motivations and needs
- A learning environment
- Growth paths
- Partnerships
- Local groups
- Newcomer hub
- Reports
- Project showcases and evaluation
- Level-up mentors
Activities
edit- New Developers Quarterly Report (T167085)
- Featured Projects (T165920)
- Documentation for new developers (T169599)
- Developer outreach programs
- Developer events
Thoughts to be processed
editHow to offer the best growth paths to volunteer developers with the best use of resources and partnerships that we can have.
Growth path vs travel budget
edit- Find your project: Introduction to Wikimedia Tech - Featured Projects. Result: project found.
- Get started: Workshop Get Started to (Featured Project). Online (text / video, real-time / self-paced). Result: certificate upon completion.
- First task: Clonable / Easy task. Self-paced, project support channel. Result: certificate upon completion.
- Get involved: More tasks via project discussions, meetings, sprints, peer programming. Result: contacts, mentors, your contributor metrics start growing.
- Get more involved: Meet developers and editors in local meetups, regional events, developer conferences, Wikimedia Hackathon, Wikimania. Result: travel support, high bandwidth collaboration, social contacts.
Steps 1-4 can provide satisfaction and don't require any travel budget. Scholarships and travel grants should focus on volunteers who make it through 1-4.
Requirements
edit- Introduction to Wikimedia Tech (Phab:T158791)
- Featured Projects with documentation to get started, first tasks, support channel and mentors.
- Certificates valuable for CV, level up, travel support.
- My contributor metrics.
- CRM to track all newcomers in a scalable way and support them according to merit and location (i.e. invitations to regional Wikimedia events).
- Activities to assure that first-timers thrive in their first face to face events.
We can squeeze a lot more the possibilities of online collaboration, focusing our travel budget flying the right junior volunteers and mentors to the right events, to continue building their growth paths.