Fedora Objective proposal: Community Outreach Revamp

[marianab (Mariana 🌻)]

Thanks everyone for finding some time to read our proposal and write your thoughts. We tried to answer all your questions/ concerns below:

@mattdm

Very minor: there’s an Activity to design the new swag and handouts (good) but “distribute new rebrand materials” should be in the Activities column as well somewhere, and a corresponding entry in outputs as well. In general, it’d be nice to put numbers on things in the Outputs column where we can.

About this, we will:

• Add in “Distribute new rebrand materials” to Activities
• Edit to “Brand & Marketing” in Outputs
  Also, @mattdm please clarify what do you mean to “put numbers on things”?

@mattdm

Less minor: I’d like to see more concrete measurables for Outcomes. How will we determine that teams are functional?

We feel this Objective goal should really boil down to being a sustainable team versus a “functional” team. It could be functional today, and then fall apart tomorrow. Ideally, we will see an increase in involvement and activity, cross-collaboration of all teams in functional aspects, and utilization of resources & processes. Additionally, we feel this is not something that can be measured after we’ve checked all the boxes, it will be something we can observe over a period of 1-2 years after the completion of this objective. Adding in a survey and/or analysis one year out and two years out, allowing for adjustments to the program could be the way to address this.

@mattdm

How will we decide that we have clear processes and documentation and an easy-to-participate-in onboarding process?

Each of the teams in the revamp will have their info congregated into one Docs page with fully updated documentation for each team. This includes the entirety of the updated Ambassador program and the Role Handbooks. Wiki pages for the teams will be marked as obsolete, retired, or moved.

@mattdm

How will we know if Awareness is at levels we deem successful?

This is a great question and has instigated a new activity for the Revamp. Our idea is to create a series of polls on social media: discourse, telegram & Twitter. We can gauge community awareness on a variety of outreach related topics now, and in 6 months, and in one year. We can also include questions related to this in the 1 and 2 years follow-ups.

@mattdm

How will we know people feel connected to their team identities?

We will be able to explore the identity question through the polls on social media. We can also include questions related to this in the 1 and 2 years follow-ups.

@duffy

I think the Outcomes need to be more measurable and specific with a plan for measurement.

We have expounded on each Objective with how we intend to measure each outcome, as well as any potential issues we foresee.

Update Outcomes

1. The Ambassador team is full of active contributors who know what to do and how to do it

We have completed the first Ambassador group cleanup and we are adding a cadence into the Ambassador program for annual cleanups. This will ensure that the Ambassador team is full of active contributors only. We will also clarify the documentation on “how to become Ambassador Emeritus” so that if folks choose to retire they know what to do.

We will measure their knowledge of the Ambassador activities/processes through a specific survey for the members currently active in the Ambassador Team. This survey should be done 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years after the revamp is complete. The results of the survey should instigate any small or large adjustments that may need to be done to the program. These surveys will be written during the Revamp, and then implemented by CommOps/Mindshare.

2. The process for how to organize events and request swag is well known to all Ambassadors, and those within the larger CommOps umbrella.

This one will be kind of tough to measure. Ideally, we will be able to tap into some of these self-organized events and outreach activities with a CommOps based “Community Activity Network” of sorts. The community survey is showing us that people are doing things without reporting them back, so the overall community is unaware of the activity. The “CAN” would help boost the signal of these activities with virtually no effort from the people executing these activities but to submit them to the network. Once we are able to capture the events/activity that are happening we believe we will find that our event presence is robust.

We should see a general increase in Mindshare Committee tickets. We will need to measure how many new swag requests are being made, compare them to years past, and continue to look at those numbers. Based on our current pandemic life, this looks a bit different and maybe hard to forecast. In the past year, swag handouts have been organized centrally through the FCAIC as Red Hat is fulfilling these requests to personal addresses and there is a significant amount of Personal Identification Information (PII) and paperwork involved. The community survey is also showing us that almost everyone is attending events, but the motivation to self organize during the pandemic is low.

3. Members from CommOps & subteams are practicing new/updated forms of organized community outreach.

We will measure this through informal polls, as well as the 1 and 2 year surveys. We should see an increase in Mindshare Committee tickets from these teams. It could potentially be tough to determine who is representing which request because there is a lot of overlap in membership on these teams. We should also see downloads/page views of key resources that are produced during the Revamp.

4. Clear onboarding documentation and process on how to get involved in the Community Outreach teams.

The CommOps, Ambassador, Ambassador Emeritus, Ambassador Mentor, Advocate, and Join teams are rolled up into one Docs page with a set of comprehensive indexed resources and information. This will also include documentation and a cadence for updating these pages. Increase in the number of Join tickets and Ambassador mentor program (TBD).

5. Brand awareness from CommOps new structure is beginning to grow based on branding and relevant marketing plans.

This is something we will measure through the informal polls on social platforms as well as in the 1 and 2 year surveys.

6. More contributors engaged in the Ambassadors program, but also the CommOps teams overall.

This will be somewhat tough to measure. The results of the community survey are starting to show us that folks really enjoy self-organizing and working independently to one extent or another. One of the paths we are detailing for the Revamp is providing templates, resources, and most importantly, how to receive $resources from the Mindshare Committee. So, if we can see that most folks are choosing to self organize we would ideally see over time consistent page views/downloads of key resources and an increase in Mindshare Committee requests for $resources.

7. Weekly meetings for Community Outreach.

The weekly meetings will be open to all of the Outreach teams. We expect a base of 6-10 folks who regularly show up. All others on these teams will be encouraged to attend when they need support or are able. We will analyze in the 1 & 2 year follow up how many Community Outreach meetings occurred, and how many attendees were at each.

@duffy

I also want to put out there that a lot of the deliverables here are a one-time thing… but I think some thought should be put towards ongoing / maintenance type activities. Because for example, new docs are great but they have to be maintained, and to keep them maintained they should start with a plan for sustaining them over time. The plan could be something as simple as, for example, scheduling an every 3-6mo review as part of the charter of the relevant team leadership, to review and update. But that thinking I think should take place now and the process be outlined.

This is a great point and would definitely point us in a healthy direction for sustainability. 6 months seems like a reasonable cadence for folks to be checking in and updating docs pages for their teams. This is most likely something all teams should be doing, so I think it will fit in quite easily to the new structure. It has been noted to include these check-ins.

@duffy

I also see that as a lot of the output are deliverables, I’d like to know if there is a distribution plan in mind (if not written up) for the materials in terms of how we’ll get them out and make them available. It’s mentioned that it’s a marketing team responsibility but I think understanding at the start what shape that delivery might take shape in (e.g. a special outreach specific website? social media distribution? some other platform like discourse? all of the above?) would help guide the creation of the content to be targeted for the correct target media. I’d suggest starting with a table of potential outlets. And thinking about, not just how do we announce this big change when it happens, but also where do the documents live and get access after the initial big announcement and in the general day-to-day operations over the long term as a reference. (could just be the fedora docs site, thats fine too, or could also involve a physical component like a printed “welcome kit” sent to new folks. would just like to see it written down )

These are great points, thank you for raising them. The proposal and plan was originally written with the idea that we could include almost every team on the Mindshare side of Fedora. This is still true to an extent, but we are changing our approach based on our experience from the past 6 months. We found that we are able to engage at least 1+ person from each team, but not the team as a whole. For example, we opened a CommOps ticket and just one person has been driving that. We opened a D&I ticket and we ended up taking the task back and which the Co-leads completed with assistance from a couple of D&I team members who overlap with the TTF/Revamp efforts. Asking skilled individuals to help on specific tasks has been a very successful approach. We reflected upon this in our meetings and came to the conclusion that most Objectives/big changes are implemented by a small group of dedicated people, so we do not view this revised approach as a failure.

We have grabbed the following to-do’s/conclusions from your comment. Let us know if we hit all the points We feel we need to get a good handle on the plans for these aspects and they will inform the other questions you have raised (where/how/format/sustainability)

• Write in a plan for the distribution of new materials/resources
• Write in a plan for the distribution of new swag items
• Write in a plan for announcement/roll-out
• Include roll/out documents/promotional materials on Fedora Docs page for Community Outreach

@duffy

Should the Join team have a role here in the logic model? Community Outreach includes new community contributor recruits too, right?

During the research phase of the Revamp, executed by the FCAIC, we received feedback from the Join Team that they do not wish to add or remove any processes to their current workflow. The fundamental idea behind the Join Team, if we understood the feedback correctly, is that this group is for folks who want to help guide others with a low barrier to entry. Folks in Join hang out in a channel, and a couple of folks maintain a repo. They feel, as we do we, that they are working functionally currently, and we do not want to be an interference. They will be welcome at the overarching CommOps meetings, will be included in any announcements that are made, and will have access to all the resources that are developed for the Revamp.

We could add in a function for the CommOps team to review the Join repo on a certain cadence to see if there is an increase/trends in tickets for new contributors.

I hope our answers above cover all your questions.
Mariana