Notes from Meetup Yesterday | All Eyes on Bristol

[Elizabeth Leddy]

So nice to see some new faces yesterday! We had a really productive talk so I wanted to quickly summarize some of the ideas and simple action items that came out of it. I created some pages to coordinate these efforts as well so if it sounds interesting to you jump on and start adding. Even better, if you have the time to "own" one of these very simple projects, please step up/in and make it happen. 

• Welcoming Committee for Bristol 2010
• When talking about how to prevent attrition of devs in the community, there was the fantastic idea of having a "talk" on the first day of the conference that introduces newbies to the plone community, how it works, and what the conferences are about. This would be something similar to "How to rawk sxsw" for those that are familiar. Additionally, we can focus on pairing up people who are less familiar with the community with those that are more familiar so that they have someone to introduce them to whos who and make sure that they participate in the "after-school" activities
• A really good discussion on post-conference events reveals that the focus is very much on eating and drinking. There is some concern that this "college kids" mentality is scaring away people that would otherwise come out. For Bristol, let's try to think of a couple alternative activities for those that don't want to go out and drink (i.e. touring the city on foot) and make sure that we get some major plone players to participate. People shouldn't feel like they are missing out if they don't want to get smashed. 
• Diversity Committee on Plone Foundation:Joel Burton and Mark Corum really stepped up and are pushing through a group of people to look into the issue of diversity in general. From what I hear already there is a lot of support so I expect a lot of interesting things to come of this. I will update the list whenever I hear anything on this.
• Tuning Tuneup: Since tuneup is a gateway drug to more participation, how can we make tuneup an even better experience? Some great ideas were 
• Adding more "green-belt" tickets that don't take 8+ hours to commit. Shooting for < 4. A lot of people seem to get half a day or less to work on tuneup or don't get paid at all, so how do we better select tickets
• Helping third party product descriptions be much better as part of tuneup
• Teaming up on tickets - getting a more formal mentoring program going where people team up in person and/or on irc to fix tickets. This is meant to get people more comfortable with fixing bugs and ready to commit faster.
• Making sure people know that tuneup isn't just a sixfeetup thing and that the community can move the direction of tuneup as well
• Adding picture to the plonechix bio page: While we haven't done this in the past, if you are comfortable, please add your photo next to your bio on the wiki. This way, other plonechix will know who you are when you meet in person and hopefully will feel comfortable just stepping up and saying hi. I know this doesn't make everyone comfortable, so it's at your discretion but people did note how it would have been easier to identify others.

Let me know if I missed anything, and if something gets you passionate please help out and start coordinating.  These are all very small, non time-intensive items that are super easy if we all share, but a lot of work for just one person :) All of them will benefit the entire community.

Furthermore I just want to mention/emphasize that we are getting a lot of support from other members of the community and ESPECIALLY the foundation to make plone a more diverse, welcoming community. If you have been hesitating, now is a great time to get involved - we have the eyes and ears so let's start making things happen! As you can see there is lot's of low hanging fruit - take advantage of picking it :)

And as always, all these items are open for discussion and I would love to hear your thoughts!

Liz

[Lucie Lejard]

I added myself to the Bio pages. I still need to find a pic :-) I'll
try to take a look at other pages too.
Lucie
--
six feet up, inc. | "Nowhere to go but open source"
Direct Line +1 (317) 861-5948 x605
http://www.sixfeetup.com | Zope/Plone Custom Development + Hosting