[Phase 0] Digital Gardening: Community Events & Communication Review

[aleesteele]

Reviewing Community Spaces & Communication Channels

From September to December 2022, we aim to review existing communication channels used by The Turing Way community in order to repurpose/delete/reactivate/combine different mediums, and in order to evaluate their use. More specificially, this project aim is to review the following communication channels:

• Slack workspace: the aim here is to revisit (project 1)
• HackMDs for Community Calls (project 2)
• Github repository (project 3)
• Events/Community calls (project 4)

...with the aim of answering the following questions:

• What is clear/not clear?: A lot of informal knowledge gets passed on at community calls and/or builds over time. However, this means that as the project has expanded, 1:1 knowledge transfer isn't as possible, and may create barriers for newcomers to the project. What is clear for possible contributors? What is not?
• Where is friction needed/not needed?: Some processes will require decreasing friction in order to make them more efficient or accessible (particularly for beginners). On the other hand, it can also be important to introduce friction to slow certain processes down, especially in order to consider intention, inclusivity, and accessibility.
• How to leave time for asynchronous feedback?: These tests will just be for gathering from feedback in an ongoing manner (no deadline – with an aim for implementation by the end of working group trial period in August).

This discussion will be used to track this project, for open discussion, questions, and feedback about this process.

[aleesteele]

Project 1: Slack Workspace

The Turing Way slack is a key space for the community to gather together, share ideas, and collaborate with each other – similar to many other open communities. A lot of activity happens in The Turing Way slack workspace, though it is not the only space in which the community operates. The goal of this space is to share information with as many people as possible that are concentrated with one space, with the aim of getting things shared out as much as possible to other community spaces like the Github repository.

Here is a document of the review process (which is very much a work-in-progress, and draws upon user research practices to do so). This document aims to review the existing channels based on their current use versus intention, and seek to revisit/repurpose/delete/reactivite/combine channels based on the current needs of the community: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11MmzROZGpSkzoB01ATOTpklXrIg86eKSm1xUmPZuhlA/edit#gid=547657140

Key questions

• How many community members currently use the Slack workspace
  • Reaching biggest # of people possible
  • Topical posting to channel title
  • Don't where to put something
• What are channels used for & is that clear?
  - For us as organisers?
  - For others as users?
  - For beginners?
  - For people more familiar with the community?
• What should be retained? What should be refashioned?

Timeline

• September 2022: Start Slack review process, archive long-term inactive channels
• October 2022: Host open Q&A about re-fashioning the slack channel? Proposing renaming/repurposing channels
• November 2022: Start archive & shifting process - to be completed by the end of the month.

[aleesteele]

Proposed slack channels to archive:
Channels that will be getting messages + pings:
#academic-authorship-paper
#ask-away
#ask-help-delegate
#book-layout
#case-study
#challenging-academia
#citizen-science-discussions
#donut-connections
#en-español - asking translation team!
#github-tutorial
#gsoc22
#hacktoberfest
#traducción-español - asking translation team!

[aleesteele]

Project 2: Github Repository

Audit document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19IfeIxtWQpDglzfOY8vpq6TFhM1jEJa1OnNdAYWjzg8/edit#gid=1136871433

Key questions

[ Visual here ]

• What is the purpose of Github within TTW?
  • Documentation purposes (historical/public)
  • Asynch communication
  • Project management
  • Logging events/talks
  • Historical/public record
• What was least clear to you about the TTW repository when you joined the project?
• I've been observing how much the repo is used for a bunch of different purposes besides writing the book, like planning upcoming conferences, logging submissions, project management, translation documentation, and others. What do you think about having issue templates for each type of use case? (edited)
• I know we've kept track of some of these specific workflows during the book dash, but where does Github lie in your own workflow? What do you prioritise when using it?
  10:28
• What are people's thoughts on github integration in slack? useful? noisy? (edited)

Timeline

• August - October 2022: Review Github issue templates, and create/edit existing ones as needed