Improve organization, housekeeping, communication of and about volunteer projects

[danielnarey]

It’s great to see that a few projects are getting off the ground. I’ve been following the conversations on the Slack channel and the Warren Groups app. It appears to me that would-be tech volunteers fall into one of two types: people who know what they want to work on and are ready to jump right in, and people who are excited to contribute but don’t know where to start.

Beyond the onboarding process that has already been set up via the app and Slack, I wondering what the volunteer organizers (and others) are thinking about how best to coordinate efforts and leverage the different skillsets of potential volunteers. While still encouraging a self-organizing process where people prototype, test, and get feedback on their own ideas, does it seem feasible to also maintain a centralized list with more clearly defined tasks that will give newcomers a place to start? Or is there a better way to link people who want to contribute with specific tasks?

Feel free to reach out to me on Slack if there is any way I can contribute on the organizing/communication side.

[john-osullivan]

Hey @danielnarey , I really like the idea of a centralized place for people to pick up work! Think you hit the nail on the head with finding a balance between self-organizing while still making it easy for people to contribute. Maybe we could work out some system where there's a set of org-wide project boards dedicated to different skillsets, and then developers on each repo could create issues and place them on there for people to pick up. Off the top of my head, I'd love to have boards for UX Dev, Data Viz, & Back-End.

Beyond that, I think syncing up everyone in Slack & the Warren app with what's going on in GitHub would be super useful comms work. It's tough to tell how many people have looked at this repo's issues, but GitHub has 9 people in the org, Slack has 62, and the channel in the Warren app easily has more than 100 people. Communicating out about what needs help would definitely bring more people in.

I also think collecting people's rough ideas from all the channels would be a great project board. On top of the two groups you mentioned, I imagine there are some people who have ideas but don't personally know how to make them, or how to make some key piece of it. It seems like there could be a pipeline here where people's ideas end up on a brainstorming board, some devs flesh them out into skeletons with smaller, concrete issues, those get sorted into skillset boards, and then that work gets communicated back out. We could probably set up some neat integration between the boards and per-skillset Slack channels!

Gonna poke you on Slack, but would prefer to keep the discussion here if you don't mind -- I'm on here much more than there

[danielnarey]

@john-osullivan - I like all of these ideas. A place to start seems to be to work on syncing up communication across the three forums that have been established - Slack, GitHub, and the Warren app. It appears that Slack has been the most active forum in recent weeks, but moving certain conversations (re: rough ideas, for example) to GitHub issues would help to track progress and delineate tasks. Also, people who are just looking to get involved may not have access to the Slack channels yet, so it would also be worthwhile to pass along information to the Warren App group about achievements, goals, work-in-progress, and so on. Likewise, as you suggest, we can prompt people who are hanging out on Slack to take a look at GitHub issues/repos.

I’m going to take a more thorough look at what is going on in the three forums right now and try to decide what the communication priorities should be based on what we have already said.

[danielnarey]

Here’s my proposal:

Let’s keep this repo (idea-board) as the gateway for tech volunteers seeking projects and continue to use the issues to collect proposals. But let’s also update the README to provide some orientation for newcomers as to which projects are completed, which are in active development, and which are embryonic and could use more input, etc. The README would be the centralized location where we track volunteer projects, so we can periodically tell folks on Slack “take a look at the projects over here”.

So the README would look something like:

Welcome, etc. ...

Current Volunteer Projects

Ongoing Support

• Reddit bot (live link, repo link)
• ...

Active Development

• Event map (repo link)
• ...

Prototyping

• Microsites (repo link, discussion link)
• ...

New Proposals / Up for Grabs

• Medicare for All cost calculator (discussion link)
• ...

[joegoldbeck]

This sounds good. One thing I think we should call out (in both GitHub issues and in the readme) is whether projects / proposals are coming from the campaign or from volunteers! Both are great, but it's good to know which is which!

[joegoldbeck]

Another small note: I'd love to see Ongoing Support -> In Production. Much more exciting / achievement-oriented that way :D We could even have In Production (Active Development) and In Production (Ongoing Support) if we find that distinction meaningful!

Thinking about the categories, I suppose I would put the bot in the ongoing support category, in that I don't have plans to pour lots of work into it / don't really need addl contributors at present, but that could change if use continues to increase :D

[amandablum]

Hey folx. Sounds like there's a call for a PM board. (I love gh, but its not a spectacular pm tool). any argument against?

[danielnarey]

Open to any and all ideas in this regard 😁 - We’ve implemented the changes I had suggested above but have been trying to clarify what the next steps are in making it easier for people to become active contributors.