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The WordPress Contributor Working Group is attempting to bring new contributors to WordPress by creating a culture of mentorship in the program. We are attempting to do so in several ways, which include running mentorship cohorts, creating a pool of mentorsEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues., and by attempting to create mentorship programs. After its formation in 2023, the group tested out the idea by running an experimental mentorship program cohort in 2023 July-August, which was quite successful.
At its coreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., the contributor mentorship program aims to provide a foundation for new and aspiring contributors to succeed in (and with) the project by helping them build necessary tools and skill set – through cohort-based and 1:1 mentorship.
The program offers to improve the overall onboarding experience for new contributors in WordPress through effective mentorship opportunities. It is aimed at new contributors to WordPress (mentees) who will be supported by veteran contributors (mentors). Mentees learn the basics of contributing to the project by working with mentors before they start working on Make/Teams of their choice. By being a part of the mentorship program and having access to mentorship, newer contributors can make successful ongoing contributions to the project and stay on to become veterans. In addition to supporting the project by empowering contributors, the program also aims to impart vital skills to participants through contributing, which will support their professional choices and careers.
The pilot edition of the mentorship program was held a four-week event between July 12th and August 9th, 2023. 13 participants (mentees) asynchronously worked together in a cohort with a group of 13 mentors (one mentorEvent SupporterEvent Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. each per mentee) to build a strong foundation in the WordPress project and make initial contributions to the contributor team of their choice. This was be made possible through cohort-based and personalized 1:1 mentorship, guided courses, and live online workshops. A brief overview of the program can be found in the flowchart below:
The pilot cohort of the program was scheduled as follows:
Week 1 and Week 2 (July 12th through July 25th) During this week, mentees were oriented to the project. They learned about the project through mentorship, some pre-designed courses, and certain workshops which we hosted. Mentees also worked with their mentors to get a broad guidance about the program, and also decided the teams that they wish to contribute to.
Week 3 and Week 4 (July 26th through August 9th) By now, mentees had received an overview of the project, and in the coming weeks, they focused on getting onboarded to the Make/WordPress team of their choice. Mentees attended onboarding workshops organized by team representatives, and got support from team representatives to make contributions to the teams of their choice.
The USP of this cohort was that it aligned with the WordPress 6.3 release, which offered mentees an inside view of how a WordPress release gets out in the wild.
Our Mentors offer 1:1 support to each contributor in our cohort. These mentors check-in with mentees each week to offer them support and guidance on the program and to answer any questions that they may have about the same, while offering them guidance and direction on our program. Here’s a list of mentors in our current cohort, with each mentor being assigned to one participant/mentee.
As part of our mentorship program, our participants will get onboarded to the Make/Teams of their choice. We have the following folks representing multiple teams, who will help our contributors get onboarded to the project. Our inaugural cohort will only have a limited set of teams – you will find below a list of teams and team representatives who will help onboard contributors to the respective teams over the course of the mentorship program. For our pilot cohort, we had representatives from Core, Community, Documentation, Photos, Polyglots, Support, Test, and Training teams.
The inaugural cohort had a group of 13 contributors who were selected as mentees from a pool of around 50 applicants. Out of this group, 11 contributors completed all the required courses, interacted with their mentors to learn about the program, got onboarded to Make/WordPress teams of their choice, and made their initial contributions to the WordPress project. Please join me in congratulating all our mentees who have graduated from the program!
Our mentors, mentees, and facilitators joined forces in a dedicated SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel in the Make/WordPress Slack. For the first two weeks of the program (July 12th through July 25th), our mentees learned about the project, by taking certain courses and through support from their mentors. For the next two weeks (July 26th through August 9th), they attended onboarding sessions of different Make/Teams and made some initial contributions to the WordPress project. In between, mentees also got to see a bird’s eye view of how a WordPress release works, through our dedicated shadowing and onboarding sessions supported by our facilitators and Make/Team representatives. More details can be found in our launch post.
Our mentees did a fantastic job as part of the mentorship program! Overall, they were quite active, going the extra mile to complete their required courses, and attending onboarding sessions, with many folks even shadowing the WordPress 6.3 release and attending team chats! Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of achievements from our cohort members.
Two members gained Core Contribution badges and one members submitted a core patch.
One member suggested 400 translations in Danish and got involved in WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Denmark
One member actively participated in forums with 51 replies
Another contributor over 1200 translations in Catalan, and multiple bug reports on Learn WordPress
A participant translations to WP 6.3 in Brazilian Portuguese
Another participant submitted a Photo Directory bug and suggested 200+ translations
Yet another contributor submitted contributions to the Documentation Team by updating a screenshot for WordPress 6.3
Four contributors submitted photos to the Photo Directory
Several contributors contributed to the Make/Training Team and one contributor even contributed code.
One of our big wins from the program was how we tried to broadcast the same towards a broader audience in the #contributor-mentorship channel of the Make/WordPress Slack, where several contributors followed-along the progress of the events and participated asynchronously in the mentorship program. The channel will continue to remain active, and we plan to use it to facilitate more public mentorship opportunities for contributors!
Another milestone for our group is about how local communities are attempting to adapt this program for their own locales. For instance, @javiercasares is already working on translating key materials of this program to Spanish with a plan of potentially hosting a future cohort for Spanish speaking folks. There has also been significant interest from the German community thanks to outreach efforts from @coachbirgit who has also kick-started efforts to bolster contributor onboarding at the upcoming WordCamp Germany 2023!
The second cohort offered some updates to the contribution process, when compared to cohort 1. The second cohort aims to build on the success of the pilot cohort to offer a more robust and comprehensive contribution experience to a group of committed and passionate mentees with the help of dedicated and driven mentors.
Similar to Cohort 1, our mentorship program took place in a dedicated slack channel in the Make/WordPress Slack for six weeks. For the first two weeks, our mentees were oriented to the program through kick-off session, got to know their mentors, set contribution goals, and learned about the WordPress project through learn-up sessions. On Weeks 3 and 4, our mentees started contributing to the teams of their choice, which continued through Weeks 5 and 6, when they wrapped-up by setting a 30-60-90 day goal and graduated from the program! Many mentees took part in projects where they worked in small groups to make collective contributions. Throughout the process, our mentees also got an inside view of the WordPress 6.5 release process and the WordPress project itself, as many mentees contributed to WordPress Core by joining the release parties.
In six weeks, many of our mentees went out of the way to contribute to WordPress. Compared to our last cohort, we had many more contributions to WordPress, as our mentees not only onboarded to the project, but also spent a bulk of their time contributing. Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of achievements from our cohort members:
👩💻Scores of Core Contributions (issues and patches)
🌎 WordPress 6.5 BetaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. and RCRelease CandidateA beta version of software with the potential to be a final product, which is ready to release unless significant bugs emerge. release posts translated to local languages.
🌎 Thousands of strings translated to several languages
🎓 Translated Learn WordPress lessons
🇫🇷🇮🇹Translating WordPress documentation to local languages (Italian and French)
✍️ Extensive contributions to the WordPress User and Developer Documentation
💬 Running Team chats for multiple teams (Community, Training, Test)
📜 Writing summaries for multiple team chats (Community, Training, Test)
🎉 Active participation in WordPress 6.5 Beta, RC, dry-run, and main release parties.
♻️ Contribution to the Sustainability Team documentation
📸 Contribute photos to the WordPress Photo Directory
👔🤝 Individually advocating and helping their company join Five for the Future!
🖥 Set up a local environment for WordCamp.org and started working on open issues for the WordCamp network.
🎟 Contributed to the MetaMetaMeta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. Team by submitting Meta tickets.
🧑🎨 Several contributions to the Community Theme project (both existing and new themes).
🛝 Contributions to the WordPress Playground Documentation
📚 Updates to the CLICLICommand Line Interface. Terminal (Bash) in Mac, Command Prompt in Windows, or WP-CLI for WordPress. handbook
🖨 Several contributions to GutenbergGutenbergThe Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/
💪 Active participation in team processes such as publishing blog posts in Make/Test
⚡️Supporting WordPress event reactivation
Another highlight of this cohort was that six of our graduating mentees were supported by an LGBTQ+ empowerment grant.
🌟 Among our mentors and mentees, our program offered eight (8) first-time core contributorsCore ContributorsCore contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. to the project!
For folks who are curious about the Mentorship Program, we are sharing some of the learning materials that our mentees used and were created during the program.
