All right. Welcome, everyone. We are going to get to know the Training team's guide program today.
And this is going to be an informal Q&A with two folks who've been working on the Training team
with the guide program for a while. And we're going to do a little round of intros.
People can ask questions in the chat. And also, you can unmute to ask questions. I'm going to ask
you to, you know, ask your questions any time. Or you can also wait until we've gone through the Q&A.
I've allowed 45 minutes for this. So we're not going to run the full hour unless we have a ton
of questions. But I think 45 minutes should be enough. So I'll introduce myself and then I'm
going to ask my two guests to introduce themselves. So my name is Kathryn Presner. And I'm in
Montreal, Canada. I've been working with WordPress since 2008. And I was a web developer before that
working on other platforms. And I've been doing tech support with automatic since 2012. And now
I'm working as a sponsored contributor with the Training team to help support folks who are
contributing their time to the Training team's efforts. So that's me. And when I'm not working
with WordPress, I love hiking. And I love collecting vintage Pyrex mixing bowls, a little bit of an
obscure hobby. And I love animals. I have a cat who is resting right there while we talk.
So Sumit, why don't you introduce yourself next?
Hello, everyone. Myself, Sumit Singh. And I am working science 2013 to start a journey with the
PHP and then continue. I started to work with the WordPress. And right now I am working as a
Training team guy as a guide to how to start the contribution for the new contributors.
And I'm still doing contribution in the core documentation and many other projects. I'm very
happy to doing these things. And because I am working with WordPress, and I'm always happy to
do something for the WordPress. So if you have any question about the training, how to start the
contribution and guide program, feel free to message me on the chat. All right. Thank you, Sumit.
How about Muhibul? Hi, everyone. My name is Muhibul Haque. I'm a WordPress developer and
WordPress open source contributor to the Training team. I am working in WordPress since 2014. As a
WordPress developer, I started my career, but I did not continue that time. I think I was just
doing customization. And after a few years, I realized that I can be developer and I started
learning development. And I become WordPress developer and now working as full-time WordPress
developer for a company. So after that, last year, I discovered the Training team. And here,
I started a regular contribution. And as a reward, I become a Faculty member of Training team and
working as a guide, also working as a mentor in wide mentorship program. So many things
I am doing here from last year. And I'm really excited to join this event as well. Thanks.
Awesome. Thank you both. Thank you both. All right. So we'll start this question and answer.
And I'm going to sort of rotate the questions between you two. So let's start with Muhibul.
Could you give me a little overview of what the Training team is for anyone who's here who might
not be familiar? And where does the Training team fit into the WordPress.org project?
Okay. We all know the Training team is a project of WordPress. This project makes WordPress project.
And in learn WordPress, we do many things like we do content creation. We make lessons, we make
courses and events like this kind of online workshop. So here we do many things for educational
purpose. Most of the content of our us is educational content. And here, most of the
people participate are contributors. Okay. So like me and Sumit, all of them, like today joined
more people. All of them are contributors and few people are sponsored as well. But Training team
focuses on contribution based work. And most of the time we do, we help Training team to
advancement of it. And I, when I joined in Training team, I was so much unconscious.
What's that Training team and why, what I will do here. And after the passes of time, I realized
this is a really great source of knowledge and education for me, I started learning from here.
So many things I learned from here. And also, now I am helping more people to learn from training
team. That's it. Okay, so just to step back for a bit and see the big picture, you know, the training
team, the goal of the Training team is to help people learn WordPress, right? Right. So learn
how to use WordPress. So for those who don't know, there's a site which is learn.wordpress.org.
And it has all kinds of materials from courses to tutorials to it's the hub for our online
workshops, which is what we're doing here. And so the Training team helps to create all these
materials and run this program, right? So that's one thing I want to make sure people are aware of,
because some folks might not be. So what maybe some meat, maybe you could answer just very
briefly, like what kind of people is the Training team a good fit for? So for example, like, the
design team is good if you have design skills, the core team generally is for people with advanced
development skills. What's a good fit for the Training team? I think the Training team is
typically a good fit for the individual who enjoy the helping other people. Okay, this is the
and there, you know, grow the his skill and so grow the, you know, new contribution to grow the
their skill and you know, like saying this would be a strong understanding the project matter subject
matters. But you know, Training team ability to cover the knowledge effectively, the audience
and it is really adopt the Taylor training approach the different learning style of material
available on the training, learn project, learn.birdpress.project side. And this is, you know,
a price and a continued learn and stay update to industry with the learn WordPress project.
So you know, this is the practice if you can continue up to date and provide the, you know, like the
if you I experienced in 10 years and you know, if I can share that knowledge, then of course,
if someone asked question, if I don't know, then I can ask you a skill of the my skill and anybody
can you know, do the Training team, you know, not any technical or graphic, anybody can you know who
connected with the technical department like the SEO guys, content guy, designer, developer,
any can do the training, connect the Training team with that contribute like, you know, learn the
create the session, learn the session, translate, review, right? Most of things doing on the learn
WordPress. So any anybody can do the Training team, and all of kind of people can fit to
train this is the you know, main, you know, if you have a startup WordPress journey, this is the main
project for the WordPress. So that's great to know. I mean, so basically, if you're coming into
WordPress, and you don't necessarily have a specialty in one area, you don't have to have any
particular type of background, there's a place for you on the Training team, you can still help. And
there's all kinds of things you can do to help out. Feel free to ask any time of the our community
Training team and always low stop guide, happy to help with any of the one on this, this particle
project, learn purpose. It's a very welcoming team, I think you're getting. Yes, yes, yes. And very
easy, very easy to you know, understand this project. Yeah. So I think one of the things that
makes the Training team welcoming and a good place for people to get started on WordPress project is
this guide program that we're going to talk about more. So movable, maybe could you tell us,
why was the the guide program created? And what are the goals of that program?
Okay, the guide program is specially created for a new contributor and experience contributor to
link them and help new contributors to get help from experienced one. So when I was I joined a
Training team, I was so confused from where to start and what to do, why I am doing a specific
thing and what will be the impact of it. So understanding all the things. If someone join
in guide program, they will get answer from an experienced from an experienced contributor.
So it helps them to get on boarded properly and in a structured way, I think. So guide program is
created for people who is really interested to join in Training team for long term, like a few
people join and after a few days, they lost their interest. So if someone is interested in
working in Training team for long run, they must join that guide program and it will help them
understanding the workflow of guide program and all answers they can get from their mentor as well.
So I think this is the purpose of guide program initially.
So I popped the link in the chat, which is the handbook page for the guide program. So if people
want to dive and read a little bit more, they can take a peek. And basically, just to give a few
more, you know, a few more pieces of information, the guide program matches a new contributor,
someone who wants to get involved with a guide, a person who is more experienced on the training
team. And they work together either one on one or with a little group, if there are other new
contributors starting this at the same time, they work one on one for about a month to walk this new
person, new contributor through the process of starting to contribute. And like you said,
it's an onboarding process. We don't officially call the guide a mentor, but that is the kind of
role that the person plays. It's a mentor. And while officially the program is a month, I'm sure
you have experiences where you've continued to be a resource person for that contributor as time goes
by. So maybe Sumit, do you want to tell me a little bit about your experience being the guide?
What's it been like for you? Tell me a little bit about your experience being a guide. Have you
enjoyed it? What has it been like for you? Okay, so you know, I'm always happy to help any of the
new contributions because I am working with what I am doing right now and what I have due to
WordPress all the credit. So I am you know, I started you know, first I have joined 2015 as a
word camp and I started the contribution and same day I have created the core team ticket and
get the pro and I'm very happy that time because I get the wages first time for the core.
You know, then I decide to increase me, you know, I need to do something more and get the more
contribution and help the people. Then I started to contribution, join the Training team. Okay.
And then I have attended weekly meeting on the slack and also June meeting. Okay. And then
I joined the program meeting and I learned lots of things, how to
recap the meeting, how to you know, help the people, how can understand the process about the how to
create a tutorial and everything, how can contribute everything. Then after one to
after three to four months, I applied a Faculty and I have accepted as a guide program. And then
you know, like Christian and other also, you know, most of the head department of the guys
providing to, you know, provide the training one-to-one training in the programming time.
And you know, low stock guys directly connect with me about the how to start the contribution. And
what I've learned from the previous Faculty, I am same things sharing with him and he's very
happy to get the wages and low stock guys already know many join right now on the this event. Many
of the new contributors are happy with me. I am right now providing the contribution and this is
the guide program working, you know, what you have learned just you need to share with the new
contributor. So if folks aren't familiar with the badges that you mentioned, everybody on
workrest.org has a profile page, which is a page which you can fill out some of the information
yourself, you can put your bio link to your website, things like that. But other things are
earned, let's say, based on your experience. And badges are little icons that are added to your
profile when you've completed certain tasks or a certain level of achievement in a certain
WordPress.org team. So you're talking about, you know, collecting those badges, it's a nice
recognition of contributions when you get a badge on your on your on your profile. So the training
team has badges for different types of contribution. And Muhobo, maybe tell me a little bit, what has
your experience been like being a guide? What has it been like for you to be a guide? Okay,
so my experience is also imaging people work for money and recognition. So here there is no money,
but there is a good recognition and the relation is respective. And that's why I feel really proud,
because when I joined as a guide, people do a very warm welcome. And I really like communicating
with new people and help them. So when I joined in guide program, I met so many new people and
all of them are from many different countries. And that is a good thing for me, because my
networking is spreading to all other countries. And from different people, I learned a lot of
things, my networking is building strong. And that's why I am enjoying the task as guide. So
being guide is really interesting. And at the same time, you can learn also not only as a mentor,
I am just teaching not like that, I am also learning from many different people like what I am,
I don't know everything. So what I realized I my skill is gradually improving also. So my experience
is also good. That's a really good point. Sometimes folks think that teaching or guiding or mentoring
is a one way process where you are giving information to someone else. But I think that's
a really excellent point that when we play these roles, we can learn a lot from the people that we
are working with as well. So it's a two way things a lot of the time. So that's a really, really good
point. So a couple of questions I was wondering about is what kind of time commitment is needed
to be a guide? So is it, you know, once one hour a week, a couple of hours a week, I mentioned that
it's usually a month long process for each person. Does any does either of you want to address that
a little bit? This depends on your mentee, like who joins the expertise, sometimes some people join
who is really expert or really catch anything when we deliver to them any resource I share,
they can understand, but few mentees are not like that. So we need spend more times to them. And
this is, I think this depends on types of mentees. But I think three or four hour weekly is a good
amount of time for a guide to guide his mentee. So sometimes I just share resources and just tell
them to read or ask me questions like if you don't understand, like ask me and that type of
resource sharing do not take two or three minutes. So as I already bookmarked all of them, I already
mentored 10 plus people. So I have all resources in my bookmark list. So I just copy and just share
with them. Most of the time, they just don't find the correct resource. So it don't take so many
times now because it's all arranged here. But at the beginning, it took so many times like 10 or
more hours for me. I don't know what time takes for submit. Do you want to add anything,
Sumit, about your own experience? Same thing. You know, I asked the first time,
you know, right now currently also, you know, if I have not bookmark or everything, you know,
still sometimes, you know, I'm asked to Faculty member to can you send me the how can do like,
you know, right. Recently, I've created the WordCamp Europe post and I don't know where I can
create the thumbnail. Okay. So I asked, but you know, right now, today I bookmark and
may well ask, okay, right now for you know, also I'm getting the how to get the Zoom account to connect,
but then you ask, okay, go to the bookmark and get the details. So sometimes, you know,
because WordPress is the very biggest things I know. And this is a small part of the training
thing. But this small part looking, I am thinking of a very big. So this is this will be good
practice to you know, if you get any new things, just bookmarks and all maybe you do, you can note
down from the URL. Mostly, I'm you know, what I'm doing, I'm, you know, myself, paste on the my slack
individually and book pin on the this link. This is the best practice for the you know, any of the
new things from the slack. So one thing I want to point out is that guides don't have to create all
these resources from scratch. We have in the handbook links to share with your mentee or your
new contributor things like, you know, the contributing to the Training team slides that
are already out there, getting started guide, things like that. So you don't have to invent
everything from scratch. But as you both pointed out, sometimes you might have a contributor who's
interested in a particular area, but is not your own expertise, that you might need to ask for help
with finding resources. And I think you know, you would probably both agree that the Training team
is very friendly and open to helping each other. So if someone has a need for a resource that
you're not sure where it is in all this documentation, you know, when you ask, there are people to help
you find things. So yeah, I mean, 10 hours feels like a lot of time, maybe, maybe that's a lot on
the high end. But as you both pointed out, you know, once you've done it more than once or twice,
you'll have your own bookmarks all in one place. So you can share them more easily. And it probably
takes less and less time the more you guide. What about personality wise or traits in a person like
what kind of person makes a good guide? For example, I'm thinking like, I would imagine you need to be
a patient person willing to take the time it needs with somebody to walk them through something. What
are what are some other qualities or personality traits that would make for a good guide, do you
think?
Commitment, commitment and reality, continue learning and subject matter expert like the
positive attitude. Also, you know, communication skill. So many of the continued learning is the
very most skill, you know, to the communication skills. So you know, if you know, guided and
speak slowly, slowly, and make sure what you are speaking front guys, you know,
understanding properly or not, like, you know, we are continuing, you know, discussing so you know,
like it makes your whole our attendee understanding what we are talking.
Moveable, anything you'd like to add? So I want to add something like,
if you if you want to be a guide in Training team, you just need good knowledge of Training team,
all the things and resources where you can find the resources for to run a Training team smoothly,
you just need to know that. And this quality can make you a good guide, because most of the people
join the guide program or other thing, select channel, they just ask for help with the resources,
all the things Training team is already structured. And it's it, it has three team reps who is really
good and running this channel really smoothly. So I never found anything that is not created
already, I we just need to resource collect that resource and just share with our mentees. So for
being a good mentee, you just need to keep knowledge about that resources, tools and other
training materials. As in Training team, we just create, we create many type of educational
content. So we need knowledge about that. And if possible, we need to participate on that specific
section always, because when I am not a content creator, I will not learn everything properly.
Because when I created my first video for learn WordPress, I learned so many things when I just
created that one, because we read the resources so many times, but this don't make any sense to us.
So for being a good guide, we have to participate on that sections also. And most of the important
part is I think, participating in training meeting, every every week we have a meeting. So if anyone
wants to become a good guide, they need to participate on that meeting. Because here we
discuss all the latest things and where we need more effort or something. So we can learn the
main areas from here also. Great points. Thank you both. I also want to mention that
typically folks who are selected as guides should be contributing to the Training team
for at least six months consistently. So that's something to keep in mind if you are interested
in becoming a guide, but you haven't, you know, you're new to the team, or you haven't been
contributing as consistently as you'd like. That's what we're going to look for is consistent
contributions for six months. Yes, you know, some guys, you know, contributed one or two,
you know, one or month or two months, then you know, ask personally, when I get the by chase,
you know, this is two persons, at least six months continue join, then you can join the
contributor. No, they know initially, we joined the one or two recap, nothing and you need to
get the better. Then you know, most of guys will come.
All right, most of them will come for batches. But I want to add that if you do meaningful
contribution, you will get best automatically like, of course, of course. Yeah, when I joined,
I also run for batches. But I tried so many things. Why I don't get batches, I whenever I
visit someone's profile and get disappointed, because I don't have that beach or what I have
to do for that beach. But with the time I saw my batches getting added here, automatically,
I don't need to pressurize to get it on my profile. Just just, you know, most of the
birthplace project, you know, signing the batches automatically just like that WTV and few other
either support like this, you know, manually right now, but most of you know, batches automatically
like the core team, Training team, Training team is a very best, you know, if you go continue the
six month, you totally work and core team also you get the pro to get the translator,
all of the notes very smoothly. So I don't think you know, you just need to ask the batches about
this. But you know, most of you know, I for my experience, most of you know, you just come to
the Training team and and translate it through a stream, go to batches then go down.
Yeah, thanks both. All right. Welcome back for part two. So I was about to ask a movie bill from
the point of view of someone who was a new contributor. I know you weren't officially
part of the guide program at that point, because it hadn't been begun yet. But I understand you were
informally guided by Ben Evans, who's currently one of the Training team reps. And maybe could
you share a little bit about what that experience was like on the other side?
Okay, so that time I just joined Training team. And it was before joining the slack in Word make
WordPress, I was not a slack user event. So everything was happening to me was really
confusing. So I found Ben even really helpful. And I asked him so many silly questions at the
beginning. And he was so patient and answering everything to me. And he said me we are planning
a guide program. And I can mention called Courtney, Courtney Pique. So she was also helpful to me.
And they shared a lot of resources to me to learn why, how I can participate on different
threats or different areas of Training team. And then I was really fortunate because
they guided me how I can become a contributor here. And most of the people just live after that,
like earning the bet. But I thought, as they are really helpful, I am getting a proper guideline.
So I can do so many things from here here, like I firstly decided to become a content creator here.
But that was not happening now, because I don't get enough time for that. But Ben Evans helped me
really in this area. And after that, after I joined in a Slack channel, guide program started
after one month. And I was a first mentor, first batch. And my mentor was Ganga Kafle. And he was
also a good mentor for me. So I think the experience was amazing for me. Great. Thank you.
I'm going to jump ahead a little bit. I had a couple more questions. But I want to make sure
we have time for questions from folks who are here. So if anybody has questions, feel free to
either put it in the chat or unmute yourself or you can turn off your video. I'm going to stop the
focus mode, which means that your video will be shared if you want to. So does anyone have any
questions about the guide program or the Training team as a whole, since we have a couple of
experienced folks here, anyone have any questions? Is anyone interested in applying to become a guide
or a new contributor? I'm also going to put back in the chat the resources that I shared earlier,
because we don't have the chat back scroll anymore. But we have the handbook page,
which explains in detail some of the things we've been talking about here.
So basically, if you're interested in becoming a guide or in becoming part of the guide program,
you can click on this link, go to the handbook page, and we have a form. You can fill out both
to become a guide and to become a new contributor in the program. Any questions from anyone?
If you have any questions, just raise the hand, maybe emoji, or if you have any.
Yeah, sure. And if folks are shy and don't want to unmute, you can type it in the chat,
and we can address it here. Otherwise, I'll just keep asking you both questions. We have five more
minutes. Yeah. So I'll ask another question. I was wondering if either of you have any success
stories to share about people you've guided. And if they've given you permission to use their name,
you can give them recognition here. If not, you can sort of tell the story as a more generic story
without using their name. But any success stories that either of you want to share?
Listen, you can see the jacket also join here. And I was a mentor for this guy. And he's doing
very well in the short term. And in two or three meetings, he has started to recap the
meeting notes for the Training team. So going very well. And I think, Jage, I am thinking it
will come very soon, the AJ Faculty, because he's doing very well. This is recently my share the
guy's a guide program with the jacket. So can you speak anything about the training? How it's going
with the Training team? Your experience. Thank you so much for the one more thing I need to share is
first time I have no idea how to join the Training team. I how I need to like
join this lecture on how I need to meeting to meeting not stacker. Okay, so yeah,
so made to guide me a lot. So yeah, thank you so much for the guidance. And yeah, I'm
very happy to continue to contribution in training.
Thanks. I can share a story about Prem Theory. I asked for his permission and he granted the
permission. So he was a mentor guide in he was mentee in third mentor guide program when I joined.
So in third session, he joined as a mentor and he was really excited and a good participant
of guard guide program. He is doing really great. And he become a Faculty member last week. And he's
doing really great. And besides guide program, I do I am a mentor of wide mentorship program from
there. I, I was a mentor for Bengali polyglots on boarding, but that was not my expertise. So
I taught them how to participate in Training team and they are doing really great. And a few people
who were not officially joined guide program, but few people from Gujarat, India, like they are
doing was ready translation, I can mention them. Roshan and pooja, they did really great. And these
are my success story and I can feel proud about them. That's it. I personally know about the Prem
Kump Theory. I am first, you know, meet also, he also, you know, very good experience in WordPress,
almost, I think, seven to 10 years plus experience, but he don't know about the how to start the
contribution. I've also helped to start the contribution, but you know, I will guide more
much other than me because I'm also already know right now guiding the seven to eight people.
So I'm fully accord because I'm doing also job. So, you know, that's why, you know,
so they're very good guys, you know, he also working 10 years ago, but he don't know about
the how to start the contribution, but right now, very good. Right. It's not the matter how long you
are working. It's a different area. So open source contribution is something different from
WordPress development. So people get confused here. Like I am doing web development for long
years, but I when I joined, I got confused and most of the people feel same. And in
our area like India and Bangladesh, we are not that much fluent in English like me, like I am,
I can understand everything when it's in a written form. But in speaking, I'm not that much expert.
And sometimes I'm really a camera shy person. And when I open my camera, I like my memorized thing,
I forget. So that's why when we join in this area, our expertise is not in that area,
this area. So we make everything confused. And we just don't know where to start. So
and most important thing I can mention is there is no money involved here. So people don't get
fully concentrated on this, because if we are like web developers, we are really good
basic of it. But if we focus on this, we can understand but if there is no money involved,
we don't focus on it properly. That's why we don't understand. So I think it makes sense.
But I tried to say,
very good points to to mention that the, you know, the daily operations of the Training team
and all of WordPress.org are in English, but there are definitely places that folks who are
fluent in other languages can contribute. So there's content creation in other languages,
there's translation of existing content in other languages. So those are really good points.
I want to also mention if anyone here has more questions about this, and is not already in the
WordPress.org slack instance, please go ahead and join up. I'm going to pop a link in the chat
of how to connect to a slack account. Slack, if you're not familiar, is a chat app. And the
WordPress.org slack is where a lot of the communication around the project takes place.
And we have it's called a channel. There are different channels in slack for different teams
and different projects. And the training channel is where we're welcome to ask questions and sort
of start this process of getting involved. So you can check out the handbook page that I linked
above. But you can also if you want to talk with somebody before doing that, or after you've done
that, and you're not already not already in slack, please go ahead and join up. It's free, obviously,
and, and you can get the ball rolling to communicate with folks. All right,
if you don't know anybody, you know, hate it with the English language, you can connect with your
local language on the slack. I am sure somewhere someone guys your local team available on the slack.
So no need to necessarily to talk with English in the English language. You can talk in the your
local language, just you know, Google type your language and send on the slack. Of course, you
can quote the mentor from the your local city. Yeah, good point. You can come in and say, you
know, sorry, anyone here because you know, I have experience when I started, you know, I had to speak
English as part of my whole. But right now I can live till bit speaking English and I can understand
English. So lots of guys, you know, facing this stage. So if anybody any question, you can feel
free to join slack and you can also put the comment on this meeting event below the comment
box. So you can leave that message on there. Yeah. And what I'll also do is put the links that I've
popped here in the meeting on meetup.com as well. I'm going to make a note to remember to do that
so that if you don't have a chance to copy them out of the chat here, you can look on meetup.com
and we will I will put those links there. All right. So thank you, everybody, for joining today.
I want to give a huge thanks to Sumit and people for joining me here. I know it's evening your
time. So thank you for giving up chunk of your of your evening and personal time. And thank you to
everyone for bearing with the technical issue. I still don't know why our meeting got cut off.
Looks like someone logged into the same account. But I'm not sure why. So thanks for your patience
there. Sometimes these things happen. And yeah, we'll see you again at another hopefully at another
one of these online workshops and have a great rest of everybody's day.
Thank you. Thank you, everyone. And as for the thank you cartoon to host this amazing event.
I hope we'll see you again.