Outreachy report #21: May 2021
May 2021 cohort
Welcoming our new interns
In the backstage we had a few interns with time commitment conflicts and a few communities who had to select other applicants to fill their spot, but in the end we announced 71 interns! 🎉
The more interns we accept, the more active Zulip seems to get. Our interns have been sharing their blogs, experiences with certain metholodogies and lines of work (there’s a great discussion on analyzing huge amounts of data for data science inclined folks), and even work playlists to keep themselves motivated throughout the day. I even connected a few Brazilian interns and alums so they could help each other with all the paperwork they need to get their stipends.
Moving our bi-weekly chats to odd weeks was a fantastic idea. When we did it in even weeks, I felt like we lost a little bit of all the enthusiasm our interns feel right off the bat. They were more engaged and asked a lot more questions (so many it was quite hard to follow the chat in real time). Sage and I have discussed facilitating those chats two times a week for folks in different timezones, but this cohort didn’t warrant that yet. I do believe, however, this is something we may consider doing for bigger cohorts regardless of timezone conflicts.
Processing sponsorships
As mentioned a couple of times, this is my first round dealing with sponsorships. I’m still getting used to many of the things we need to do in that regard (mostly knowing who to message, when and why), but we’ve been progressing on that front (especially when it comes to documenting how certain tasks are done and automating a few steps). We’re right at the end of the sponsorship processing cycle, starting to effectively invoice community sponsors.
Summer goals
Accessibility
Sage and I have been talking quite a lot about accommodations for disabled applicants. One of the areas I’d like to explore this summer is our website accessibility – how well can someone with a screen reader navigate our website? Are we using HTML correctly? And, of course, detailing the many ways we can accommodate disabled applicants and interns, once they’re selected. Can we do something like the travel stipend, but for home office improvements?
Documentation
Accessibility also intersects with documentation improvements. Our documentation is quite long, verbose, and sometimes difficult to read. Some sections – especially those that mention travel stipends – are terribly outdated. Outreachy needs a documentation overhaul in the same way Open Collective did when I participated in Google Season of Docs.
In 2019 I created the following framework to rework Open Collective’s documentation:
- Make a detailed analysis of all pages
- What is the main subject of this page?
- Who is the page addressing?
- Is its tone conversational or instructional?
- Is there any media on this page?
- If so, do they need to be updated?
- If not, should we add some?
- identify common themes between page groups
- Propose of a new structure
- Submit it for comments and suggestions
- Present the final restructuring plan
I’ll be following a similar methodology with Outreachy’s documentation. However, since there’s limited time to focus on this task, my greatest priority will be all documentation related to applicants and interns.
Lastly, some personal news: I took my first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine last month. My second and final dose is scheduled for August 13th. People on social media joke that Oxford/AstraZeneca sucker punches you into developing immunity against the virus, and they’re right. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but it was definitely way more pleasant than COVID-19 itself. I can’t wait to do it again in August!