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[Outreachy reports] · · 3 min read

Outreachy report #30: February 2022

🏆 First-time achievements

  • I dealt with Feedback #3 completely on my own: I followed up with extension requests, processing them or arguing against them when necessary. I pinged community coordinators and mentors about non-individualized feedback and/or missing feedback. All feedback was processed by February 15. All interventions made after Feedback #2 were successful. Only 1 intern needed an extension.

✨ Team highlights

  • We saw a decrease in extension requests in the December round: We made adjustments to the intern chat topics to talk about the ins-and-outs of working remotely. Early interventions and making extension guidelines clearer seem to be contributing factors to that decrease.
  • We’re seeing the results of a year of training as an organizer: Tasks that would take me a couple of days now take only a couple of hours to be completed. Sage is now able to transfer tasks to me fully and permanently.

💪 Getting better at it!

  • Daily planning: I came up with a new personal notes system that helps me keep track of tasks, thoughts, events, situations and other important items throughout a work day. It’s inspired by our daily stand-ups.

🔮 Improvements for the future

💬 Team communications:

  • I started becoming available for meetings at 9 am BRT/UTC-3h every day: That way, my schedule will hopefully align with our future community manager’s working hours.
  • I adjusted my stand-up format: My stand-ups now have a list of blockers coming first and have tasks split in morning and afternoon tasks.
  • I adjusted the time I post my daily stand-ups: Sage should be updated about my progress as soon as they start their working hours. They’re now posted at 12 pm.
  • I now add a meeting agenda to my daily stand-ups: If I have a meeting that day, my daily stand-up will include things I want to discuss or bring up during that meeting.
  • I created the You’ve got mail stream: This is a Zulip topic under the organizers channel where I share a summary of the most important emails we receive throughout the day. It includes replies to previous emails, notifications, inquiries, and updates.
  • I created a triage system for Applicant Help emails: We used to be so overwhelmed by the amount of emails in Applicant Help we would unconsciously ignore it. I now triage emails by moving them into folders with different categories that helps us decide which ones we should prioritize in every phase of the application period. I also created folders for website and policy feedback.

📑 Documentation:

  • I created an internal wiki for organizers on GitLab: I tested a couple of information organization before settling on a native GitLab wiki. GitLab offers a rich text editor on their web interface, making it more accessible for everyone regardless of proficiency with Git and Markdown. It also offers a separated Git repository for organizers who prefer to edit files locally and push their changes later on.
  • I organized information in our older organizer manual: Our semi-current organizer manual is a long Markdown file published on GitHub with our website code. That makes it difficult to navigate and find relevant information. All information in the organizer manual was split into smaller files and organized in sections in the internal wiki I’m now maintaining.