--- tags: community-strategic-lead, jupyterhub, planning --- # Strategic Plans for JupyterHub Community ## Content Meetings From leading the regular monthly team meetings, I don't think they are a very consistent or accessible entry points for newcomers to the project, even though the meeting is advertised as "open to anyone". This is because the agenda varies wildly depending on what the community wants to discuss, which is amazing that it's emergent, but not consistent. I think it's quite off-putting for people to attend these meetings when they become very technical, or very strategic/governance heavy, for example, and I've often see that new folk only come to one meeting and never return. I think this is also because the meeting doesn't help newcomers orient themselves to the project or where they can begin to help. So instead I wonder if breaking up our single meeting into different, tightly scoped meetings on specific topics may be more beneficial. Both for newcomers to the project who will have a clearer sense of where to go to start contributing, without being drowned by overly compex technical challenges or governance strategies straight off the bat, and for maintainers who will be more able to focus on which meetings they want/need to attend based on their interests and roles within the project. Some types of meetings and topics they would cover could be: - Steering Council meetings: discussing project governance, community strategy, funding opportunities, roadmap workshopping, etc - Issue and PR triaging meetings: This could be a bit more flexible and could range from an informal setting for maintainers to triage together and have company, to more of an onboarding "where should I start?" orientation for newcomers - Showcases: For the "let me demo the cool thing I built" type of presentations (Then Sarah began changing her mind on the many meetings approach...) ### Maybe a Collaboration Cafe? Ref: https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/community-handbook/coworking/coworking-collabcafe.html The Collaboration Cafe has been a really successful model in the Turing Way. This is a two-hour block of time every 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of a month where members of the community make time to work on the Turing Way. This often looks like many break-out rooms, such as: - Quiet working - Groups of people wanting to discuss a specific topic, such as issue triaging or a new chapter - Onboarding. Newcomers are often directed to the Collaboration Cafe as an initial touchpoint where an experienced member of the community describes the project and it's purpose, how the community works together, and how they can start contributing The breakout rooms work in [pomodoro sessions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique) with breaks back in the main room to share progress. Hosting a Collaboration Cafe may reap dual benefits of being more friendly to newcomers (we provide onboarding breakout rooms as and when they are needed instead of trying to maintain a regular onboarding session) and keeping the emergent nature of "what does the community want to talk about this session" that the current team meeting has - including really technical stuff! As well as giving a space where folk can start coordinating and actioning their ideas because it is a more collaborative space than a meeting. (I'd probably still keep something like a steering council meeting separate from a Collab Cafe) Follow-up thoughts from chatting with KW: - In the comms, _always_ say that an onboarding session will be run, because folk do not like uncertainty, and they like to know that they will definitely be onboarded if they came. But the onboarding break-out room doesn't actually have to happen if no one turns up to be onboarded - Get the word virtual in there! Or change Collaboration Cafe completely. The model of Collaboration Cafes is not broadly understood. When the TTW calls first started, it was pre-pandemic and some people thought that it was a physical cafe!