User:Sonkiki/Hackathons/handbook/Newcomers


 * outreach/recruiting part of this chapter: Hackathons/Hackathon tips for organizers
 * promotion within wikimedia world: 2Promotion

Mentoring Program:
Wikimedia Hackathon 2017/Mentoring Program

Be sure to have the Friendly Space Policy, because the social part is especially improtant for newcomers. Also, nice social events (link to social events) help!

Newcomers are important for a Wikimedia Hackathon
The registration form should help identifying newcomers and other participants welcoming an introduction, as well as more experienced contributors willing to help welcoming them. See phab:T89392.

Note that there are different types of newcomers:
 * Junior developers interested in Wikimedia.
 * Not so junior developers interested in an international developer hackathon happening nearby.
 * Developer communities strong in technologies used in Wikimedia: PHP, JavaScript, Android, iOS... (phab:T76325)
 * Local or international contributors of upstream projects used in the Wikimedia stack. (phab:T76325)
 * Tech-curious contributors, not necessarily developers, but experts in some related area (web publishing, open data, geolocation, etc).
 * ... and many more!

Strategies to reach out to Newcomers from like-minded Communities
This chapter takes from the Outreach and Community Building Strategy around the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017.

For the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 we need to reach out to two new groups to which WMAT has no well-established contact yet in order to build a sustainable tech community around Wikimedia projects in Austria.

We identified two main target groups with different needs, therefore we needed different strategies to reach out to them.
 * Stakeholders (STH):  (Commercial) MediaWiki user outside of the Wikiverse, who have a mainly professional interest and are potential sponsors for tech events in Austria. For this info, see Chapter: Stakeholders
 * Like-minded communities (LMC):  Tech-savvy communities or individuals who already are or could be interested in FOSS and are potential new Wikimedians in Austria. A special focus lies on female developers.

Like-mindes Communities: People from “two nodes down the network” (e.g. open street map, open data, net politics, linux devs, …) who know of Wikimedia, but have yet to participate in a Wikimedia hackathon. How do we reach out to them?
 * 1) LMC can be a diverse group. Their coding skills may vary from “interested in” to “full-on app-dev”. Therefore, not one strategy works for all. We also want to accommodate for gender diversity and address the needs of female devs (childcare etc.)
 * 2) LMC are the future: new people!
 * 3) Diversity ftw.
 * 4) Since we’re working outside of our own Wikiverse-bubble, we need to make sure that we think outside of it. We want diversity, so we need to accommodate it. We want to to just make people adjust to our ways, but find new ways and approaches to engage new people. (see below, ideas for a mentor-system)
 * 5) Social motivation is a key factor. It more often than not is the make-or-break factor whether someone joins a new group.
 * 6) (Story from Mexico Wikimania 2015: L. did not plan on participating in the hackathon. But then he got to sit with devs at the breakfast table, was invited to do some sightseeing with them and they got along really well, he decided to join the hackathon with them and had a fun and productive time and was included in group projects, even though he had not even brought his own laptop.)

1. Look at our neighbours in the network: find out who could be interested
Set up a spreadsheet of network partners. Describe the different communities: Who are they, what do they want? What do they need to feel welcome and want to take active part in a Wikimedia hackathon? Distinguish between people who already have some coding skills and people who don’t, because they need different things.

2. Little steps! Let them get to know us bit by bit
When you meet someone new, you probably don’t want to go on a weekend trip with them right away. You meet for coffee first and see what happens.

We will apply that strategy to our LMC. We invite them for coffee - e.g. a workshop for an afternoon, “MediaWiki 101” or “How to rock Wikidata as a newbie”.

Let them meet the faces of the community and see whether the chemistry is right and they - and vice versa, the community - feels comfortable with each other. Do everything we can to make the overall circumstances and  framework conditions for these workshops and get-to-know-each-other events as socially inclusive as possible.

3. Offer ways to participate in the hackathon as a newbie
Implement a mentor-system for the hackathon: Experienced devs who enjoy working with new people and teaching them / introducing them to MediaWiki. Maybe let them know the projects you’ll be working on in advance, before the hackathon even starts (e.g. on the website, “projects for newbies”, “beginner-friendly projects”, best also with a picture of the mentor, to put a friendly face to it)

Mentors will have to be picked in advance by the WMAT and WMF team. (Maybe in the future, that can be a more open process, but for this time, we (WMAT) think that it would be best to start with mentors whom we know have the matching social skills and motivation.)

We were thinking about 2-3 newbies per mentor (experience from other hackathons).