Outreachy/Administrators

Read below the responsibilities of Wikimedia's organization administrator in various phases of the Outreachy program.

Note: Outreachy takes place twice a year and contents on this page follow the timeline of the two previous rounds which might be different next year, but the process of the program will more or less remain the same.

Before the application period

late December - middle of February / late July - end of September

1. Confirm budget for the program.
2. Sign up your organization to participate in the program.
3. Subscribe to the Outreachy mentors mailing list to receive announcements, program updates and applicant queries. Remember to set a filter for lists.outreachy.org to ensure it ends up in your personal inbox.
4. Recruit two community coordinators/admins. As the timeline and process of both Google Summer of Code and Outreachy summer round are similar and require coordination, it's recommended to have the same people organizing them. 
5. Confirm approval of WMF by Outreachy; they should send an email.
6. File BAR and confirm contract.
7. Create a milestone in Phabricator under Outreachy project and copy and adjust the milestone description from the previous Outreachy round. (Request permissions to create milestones if you don't have already.)
8. Create Outreachy/Round_XX subpage on MediaWiki.org. Add latest round to Template:GSoC and/or Template:OPW
9. Put out the call for mentors/projects on mailing lists and Slack. See example. Task description of chosen projects should meet the listed criteria.
10. Ensure all mentors have signed up on the Outreachy site and uploaded their project descriptions by the deadline.
11. Create channels on WMF zulip for the current round; be sure to include both community coordinators in all channels
    1. Outreachy XX (public, for anyone)
    2. Outreachy XX mentors (private, for confirmed mentors only)
    3. Outreachy XX interns (private, for confirmed interns only)
12. Participate in the Outreachy zulip chat to answer applicants queries. 

OPTIONAL: Host an information session for applicants For one of the previous rounds, we used YouTube for the live broadcast and IRC for a simultaneous discussion. See more details. 

Application period

Before the deadline: middle of February - end of March / end of September - beginning of November

1. Assign all microtasks to "DO NOT CHANGE (Microtasks with several assignees at the same time)."
2. Add a red box on top of the Phabricator task. (Example) Red Box Content:
   IMPORTANT: Welcome all Contributors!! Before commenting on this task, please thoroughly review the Outreachy participant instructions and communication guidelines to ensure you're well-prepared. This space is dedicated to project-specific questions, so please refrain from introducing yourselves and asking general questions about getting started or setting up Gerrit. If you're unsure, feel free to ask your question on our Zulip channel (insert link) first, and we'll be happy to guide you!.
3. Suggest next steps in the process to both interns and mentors. Make sure interns follow both the official and Wikimedia's application process guidelines. Remind mentors to review intern proposals on Phabricator and give them feedback.  
4. Answer interns and mentors queries. They might approach you via various communication mediums (Zulip, Emails, Phabricator, Talk pages). Be prompt in your replies.
5. Provide a group communication tool to interns and mentors In the few recent rounds, we have encouraged the use of Zulip for Q&A; check one of the previous streams.

OPTIONAL: Review student applications. Verify that students have followed all the application process steps.

• Provide relevant feedback on the applications – Ideally, 1-2 weeks before the deadline, so that students have time to work on the feedback.
• If there isn't enough time for the student to work on your feedback (or to create a new proposal), leave a comment stating that their chances of getting accepted are low. A sample comment:

   Welcome! Thanks for your interest in this project. The Outreachy application deadline is in ~2.5 hours, which isn't quite sufficient to complete our application process, so I'd like to frankly let you know that your chances of acceptance are very slim. But, we do understand that the application process is a good learning experience, so if you still wish to draft a proposal, we'd be happy to support you. You can also contribute to Wikimedia besides these programs. If you're interested, we can share some resources with you on getting started. 

After the deadline: end of March - beginning of May / beginning of November - end of November

1. Ask mentors to review applications. Encourage them to follow the selection process tips and update the score in the Outreachy's system.
2. Announce results on Wikitech-I & Wikimedia-I mailing lists once they are out. You could also send emails to accepted participants & congratulate them. See email examples one, two. 
3. Organize tasks in Phabricator, decline proposals not accepted (via "Add Action… 🡒 Change Status" plus add a comment "This proposal unfortunately did not get accepted, hence declining this task"; you could save some time by batch editing these tasks), move the accepted proposals to an appropriate column on the workboard of the corresponding Outreachy round.

OPTIONAL: Send emails to rejected participants. Encourage them to continue contributing outside of Outreachy and re-apply the following round. See example messages.

Internship period

end of May - end of August / beginning of December - beginning of March

1. Engage interns in your community. Prepare a list of small tasks to help interns get familiar with the community practices and processes. See example. 
2. Suggest next steps in the process to both interns and mentors. Encourage interns to write weekly reports, work towards accomplishing milestones in their project timeline, communicate regularly with mentors, and submit evaluations on time. Encourage mentors to continue providing guidance to interns during this time. 

OPTIONAL:

• Host video meetups with interns. Allow interns to learn and share their work with fellow participants and request feedback. 
• Share interns' weekly reports with the community. See example.

Wrap-up

end of August - late September / beginning of March - late April

1. Suggest next steps in the process to both interns and mentors. Ensure no pull requests are remaining to be merged and deployed in production and documentation both on-wiki and in the code is complete.  
2. Archive the corresponding "Round" milestone project in Phabricator (select "Manage" in the left bar and select "Archive Project" on the right).
3. Update Outreachy/Round_XX subpage on MediaWiki.org: Add {{historical}} on top. Remove "Stay up to date with the progress on projects through the bi-weekly reports of interns" from top and move to "Accepted projects" section. Potentially summarize the round on top instead.
4. Add this round's projects to Outreachy/Past projects.

OPTIONAL:

• Write a blog post for Wikimedia blog. Include information about interns, projects they worked on, what they accomplished, etc (Example). At the very least, announce on wikitech-l & Wikimedia-l mailing list.
• Host a lightning showcase and invite interns to share the projects they built with the community.   

Additional notes

• For the sections listed above, do not miss any emails on the Outreachy mailing list or from the program coordinators as they will contain information about important deadlines.

Resources

• Read the resources on the GNOME's Outreachy Admin's page.
• Read announcement emails and messages from Round 20.
• Read lessons learned from the previous editions.
• Read lessons learned from the GSoC 2017 edition.