Cycle 4 Funding: Community Engagement Follow-on work by OrgMycology #389
Conversation
We've attached a proposal to create a follow-on for the work we've been doing with Astropy. We see some key areas we think we could be helpful going forward, and welcome conversation over the coming weeks to co-create some intitiatives under this outline proposal. We'd very much like to hear from the CoCo about priorities they might have from our community survey that they think we could potentially contribute to.
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We'd also love to hear from community members who've read our Astropy Community Survey Report what they think should be key activities of the community could / should be based on their reading of the report. We've tried to outline some things we think could get community management in front of more eyeballs in the community. I've also outlined a few things about easing contributors into their first contributions to Astropy (not necessarily code contributions). Would love to hear from community members about ways in which they would like to see more of this kind of work. With our proposed work, we feel that skills maps can help ground some descriptions of community roles, and a few tangible workshops and activities can model for the broader community ways to help each other cross into new skills within the community. We're quite flexible in scoping this proposal into a mix of supporting and key community actions that increase the cohesion and community contributions (beyond just software). |
| - **Skills Map Development** – Addressing [our recommendation to better communicate user-contributotr pipelines](https://astropy-report.orgmycology.com/sections/consultant_recommendations#develop-and-visualize-user-to-contributor-pipelines). We propose to develop skills maps which can help to map roles of Astropy community members and the ways in which educational material and community progressions take place. We propose to develop two skills maps, one for Astropy Developers (focusing on on-ramps for new developers) and one for Astropy Users (starting with Astropy Learn lessons). These will be developed with community involvement and feedback and shared openly as a resource of the community to own and update as needed. [Examples of skills maps](https://orgmycology.com/skills-maps) | ||
| - **Technical skills support** – Helping and supporting Community Lead as she develops more automations and tools that help her do the work of community manager for the Astropy Community. Project priorities will be set with Community Lead and monthly progress reports will be shared back with the CoCo and community. | ||
| - **1-2 - Special projects prioritized by CoCo** | ||
| - Contribution workshops - desing, support and test-out short workshops for PRs, contributing to documentation, learning about automated testing suites etc. |
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Do you have a sense of how these these workshops would fit into the ones the Astropy community already organises? Or would these be completely separate?
For context, a few Astropy workshops included walking through a PR with students, and am wondering if your plan is to organise these more regularly.
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Yes these would be working to actively support the community manager, we'd plan, develop lesson plans and run them the first time, and build scaffolding and structures for other short online community workshops to emulate.
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| Any non-refundable expenses such as travel and accommodation that have already been booked will be charged in full. | ||
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| Travel (if applicable): Passed on at cost. We are also happy for your team to book any travel or accommodation directly. Efforts will be made to share travel expenses with other clients, and to use Zoom/Teams where appropriate. |
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Note that there are limitations to travel in the NASA grant (the total travel budget is $60k). I would recommend removing this from the grant request.
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Can do, thats our standard consultant boilerplate. It is not applicable to this effort, so I will remove.
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Please react to this comment to vote on this proposal (👍, 👎, or no reaction for +0) |
| How does this benefit Astropy packages / users / community / ...? Short summary. | ||
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| Details here as needed for Astropy community members to understand what is planned. |
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I agree - details are needed because I don't understand what this will get the astropy community. It seems to be mostly a "support and train the community manager" proposal. Is that the right interpretation?
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Back in 2023, we had originally proposed that we act as a community manager for a period of time in order to build a foundation for the work of an eventual full-time community manager. This was backed-off of as a suitable candidate was found (and our budget reduced), so we've defaulted to a supporting role in the past year.
In this proposal, roughly half of this proposal (community manager support, qualitative inquiry coaching, and technical skills support) is continued support for the community manager, and the other half is 2-3 projects that our team will lead, seeking to use to build capability and capacity across Astropy. One of those projects, skills mapping, clearly helps define what community development in both developer and user spaces would look like, this is not a supporting activity per-say though it will support the work of the community manager.
The other two optional areas, we like to co-create a few activities that are priority areas for the community based on the insights from our survey last year. There is a clear need for Astropy to do more than it is presently doing in areas of concern raised by the community. We're keen to co-create next-steps and tangible actions here. We've observed that this community work is very low on the priority list, and there is a strategic risk for Astropy in continuing to leave it there. With our modest budget, we hope to keep nudging along a few key important areas, and we're keen to co-create what feel most-important to you all at this present moment.
EDIT: I've rolled an edited version of this comment into the proposal text itself.
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Hi Jonah, I'm writing on behalf of Astropy's Finance Committee regarding the outcome of your recent Funding Request. We are sorry to report that your proposal could not be funded during this funding Cycle. We will be closing the FR as a result. While the community vote was the primary driver of this, it is important to note that this likely does not reflect anything about you as a member of the Astropy Community. Rather, it reflects the specific balance of projects proposed this cycle, the available funds, and the priorities of this cycle’s funding sources relative to others. We encourage you to read feedback in the thread above or other feedback you might have received via other means, and consider an FR for the next cycle with whatever modifications you think would help. You are also welcome to reach out to the Finance Committee for feedback if you would like. Ana- on behalf of the Astropy Finance Committee |
We've attached a proposal to create a follow-on for the work we've been doing with Astropy. We see some key areas we think we could be helpful going forward, and welcome conversation over the coming weeks to co-create some intitiatives under this outline proposal. We'd very much like to hear from the CoCo about priorities they might have from our community survey that they think we could potentially contribute to.