Welcome

Here's the initial material that inspired this project:

Long term pairing of mentors and mentees for multiple forms of contribution (code, documentation, presenting, etc.) https://github.com/drupaldiversity/administration/issues/135

could we (not we as DD&I but we as Drupal community) have a seasonal "accelerator" group or something? Group of people that get paired with established maintainers or contributors to learn/grow. And then we can cycle the group? https://github.com/drupaldiversity/administration/issues/135

Idea from Slack discussion on Thursday, September 21 mdrummond: Had an idea from that I wanted to throw out there related to mentorship and improving the diversity of Drupal contributors (both code and non-code).

I wish I could find a reference to this, but sometime in the last month or months I read a thread from one of the guys on Google’s AMP team, Malte Ubl (cramforce on Twitter), who tweets now and then in support of improving diversity in tech. I just looked now and can’t find a reference to this, but he shared how one thing he’s seen that is effective is that it’s really hard to change the overall diversity numbers of a really big pool of people, because you’re trying to get people integrated into large groups of people who may have behaviors that are negative towards marginalized communities. Those behaviors should absolutely be addressed. Another way to improve things is to set up new teams and to make sure those teams are diverse and inclusive from the start. Over time, you get a bunch of teams that are more diverse, and that’s a way to nudge the needle in the right direction.

Given Google’s overall numbers, I wouldn’t say that’s an approach that’s proven in its efficacy, but it still got me thinking.

What helped me to actually contribute to Drupal regularly was connecting with a team working on getting Twig into Drupal 8. We had regular hangouts (every two weeks?) that worked as scrums, and we were able to support each other on various issues, which really helped to move things along. We could figure out difficult problems, figure out blockers, figure out what needed the most energy at any given time. It was so much more effective than just trying to navigate contributing to Drupal on my own.

So I was thinking, what if DDI helped to organize one or even several teams to tackle some aspect of Drupal, whether in core or contrib? We could work to make sure we had a team that was diverse from the start, including maybe one or more project managers who wanted to contribute. We could have some experienced Drupal contributors help on a team, as the issue queue isn’t always easy to navigate. But ideally the team or teams would have diverse leadership, not necessarily somebody who has been around the queues for ages.

I think a good group size is somewhere between 6-10 people. Getting larger than that makes for really long discussion times. Smaller and there’s too much pressure on individuals.

With Drupal 8.5 kicking off, this might be a great time to get this started. I don’t know exactly what the team or teams would tackle. I would suggest not trying to necessarily latch onto one of the big ongoing initiatives, as they already have things going on. And not necessarily coming up with a big giant area. But picking one manageable thing like tackling CSS cleanup issues maybe. Could be anything. Just something where a team could work together and build capacity.

Ideas on topics to focus on: Helping contrib projects use updated Media API: https://janezurevc.name/call-help-media-source-plugin-porting Convert simple tests to PHP Unit: https://www.drupal.org/node/2735005 Help out of the box initative: https://www.drupal.org/core/roadmap#out-of-the-box Join weekly UX calls Create a new contrib theme with a design (or themes)

Feedback Make sure group participates in public ways (drupal.org, Drupal Slack #contrib channel) Having a backchannel for a group (something on Drupal Slack) can be helpful to provide support to each other and direct work: just need to also participate publicly for visibility Regular meetings good (Slack or Hangouts) Involve one or more project managers to help direct effort