What is our process for onboarding local organizers this year?
I think it would be nice to keep track of it more transparently - who has spoken to whom, and announce when onboarding calls will take place so that other members of the team can join in, and so we know who is organizing/acting as a contact person for different cities.
I would also like to do so in the forum if possible, so that from the first contact it is introduced as a useful tool.
I’m prototyping a process here, what you you think?
I have also filled out the google doc which includes info like email addresses, but I like being able to link publicly to something as well. Others don’t necessarily have to adopt this method if it’s too much work but I think I will continue it.
OK, another onboarding question:
What about when someone wants to get involved in a local event but not take a leading role?
We were contacted by Vic Jasin from London. Ontario:
“I would like to get in touch with folks of like mind in my area and prefer to work on projects and initiatives that are in my sphere of influence and my community vs. any global or broad scale/scope organising.”
My first idea for our process in these cases would be to:
Encourage them to make a post in the forum (do we create a ‘Local Matchmaking’ thread for this purpose?)
From Twitter and in the facebook group, linking to the post, we put out the word “Vic Jasin is looking for co-organizers in [London, Ontario](link to forum post)! Know any Ontarians who might be interested? Get in touch!”
In cases where people don’t specifically rule out helping on a global level, we could also direct them to the global Call for Skills.
Yep I thought about it. I think we should even create a category in the forum for it. Where its only about people who would like to see this oscedays happening but need help. One topic, one city. Less confusing and easy to find
ok, sounds good.
I also thought to do a quick online search for “[placename] fablab” and "circular economy [placename]"
to point the person in the right direction.
In this case, London ON is quite small, it doesn’t appear to have much, but there’s a hackerspace in Toronto (190km away - which I guess is next-door in Canadian terms), so I would probably suggest that he at least gets in touch with them to ask if they know anyone in his area.
I think then we will have done all that we can for the person - given them a space in which to call out, a couple of people or places to follow up with, and used our network to put out the call for them.
how about in the Other cities category?
So I would ask him to make a post called “London, Ontario - Call for Organizers” and give him an outline of what to say, eg
why you’re interested in the topic
what skills or background you have
what you hope to get out of taking part in OSCEdays
does that make sense? anything else?
Ok, here is the text from my email which can be edited and used as a template:
Hi Vic,
thank you for your interest in getting involved, we would love to have you!
We don’t know anyone else in London yet, but we will do our best to connect you with others.
One thing that you can do to begin with is to reach out to existing organizations nearby who may be able to point you in the right direction - I would suggest, for example, asking the Toronto Hacklab (https://hacklab.to/about) or the Institute for a Resource-Based Economy (http://www.irbe.org).
It’s over the border, but we will likely have an OSCEdays event in Detroit too, so we can soon connect you to others in your region where there may be other possibilities for collaboration.
Another way that we can help you is if you create a new topic in our forum - then we can spread the word via Facebook and Twitter, linking directly to your topic so people can talk to you there or offer help.
Click on “+ New Topic” or “Why not create a topic?”
In the title line, you can name your topic - call it “London, Ontario - Call for Organizers”
Then in the body of the topic, write a few sentences introducing yourself - you can use your comment as a starting point:
"Hi folks,
I am interested in getting involved and helping organise in LONDON ONTARIO Canada. I am not willing to take a lead role in doing so as I have some of my own commitments and initiatives involving Mutual Capital as a Homesteading TRUST for locals. I would like to get in touch with folks of like mind in my area and work on projects and initiatives that are in my sphere of influence and my community"
Maybe you could also add a sentence about yourself and why the OSCEdays idea appeals to you, or perhaps
what you would like to get out of the event?
7. Once you’re done writing, hit “Create Topic”.
I will automatically receive a notification, and I can put the word out on Facebook & Twitter for you, and hopefully we will be able to find you some fellow Ontarians to collaborate with!
Best of luck, and hope to have you involved with OSCEdays in some way,
kind regards,
Sam
sorry for the late response but I was knocked out by a flu for some days, still down but b2k.
I am not to big of a fan of the procedure for the general onboarding suggested. Since I was managing the onboarding process mostly last year I have some experience. And the procedure layed out above is way way to complicated.
Creating a doodle and a topic for every onboarding call and also collecting contact details in a google doc is way to much work - an inferno. And it creates unnecessary points of failure - like the doodle.
I think the onboarding process should work almost exactly like last year.
1 get in touch
Someone interested writes to the 3 people who onboarding team announced on the contact page. It is Sam, Tim and Me at the moment. http://oscedays.org/contact - If someone write to another person the person should forward it to the onboarding team.
2 arrange a date via email
One of us repyling to them suggesting 3 times to meet. One of us is enough in the call. But of course, the more the better.
3 set up infrastructure, send information and organise contact details
If everything is cool after the call and they want to do it, one of us that made the call is doing the necessary steps:
setting up their category
setting up their subpages and putting their contact details on them
putting their contact details on the main contact page oscedays.org/contact (so no google doc needed)
We should have of course an Onboarding Procedure Topic, where this is described and where we also can make public when we have a call with whom … so others can join if they want to. But I would just say the City not the name of the person or initiative… not before they agreed with it.
The other workflow with the mail to people who are generally interested is good.
Update: I was clicking the last minutes through 3 doodles and I am already confused . . .
Also having an [ONBOARDING] topic for every call in front of us where people can introduce themselve is a nice idea in theory. But I don’t think that it will work! Because people want to check out, what is this, they don’t want to get immediately active. 1/3 or a bit more of all calls last year did not result into a local event.
Ok, I will drop the dudle/framadate part, and just send 3 time options via email. fine by me.
But I still like having a topic in the forum - it’s also a place where we can jot down a few quick notes about the call after it happened, summarising what was decided - whether we’re going ahead with the subpages etc, whether they are still unsure, if they’re looking for more people, etc.
So for the contacts I’m looking after, I will continue to use a topic in the forum to keep everyone on board with what’s going on, I want to keep as much as possible out of my email inbox. Different people work in different ways, so I’m not suggesting everyone has to follow me on this.
I like having the google doc for the team to get an overview, and in the doc I will always link to the topic and include the time/link for the call.
Great job guys. An idea for scheduling the calls with local organisers / contributors. We can say that 2 days per week, there is 3 time slots. Morning - Afternoon - Evening community calls are planned. We create a topic and people directly register on it. we can even have multiple cities in the same time, not too many though.
So for instance let’s say every Monday and Thursday at 10.30 - 15.30 - 19.30. Community calls.
What do you think? Otherwise it will drive us insane and this way we only need one, best 2, person(s) that know(s) well the OSCEdays on those time slots and we are good.
Nope, i prefer flexible time slots - because my calendar is flexible, can’t make this times generally free. Also it depends on when they can make it. And in which time zone they are. It will be flexibel anyway.
And I don’t think we need someone super experienced in this calls necessary. I experienced this last year. Almost noone really had a question because the participation guide was and is quite clear. It is just that we check if they have understood what the OSCEdays are.