Program timeline

(As per https://www.outreachy.org/apply/project-selection/)

Administrator ToDos

Before the application open

• Share with Outreachy organizers our new plan, seek permission to start recruiting projects early and ideas for venues to promote the projects to potential candidates (in August).
• Recruit one or two organization administrators. @Pavithraes & @Gopavasanth
• Sign up as a mentoring organization on Outreachy's website. Indicate funding amount (for 6 interns).
• Set up a Round 21 page on MediaWiki.org.
• Create a Outreachy-Round-21 project tag on Phabricator.
• Recruit ideas for projects and mentors.
• Early-heads up and a reminder email (with a month’s gap) for a call for projects. Besides existing content, highlight why the focus on data science and engineering projects only, what that entails, how would it benefit Wikimedia and future interns.
• Possible venues:
  • Wikitech-l https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2020-August/093759.html
  • Wikimedia-l https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2020-August/095498.html
  • Wikidata-I https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikidata-l
  • Wikimedia Foundation Optional mailing list
  • Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia Deutschland Product and Tech team managers (Birgit led this conversation)
  • Telegram channels https://t.me/wmhack/11307 and https://t.me/WikimediaGeneral/20837
  • Newsletters (Wikimedia Technical Community) (Newsletter will go out in October, so we can't post there)
  • Maybe Twitter/ Facebook (wikimediatech, Wikmedia) https://twitter.com/mediawiki/status/1299366711016054796
• Forward the message to:
  • WMF’s Product Analytics team (mostly), Analytics , Fundraising operations, Scoring & Research, and a new small team in Product focusing on user data.
  • WMDE (only has one data analyst), Wikidata team.
• Create a private stream on Zulip for mentors where they can ask each other questions about the program.
• Get mentors to submit their project proposal on Outreachy's website.
• Zulip chat stream setup.

After the application open

• Promote Wikimedia's participation in Outreachy. T261482
• Share an invitation to apply to Outreachy with Wikimedia on these channels. Besides existing content, highlight there Round 21 focuses on data-science projects, what they are about, and required skillset. https://www.facebook.com/groups/995474220466742/permalink/3836155623065240/
• Ask WMF folks to spread the message in the women in tech or LGBTQ channels they are part of.
• Global Facebook group “Beginning Data Science, Analytics, Machine Learning, Data Mining, R, Python” with 80k+ members. Share the post with #DataScience hashtag.
• Set up a meeting with WMF Analytics and/or T&C teams to learn about venues where a data science related WMF job opening was shared in the past.
• Participate in the Outreachy Twitter chat.
• Participate in a She Code Africa's webinar named "Excelling in Outreachy Internships" and share tips with potential applicants.

Selection phase

• Start an email thread with mentors and faciliate the selection process.
• Send accepted participants a congratulations email and instructions to join Zulip, community building, etc.
• Send rejected participants an email with opportunities to stay involved.
• Update the event wiki with necessary information (accepted candidates, next steps, etc).

During the program

• Remind students to continue working on projects and write reports.
• Host three sessions for interns: opening, middle, closing. Allow space for peer-to-peer sharing.
• Outreachy contract renewal.

Wrap-up

• Write a blog post sharing lessons learned.
• Archive the workboards on Phabricator.