This post continues the call for Marketing team reps for 2022. Details of how you can nominate and a timetable are in the sections below. We’ve included some background to recognize the thinking and efforts across the team to help get us to this stage.

We are posting our next Update and posts on what the team has been doing to help encourage contributors to get involved as a team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts., or in the many other ways to take part and learn more about different parts of the project.

Thanks to the other teams who have shared their write-ups and election processes, so we can adapt them below for marketing, and to Chloe and Josepha for their information to help finalize the arrangements today.

Team rep is a role focused on co-ordination and administration

For more information about these roles in the WordPress project, you can check the article about what it means to be a Team Rep. In summary from this post.

Team Rep is a leadership role that is mostly administrative in nature; it is not a Lead role. Letting go of the Team Rep title is not a loss of status, just a handing off of responsibilities. Someone who is a leader in a team can lead whether they are doing the team rep job or not.

Each team has team representatives (reps). Team reps are responsible for communicating on behalf of their team to other contributor teams and sharing this information back with their own team. They help represent the team internally, collaborate with other teams, raise, manage the meetings with contributions from others in the team, contribute to the agenda and notes, and address any issues.

How did we encourage and elect Marketing team reps in the past?

In Marketing, we have had a hybrid system during the last two years as we have wanted to move towards elections like some other teams. Since the start of the COVID pandemic, we expanded this approach on the path to full elections and to provide support and encouragement to anyone interested in becoming a team rep or another co-ordination and reporting role, such as, task co-ordinators and what we call in the team, our projects and actions groups.

In this hybrid approach, team members have been asked regularly to highlight contributors, suggest people for team reps, or put themselves forward for roles to help co-ordinate tasks or the team’s activities in specific areas. These nominations have been collated by the Team Reps and a check done with the person nominated to confirm they were happy to stand. When vacancies have arisen in the last two to three years, these have been allocated based on these nominations/ suggestions.

@yvettesonneveld, I, and others have suggested we move towards the approach used in some of the other teams and asked about a shared approach across the Make Teams to make it easier. So it is exciting that now all teams will be able to have elections. We realize that there have been some reservations about moving to a regular election and reducing the number of team reps, but we hope that together as a team we can work through any of these issues.

Please know that we continue to value everyone who is co-ordinating, organizing or helping on a task.

Six team reps and support group

Marketing has traditionally had a larger number of Team Reps to be able to co-ordinate and keep awareness of activity in the other Make Teams, and more similar to the Deputies idea in the Community team. This has been supported by wider projects and actions groups, often enabling the team to bring in specific skills, enable a greater welcome and support to team members and new contributors, and learn and share more about the WordPress community and contributor teams. This combined approach has been able to help address:

– the global nature of the team and wide skillsbase

– share the workload and encourage sustainability

– efforts to grow the diversity in terms of where the team members are based, skillset, and improve opportunities for asynchronous contribution for those in different timezones than the main meetings or for contributors with family, caring or work demands

Due to the pressures from the pandemic, we currently have maintained this larger Team Reps group plus our projects and actions groups. They all work together with the task co-ordinators, and the wider team is encouraged to join in, attend, input into all discussions.

The new project mapping system on the Marketing Team GitHub was also designed to enable this further. It will help as we move towards a smaller Team Rep group supported by the projects and actions group, and various task sub groups.

Aligning the team reps system across the Contributor Teams

Josepha would like to see two to three Team Reps in each Contributor Team. In her message to the Marketing Team, she has suggested to aim to ‘a mix of company sponsored and self sponsored folks’.

Having more than one Team Rep allows the individuals to share responsibilities, divide tasks and cover each other when needed.

As highlighted during the weekly Marketing meeting in the last few weeks, all WordPress Teams will be using an annual election process to select the new Team Reps (Josepha’s post). Each person will need to stand for nomination per year. This means that all existing team reps positions, including those recently nominated and appointed, will stand for election on a yearly cycle.

How do I nominate someone?

The team can have two to three Team Reps every year.

If you would like to stand or know someone who would be a great fit, please nominate them or yourself by adding a comment to this post. If you would like to chat more about the role or nominate someone privately, please contact one of the existing Marketing Team Reps (names on this link) who will be really pleased to share their experience.

Remember that, if someone nominates you, but you don’t feel like accepting at this time, it is completely fine to decline. Your nomination will be considered by the whole team only if you explicitly agree to it.

Timetable for nominations and elections

Following the model being used in other teams and we are aware that there are some major festivals and ongoing school holidays for those with other responsibilities, we want to allow for everyone to be able to be nominated and vote.

3 November 2021: further share the planned timetable and post, and receive any comments.

From 5 November 2021: encourage nominations and promote in the Marketing Team slackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., with a regular open drop-in by 10 November for anyone who would like to consider being nominated or who has been by someone else. Previous team reps will be invited to come and share their experience, if they are available.

30 November 2021: close nominations. Share a list of nominations in the Slack and update this post. A link to how to vote, if needed, will be shared during the global Marketing Team meeting on Wednesday 1 December 2021 (updated date). This will give anyone unable to attend an opportunity to vote after the meeting.

10 December 2021: Close poll
(This is in line with other teams which are keeping their polls open until December 10, 2021 at 12:00 UTC to take account for the US Thanksgiving holiday and the WordPress next release. This timetable, draft post, and information for nominations were shared for comment and awareness/ consider nominations in the Marketing Team meeting on 3, 10 and 17 November 2021)

Please do considering standing, and do vote in an election to continue to support the team. This will build on the progress and achievements of the team gained with thanks to the efforts and dedication of all the team reps, members and wider project efforts since the Marketing team began.

Celebration date: invite all the previous team reps to a social and thank you on behalf of the team and community.

1 January 2022: As with other teams, like CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., new reps will start their role at the beginning of 2022.

Nominations

Nominations will remain open until 30 November 2021, 12:00 UTC. Please add your nominations as a comment on this post. You can nominate yourself or someone else if you think they would be a great fit.

Updates from meetings / drop-in 24 Nov:
– names will be published only if the nominee has confirmed they are happy to stand. We would like to share in Slack a list of all those nominated, including those who decided they did not wish to go forward at this time.
– you can still choose to stand/ confirm a team rep election nomination for a future election year if you opt not to be put forward for 2022. Please know that declining to stand will not be a barrier to ongoing involvement in the team / other Make teams, task sub groups, projects and action groups.
– you can also have informal chats with the existing team reps or the projects and action groups members if you are unsure about standing
– members can nominate more than one person
– you don’t need to be in a particular timezone nor country/ continent to be a team rep. Like now, team reps come from different continents and timezones
– you need to be on the Make WordPress Slack

Announcements

We will announce the results at the next team meeting after the election closes on 10 December 2021!

If you have any questions, please ask in the comments or in the Marketing Slack.

Thanks to @webcommsat, @yvettesonneveld, @meher, @lmurillom, @eidolonnight, @vimes1984, Dan Soschin and others in the marketing team meetings who collaborated or peer reviewed the nominations post before publication and sent information/ Q&As for updates.

#nominations, #marketing-team

#team-reps