Develop "Trainer Meeting Guide"

[brownsarahm]

Summary

Develop a written guide for how trainer meetings are run from topic selection/assignment to hosting responsibilities to increase transparency and invite participation in trainer meetings.

Background

Setting the trainer meeting agenda is listed as a power of the trainer community. Setting the schedule and leading meetings are leadership powers and responsibilities. Other aspects of how trainer meetings come to be is not documented. Currently, the core team Instructor training team takes the lead on most aspects of hosting and documenting trainer meetings.

Leadership Committee recently created a form to collect topic proposals from the community, decided to use a project board for the schedule and used the may 2022 trainer meeting ice breaker to discuss what people would want to have in order to host a trainer meeting.

The Schedule Project Board has a readme with instructions for how to propose a topic, but this is not documented elsewhere.

The trainer guide section on trainer meetings describes what trainer meetings are, but does not explain how to contribute or engage in them.

Implementation

• Develop initial outline with preliminary text that is mostly what we already do
• Determine key questions for trainer community discussion
• Submit this as a topic for a future trainer meeting if questions justify that
• Develop complete draft (using input from trainer meeting if it happens) and share with trainers through an RFC
• Publish guide to a findable location (either handbook or this repo)
• handle open topics once this exists

Decision Factors

Pros

• more transparency
• easier to share the responsibility of hosting meetings
• working through both leadership power and community power together will make for a smoother handoff

Cons

• could be too rigid or too long to parse

Possible Alternatives

• continue as we are without
• develop a separate documents for separate powers: topic selection process document for the leadership committee and a trainer meeting host checklist

Appendices

Topics for the guide

this is list is an example, these topics may not all be necessary and other topics may be included

• proposing a topic
• pre/post discussion sign up
• note/link to holiday policy
• hosting checklist
• minutes for trainer meetings procedure
• procedure for leadership setting schedule
• how to have meetings at alternative times?
• asynchronous participation in the topic of the month?
• how to manage the conflict of itnerest with topic-host with whole meeting host (maybe having two hosts)
• what to do with topic proposals after meetings? link meeting minutes & close? archive to discussions?

Potential related action

We may find through this process that the community would be better served by clarifying/rephrasing the listed distribution of trainer meeting powers and responsibilities. For example what exactly it means to set the agenda versus schedule and how those are divided among the trainer community and leadership may become more clear such that we should align the powers to what suits the community.

[paocorrales]

I like the proposal.

And maybe we can work on the topics list and break the work into small pieces. Then we can invite people to write those sections

[marklcrowe]

Now I've read through this properly, I'd like to rate it even higher than "I like the proposal"! Thanks Sarah, I think increasing the value and productivity of trainer meetings should perhaps be our main goal of this year.

[bonnyad]

I like this proposal.
I had this confusion myself when i started and i think this will increase the engagement of the trainer community.

[jcoliver]

Proposal is approved (Jeff "liked" in 2022-07-20 meeting).

[karenword]

I will use the notes here to outline some content for you to start with in the draft Trainer Handbook in development.

[ragamouf]

@sheraaronhurt Following Core Team handover, is this issue still relevant in 2024?

[sheraaronhurt]

Yes!