Governance and documentation module

Through a combination of workshops, lightning talks, and an intensive multi-week course, participants will develop practical skills in giving and receiving feedback, decision-making frameworks, volunteer management, and the creation of documentation to support participation and collaboration such as contributor guides or team playbooks.

Our approach

All Birdaro training program modules involve a combination of instructor-led Mini-workshops and courses, complemented by facilitated networking and peer-to-peer knowledge sharing. Through this approach, we both equip participants with a shared vocabulary and skillset, and ensure that participants are able to learn from each others’ experiences as leaders of scientific open-source projects.

Module overview

For descriptions of each session component, please see linked information.

• Program kick-off and curated networking session 
  • An introduction to the program, including a live demo of Canvas learning management system (30 mins)
  • A curated networking session where participants will be paired with others in rotation based on the interests and challenges they shared during program registration (1 hour)
• Mini-workshops 
  • 5 Mini-workshops will cover topics that address governance – how decisions are made and power is distributed – at different levels of scale (individual, team, community and project) and via different formats (modes, activities, structures and programs)
  • Workshops in this module are:
    • Workshop 1: Giving and receiving feedback
    • Workshop 2: Making collective decisions 
    • Workshop 3: Community governance structures
    • Workshop 4: Designing for collaborative activities 
    • Workshop 5: Working with volunteers
• Lightning talks
  • 5 lightning talk sessions, each themed around a different topic, will give each team the opportunity to share their expertise and build deeper connections with other participants interested in similar topics
  • Session titles will depend on the teams participating in a specific cohort and the preferences they indicate during their registration
• Multi-week course: Creating documentation to support participation and collaboration a.k.a. Creating Community Playbooks
  • This six-week course will support participants in auditing existing documentation and creating a playbook or contributor guide to support their work as it scales.

Interested in this module?

• You can choose to fund or sponsor places in a future Birdaro training module – including this one. 
• We are also available for hire to deliver this module as a custom training e.g., for academic OSPOs and the projects they support.
• Please contact info@birdaro.org to chat with us!

Session descriptions

PROGRAM KICK-OFF AND NETWORKING SESSION

The module begins with an orientation session that includes a logistical overview of the program and an introduction to the CSCCE staff who power Birdaro. Then, we facilitate a networking session where participants move through several breakout room rotations to meet other members of the cohort. Pairings are made based on themes and challenges projects have in common.

MINI-WORKSHOPS

Mini-workshop 1: Giving and receiving feedback

Providing useful and kind feedback to others and being open to receiving feedback ourselves is a critical skill for effective collaboration, including reaching decisions together. During this session, we’ll explore the functions of feedback, how to structure yours, and what can make receiving feedback easier.

Mini-workshop 2: Making collective decisions

Project leaders frequently strive to make decisions about future directions by gathering input from collaborators. Multiple types of activities from project coordination meetings to community calls can require gathering input and decision-making with the participants. How do you negotiate power dynamics so that everyone feels able to express their opinions? And how do you think through who plays what role in a decision? In this interactive session we will explore four broad decision-making modes (authority rule, consultation, voting, and consensus) and consider how the RACI matrix can help with considering how to involve different groups.

Mini-workshop 3: Community governance structures

Working with community members gives us a valuable opportunity to scale our project’s activities in a collaborative manner. We might receive feedback and advice that guides a decision, be able to carry out new activities or recruit new members, and even evolve the direction of our shared work such as translating materials into multiple languages or adding new features. Critical to working with community members is choosing governance structures that enable members to work together in a way that matches their interests, expertise and capacity. In this session, we’ll explore a range of community governance structures and some examples of when each may be most useful.

Mini-workshop 4: Designing for collaborative activities

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, at mei dolore tritani repudiandae. In his nemore Successful collaborative work takes preparation. In this session, we’ll review the key areas in which you can take action to set up your project for success when working collaboratively. Then, we’ll conduct a deeper exploration of a framework describing six collaborative approaches or activities. You will identify which combination of approaches or activities will be helpful for the next stage of your collaboration, and will leave with further “recipes” to use in future scenarios that you encounter.

Mini-workshop 5: Working with volunteers

Open-source projects typically rely on volunteer labor, which can add valuable capacity for maintenance tasks, bring new perspectives and expertise, and support scaling into new domains, locations, and user contexts. In this mini-workshop, we’ll explore common challenges and concerns related to working with volunteers. We’ll discuss how to center volunteers in a way that empowers and supports them in working together and builds your confidence as a community organizer. We will also discuss making contributor pathways visible so that work gets done, while being respectful of members’ different contexts. If you’ve ever found yourself thinking things such as “I feel really self-conscious about asking for contributions from our volunteers – are we being too demanding?” and “I know that different members in our community need different things, but I don’t know where to start,” then this discussion-based workshop is for you!

LIGHTNING TALKS

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, at mei dolore tritani repudiandae. In his nemore Lightning talk sessions feature several project teams presenting on related topics to spark connection, conversation, and knowledge sharing between project teams. Over the course of the first half of the program, we’ll convene five lightning talk sessions.

MULTI-WEEK COURSE: CREATING DOCUMENTATION TO SUPPORT PARTICIPATION AND COLLABORATION

AKA Creating Community Playbooks

Contributor guides and team playbooks are written hubs that keep your community members, community champions or project  team on the same page by making visible the who, what, why, when, where, and how of your shared work together. In this workshop-style course, we talk about the different contexts in which structured pieces of documentation are useful and the different strategies for creating and maintaining them. Then, participants use CSCCE’s playbook framework and custom templates to create a “lite” team playbook or contributor guide of their own.

Attendance expectations: At least one member of each team needs to attend the majority of the course sessions (missing up to two live sessions is permitted). We strongly recommend the same team member attends all sessions with additional team members welcome to join some or all sessions. Since the course builds upon ideas as it progresses, this will support application of the materials most effectively. 

In addition to weekly homework (usually spending time making progress on documentation), each team is expected to give a short presentation about their team playbook or contributor guide during the final session.