[Events] "Internal" notes after the RPI campus.openhatch.org event

Mon May 7 02:28:13 UTC 2012

Hi,
I have a feeling that a 50% retention rate between the first and the second day indicates that there is room for improvement, or perhaps there is one thing that we may not be aware of that has a negative impact. 50% seems a bit low.
It would perhaps be good to investigate the issue.

Here is what I would suggest:
1- have a couple of rounds of brainstorming (through mailing list) to identify the reasons intra and extra OH for not coming back for a second day.
2- list the 5 top reasons and design a short survey that will be given to participants at the end of the day.
3- the second day of OH training, match the survey with the people who are not coming back and those who are and try to identify a clear pattern (compare with the results from people who stay). We can run some basic stats to empirically validate that as simply as t-tests.
4- if the identified reasons are related to OH training, have a round of discussion to try to fix it. 
5- next training: run the same survey and compare with the previous results. If the results are not better, keep investigating, perhaps in step 1 we have missed a point. Re-brainstorm and refine survey.
6- keep going until we have evidence that the retention rate is not influenced by something we are not doing so well at OH.

Remarks about factors for not coming back:

I think we shall first identify categories for such factors. First, there are 'pre-training' reasons such as the overall motivation to take part to the training session. Some people might just be interested in knowing more about FLOSS, others may want to gain some extra skills,  and others might join because they think FLOSS is the right way to do things. If we find out that a majority of people not staying are people who came to gain extra skills as a main motivation, perhaps we can still do something by providing more information about the overall FLOSS ideology and its societal implications. 

Among other 'pre-training' reasons, there shall obviously be some demographics. Again, it can tell us something. Suppose always the youngest or oldest people are not coming back would indicate that the way we address people may be a problem as people from a certain age category may feel less integrated or concerned. 

There shall come the OH-related factors, among those there are 'logistics'-related factors (food, computers, room setting) and training-related factors. Asheesh, you have already a list of things that did not go so well, it is a start point. You have for instance, pointed out that experience in FLOSS as a potential factor as you mentioned 'newer people' have struggled a bit.

Hoping these insights will help,

~Kevin

-----Original Message-----
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Sent: Monday, 7 May 2012 12:00 a.m.
To: events at lists.openhatch.org
Subject: Events Digest, Vol 15, Issue 4

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: OpenHatch Boulder? (Events Digest, Vol 15, Issue 1)
      (Tim Kellogg)
   2. The first Midwest Python Workshop was a go! (Mel Chua)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sat, 5 May 2012 09:32:16 -0600
From: Tim Kellogg <timothy.kellogg at gmail.com>
To: events at lists.openhatch.org
Subject: Re: [Events] OpenHatch Boulder? (Events Digest, Vol 15, Issue
	1)
Message-ID:
	<CAOqOF==D+gGzd2=4jYN+gbq+JdQcTkBUD4CLaKQLHaWc8+NWxg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Sumana,

Thanks for the feedback. A large part of me refuses to believe that
harassment would ever be a problem in Boulder. However, just in case you're
right, I adapted my own version on
http://www.meetup.com/OpenHatch-X-Boulder/about

--Tim

On Fri, May 4, 2012 at 12:47 AM, Sumana Harihareswara <sumanah at wikimedia.org
> wrote:

> On 05/01/2012 07:59 PM, Asheesh Laroia wrote:
>
> > As a sketch, here's what I imagine would be required to be called an
> > OpenHatch X event:
> >
> > * Have the organizers commit to a "friendly space policy" like
> >   this one: https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Friendly_space_policy
>
> I just saw http://www.meetup.com/OpenHatch-X-Boulder/ - Tim Kellogg,
> it's cool that you are starting this!  And I'm glad you have found the
> Wikimedia Foundation friendly space policy useful.  I adapted the
> wording for that from
>
> http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Conference_anti-harassment/Policy
>
> in case you'd like to adapt one of those sample policies directly to
> your event.  As you can see, the Wikimedia Foundation policy states that
> I'm the organizer of the event, and "This is a policy of the Wikimedia
> Foundation and applies to Foundation-organized events." which isn't true
> in your case! :-)
>
> I suggest that you place the text of your policy on
>
> http://www.meetup.com/OpenHatch-X-Boulder/about/
>
> so you can link to it easily from your Meetup page.  Thanks for
> organizing this!
>
> --
> Sumana Harihareswara
> Engineering Community Manager
> Wikimedia Foundation
> _______________________________________________
> Events mailing list
> Events at lists.openhatch.org
> http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/events
>
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Message: 2
Date: Sat, 05 May 2012 18:56:23 -0400
From: Mel Chua <mel at melchua.com>
To: events at lists.openhatch.org, mpw-staff at lists.openhatch.org,
	Jessica McKellar <jessica.mckellar at gmail.com>,	Catherine Devlin
	<catherine.devlin at gmail.com>
Subject: [Events] The first Midwest Python Workshop was a go!
Message-ID: <4FA5B017.2070600 at melchua.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

As the subject says, we had the first workshop in Indianapolis last 
month, co-located with Indiana LinuxFest -- and learned a lot about what 
it means to transplant the workshop from a dense, highly-technical city 
(Boston) to a much more sparsely-populated-with-programmers farmland 
location. For instance, one big surprise: apparently very few attendees 
had used Twitter before, whereas in Boston everyone did.

We've got pictures and more of a write-up on the day because 
co-organizer Catherine Devlin blogged about it here: 
http://catherinedevlin.blogspot.com/2012/04/indianapolis-python-workshop-for-women.html

If you're interested in workshops in the midwest, we have a mailing list 
for organizing them 
(http://lists.openhatch.org/mailman/listinfo/mpw-staff) -- it's quiet 
right now since we're still recovering from the one in Indianapolis, and 
don't have immediate ideas for location/dates for the next round, but 
join and introduce yourselves and pitch in where and when you think the 
next one ought to be, and maybe we'll stir up some action. ;-)

Cheers!

--Mel

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