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Collaborating with other maintainers at the GSoC Mentor Summit

We learned a lot from other communities at the 2023 Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit

Thibaud and Sage at the Google MP3 campus, with a Google bike and GSoC banner

Our core contributors Sage and Thibaud had a blast at this year’s Google Summer of Code Mentor Summit. This event brings together maintainers and mentors from all communities which took part in the program this year. Here are our key takeaways for the Wagtail community.

Our learnings

  • We should consider a formal diversity and inclusion policy for Wagtail
  • When taking part in programs like GSoC or Outreachy, we should advertise our participation with specific groups to encourage their participation.
  • The “6 second rule” in meetings is a great way to make sure everyone has an opportunity to speak.
  • We should consider “fellowships” - long-term coaching for community members.
  • It could be a normal part of our GSoC process for alumni to give back to the community by volunteering as mentors.
  • Zulip is cool! It has public, anonymous access, and an official “chat archive as HTML” feature.

Our sessions

We proposed two sessions at the summit:

Sustainability and climate change; as this is an area where we hope to keep making improvements to reduce the carbon footprint of Wagtail websites.

Accessibility; as we hoped to share our hard-earned expertise with other projects.

What next

We will want to keep collaborating with the community maintainers we met at the summit, particularly on diversity considerations as this is an important topic for our community.