Find-a-task 2.0

[Svetlana Belkin]

I'm willing to help with leadership/mangement along with Ian on moving
this on to 2.0.  I haven't had any projects in awhile.  Thanks.


On Thu, Jan 21, 2016, at 08:37 PM, Nicholas Skaggs wrote:
> As we wind down GCI, I've been thinking about what's next for Find-a-
> task, how useful it has been, etc. I know Ian has done a bit of
> promotion, and teams have placed tasks on the site. We've also done
> some analysis and work to ensure the feature is more prominent and
> displayed on the site. Nevertheless it suffers from a few things:
>
> 1) The tasks never expire. This means they will get old, rot and not
>    be useful. Alternatively, if you create 'timeless' tasks, they lack
>    specificity and depth and thus undermine the goal of the tool.
>
> 2) The tasks lack information. A well-written task isn't enough for
>    someone brand new. They likely will need a little nudging and
>    personal help from other community members. Even if the answer is
>    in a wiki,  the new member has to know such a thing exists, and be
>    able to find it.
>
> 3) The tasks lack a point of contact. See above. No one 'owns' the
>    task, so there's no one to ask for help, no one to maintain the
>    task, no one to remove it once it's no longer viable, etc.
>
> 4) We have no feedback from users who try find and task. Has anyone
>    been successful in using it? What are there stories? How can we
>    contact them?
>
> So, I'd like to make an attempt at expanding find-a-task to tackle
> these issues and model it a bit after GCI and other mentoring programs
> in the past. I am loathe to recommend YET ANOTHER mentoring program,
> tool to write, etc, however, I think we can think critically and
> decisively about how we might be able to expand find-a-task to make it
> more useful and palatable for all parties. And of course, as Ian has
> said in the past, it's time we evaluated the tool for it's impact.
>
> Specifically, I'd like to ensure every task in find-a-task has a
> sponsor. This person would act as a contact for the task and a quasi-
> mentor as well. In addition, I would like to time-limit tasks, so the
> tasks would expire after a set amount of time. Tasks don't last
> forever, and it's hard to think about tasks that would last for more
> than a cycle or two.
>
> So what does an ideal task look like for me?
>
> -- Title -- Description -- Sponsor / Mentor -- Link for more info
>
> This is mostly self-explanatory, but the idea is to insure you have a
> clear and concise task, someone to contact about the task, a means to
> contact them (email), and finally a link to more information about the
> task (such as the team wiki, etc). Someone using find-a-task can
> immediately begin working and have a point of contact for the task
> they are interested in. Conversely, we can record there interest, and
> in the tasks they select, in addition to alerting the mentor / sponsor
> when someone decides to take a task. We also need to make sure tasks
> have expiration dates or otherwise just automatically expire them
> after a set amount of time.
>
> Finally, I'm curious about the usefulness of requiring so many
> clicks to view a task and find a task. So in thinking about what
> this next version might look like, we aren't limited to the current
> workflow or ideas.
>
> In short; let's think about expanding find-a-task. Keep the idea of
> tasks, but add sponsors to the tasks, and help facilitate
> communication between the interested contributor and sponsor. By doing
> so I think we'll see more success -- or at least understand how the
> tool is being used.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Nicholas
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Svetlana Belkin A.K.A: belkinsa User Wiki page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/belkinsa
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