Onboarding new chapter organizers

Goal

The goal of this activity is to start a conversation with prospective organisers, answer any questions and send information on how to get a new chapter started. This activity can be carried out by a team of 2 people, to split the workload and guarantee requests are addressed timely.

What to do

  • Monitor the email: chapters@rladies.org. As part of the Onboarding Team, the messages to this account are forwarded to the email address you provided during your own onboarding process.

  • On the rladies.org website, we ask any prospective organisers to get in touch via email. Especially during conferences, we may receive a high volume of requests for information. If possible, this email address should be monitored daily.

  • If there is a request for activation of a new chapter, we need the following information:

    • City/Region/Country where the meetup will be located

    • Name(s) of organiser(s) and their email address (to be added to the the R-Ladies Community slack).

  • Open a new “new-chapter-setup” issue that will help you track the execution of the following instructions:

    • Make a search on GitHub (https://github.com/rladies/rladies.github.io/tree/main/data/chapters) to make sure the city does not have a chapter yet. You can use CTRL+F to search using the city’s name.

    • If there is a chapter already, check the name of the organisers match.

    • Ask the person to confirm they identify as a woman or gender minority and are interested in the R programming language (just an ok, we are not collecting information). For alignment with the R-Ladies mission, can you just write an ok as an answer to “Do you identify as a woman or gender minority, and are you interested in the R programming language?” (really just an ok, we’re not collecting personal data!)

    • If there is no chapter, check if there is a chapter nearby. If so, inform the sender about it and put them in contact with the chapters organizers by adding the email address of the chapter as CC.

    • If there is no local chapter yet:

      -   We make sure it is a city using Google Maps, and that the name
    follows [the naming policy](#naming-a-chapter)

-   We add the chapter to the chapter data (https://github.com/rladies/rladies.github.io/tree/main/data/chapters), only the info below
    (no email address):

    -   City

    -   Region (if relevant)

    -   Country

    -   Organisers

    -   Status = Prospective

-   Invite organisers to the R_Ladies Community Slack.

-   Invite organisers to the R-Ladies organisers Slack once they fill in the R-Ladies form.

-   Send the prospective organiser an email with all the most important

      information and links (see Appendix A)

      - Post a message in the issue to request @rladies/email and @rladies/meetup-pro to create the chapter infrastructure.

- Create a PR to add prospective chapter / chapter organizers to the current chapters on the website.

- Request a review of the PR from `rladies/leadership`. Once the PR is approved and the GitHub Actions pass, the person who submitted the PR is responsible for merging it.

  • Other types of requests:

    • People may ask to be added to the organiser slack, please check if their name is in the meetup list of co-organisers. If not, ask why.

    • Onboard new organizers:

      • Ensure you have received the email addresses of the new organizers.
      • Open a new “existing-chapter-update” issue to track the exectution of the following instructions:
        • Send new organizers the R-Ladies Organizers form.
        • Invite the new organizers to the R-Ladies Community Slack.
        • Invite the new organizers to join the organizers’ Slack workspace after they fill in the R-Ladies Organizers form.
        • Post a message on the open issue to request the Meetup and Email teams to update the chapter infrastructure.
        • Request the Website team to add the new organizers to the website.
      • The template B can be used as a response to this type of request.

    • Retire organizers:

      • Request the Meetup team to change the status of co-organizers stepping down to members on Meetup.
      • Update the chapter’s information on the website by moving the current organizers to the “former organizers” field.

    • General information -\point them to the Community Slack and meetup dashboard (see template C)

Naming a chapter

A chapter is named for the city it serves. Not the country, not the state or province, not a broad region.

This matters more than it looks. A chapter called after its country reads as though it speaks for every chapter in that country, and it blocks the name that a future chapter in the capital would want. We have four chapters in Saudi Arabia and five in Chile; a group called “R-Ladies Saudi Arabia” leaves no room for the other three.

Check the city exists on a map before agreeing the name, and check no nearby chapter already covers it.

The name a chapter actually shows

The chapter page on rladies.org takes its title from the Meetup group name, not from the chapter data. So the name is settled when the Meetup group is created, and changing it later means asking the chapter to rename their group — the Global Team cannot do it for them.

Get it right at creation.

Metropolitan areas are fine

A single well-known metropolitan area is an accepted exception, even where it spans more than one city:

  • R-Ladies Twin Cities — Minneapolis and Saint Paul
  • RLadies+ RTP — Research Triangle Park, spanning Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill

The test is not “is this exactly one city”. It is “does this name cover territory another chapter already has, or would want?” A metro area that functions as one place is fine. A country or a vague region is not.

Disambiguation is fine

Where two chapters share a city name, adding the state or country is right, not wrong:

  • R-Ladies London, Ontario — distinct from London, UK
  • R-Ladies Athens Greece — distinct from Athens, Georgia, which is also a chapter

Branding

Chapters name themselves. We do not convert a chapter’s own name to “RLadies+” house style, and chapters are free to adopt it in their own time. The policy above is about what place a chapter is named for, not how it spells RLadies+.

Appendix A

Onboarding email template

Hi <<FIRST_NAME>>!

It's great to hear that you are interested in starting RLadies+
<<CITY>>!

We have some information on starting a local chapter here:
https://guide.rladies.org/

We also have a Slack group which I'll send you an invitation to in a
minute. The Slack group is mainly how we communicate and a great place
to discuss meetup organization and other matters (R-related and
other). Once you join, please say hello and introduce yourself in the
_\#welcome_ channel. When you are ready to launch your chapter and start
advertising on social media, please go to #new_chapters and ask:

- The meetup team to set up a new meetup page for you,

- The email team to create a chapter email address, you will
  need this to set up social media accounts.

In the Slack, together with all RLadies+ chapters organizers worldwide,
you will find the
RLadies+ Global leadership team. Feel free to reach out to them through
the channel #ask_the_leadership if you have questions that are not
addressed in the Guidelines or that other organisers
cannot answer. More info about the RLadies+ Global team is can be found on the RLadies+ website:
https://rladies.org/about-us/team/.

There is no specific time frame for launching the chapter. Note that if
other persons are interested in organizing this chapter, they will be
onboarded to join you in the organization. You will be notified of this
and we will put you in contact with any other person interested. The
chapters organizer team will remain open until the first meetup takes
place. After the first meetup, the local organizer team will be in
charge of any further decisions about local leadership.

Once your chapter launches on the meetup.com platform, please hold your
first event within the next 6 months. After that, please keep your
chapter active with at least one event every 6 months. For comparison,
many chapters do an event every 2-3 months and some chapters do monthly
events. If you find yourself struggling with this frequency, please be
in touch and we'll figure something out.

Welcome!

\<YOUR NAME HERE\>

RLadies+ Global Team

\<\*\add if they mention other organizers not cced in the original
message: "Please send us the names and emails of the other organizers so
we can add them to our records."

Appendix B

confirm list of organisers - email template

Hi <<FIRST_NAME>>,

Thanks for sending through the updated list of organisers. I sent the
invites to the new organisers to join the RLadies+ Community Slack. The new organizers should fill in the following [form](https://airtable.com/appM6GuE0Jl1UI9qx/pagEczcfwQdkN4SHN/form). Once submitted, we’ll invite them to join the Slack workspace dedicated to RLadies+ organizers.

We keep information about chapters and organisers on this list on
GitHub:
https://github.com/rladies/rladies.github.io/tree/main/data/chapters.

- Could you please send the email addresses, names, and surnames of the new organizers so we can update the chapter list?

- Could you also please confirm whether I should remove the following
  from the list of organisers?

  - <<ORGANISER_1>>

  - <<ORGANISER_2>>

We assume former organisers provide all the necessary information to new
organisers before passing the baton :)

Kind regards,

\<YOUR NAME HERE\>

Appendix C

general info - email template

Hi <<FIRST_NAME>>,

Thanks for reaching out.

My recommendation would be to join the RLadies+ community slack channel
(https://rladies.org/form/community-slack/) and start a
conversation with fellow RLadies+.

Also, please check out this dashboard to find out whether there is a
chapter near you https://www.meetup.com/pro/rladies.

Hope this helps.

Kind regards,

\<YOUR NAME HERE\>

Appendix D

chapter is set up - email template

This one is sent by jinx rather than by hand, when the last step of the onboarding issue is ticked. It is here so that the wording is ours to edit: jinx fetches this file rather than carrying its own copy. Everything a new chapter needs to know lives in this message, which is why the Meetup message in Appendix B of the Meetup guidelines does not repeat it.

Hi, and welcome to RLadies+!

RLadies+ <<CITY>> is now set up. Here is what exists:

- Chapter email: <<EMAIL>>
- Meetup group: <<MEETUP_URL>>

A few things worth knowing.

**Keeping the chapter active.**
Hold your first event within the next six months,
then keep the chapter active with at least one event every six months.
Many chapters run something every two or three months.
If that frequency turns out to be hard, tell us rather than going quiet.
Ask in the organisers' Slack,
or sign up at https://rladies.org/form/mentoring-signup/
and we will pair you with an experienced organiser.
We would much rather help than retire a chapter.

**Publish every event on Meetup.**
That is what counts as activity, and it is how members find you.
Events we cannot see on Meetup are events we cannot count.

**Look after the chapter email.**
Use it to create any social accounts,
and cc it on replies so your co-organisers can see them.
Keep its password in a password manager rather than a document or a chat message,
turn on two-factor authentication,
and save the recovery codes somewhere you will still have them if you lose your phone.
Our guidance on account security and password managers is at
https://guide.rladies.org/organization/tech/security/.

**Keep your chapter's details current.**
When anything changes - a new social account, a new website -
update your chapter's entry at
https://github.com/rladies/rladies.github.io/tree/main/data/chapters.
That file is what the website and our own tooling read.

**Adding co-organisers.**
There is one official route, and it is described at
https://guide.rladies.org/organization/intro/co-organizers/#how-to-onboard-organizers.
Please use it rather than adding people directly on Meetup.

Where to find the rest:

- Running events, including the RLadies+ Zoom account:
  https://guide.rladies.org/organization/events/general/
- Logos, colours, slide templates and stickers:
  https://guide.rladies.org/organization/tech/brand/
- Everything else: https://guide.rladies.org/

If you would like a GitHub repository for your chapter under the RLadies+ organisation,
ask in #new_chapters on the organisers' Slack.
That Slack is where we do most of our talking,
so it is the quickest way to reach someone.

Any questions, reply to this email - it reaches the onboarding team.

Welcome aboard,
The RLadies+ Global Team