Open Austin currently runs new member orientation and CANs concurrently. From an "event organizing" perspective, this seems convenient. However, this is a challenging experience for everyone involved:
- Orientation lead: Because the OA core team and overall product manager respresentation is miniscule, Liani is doubling as orientation lead and projects' individual contributor.
- Project leads: to come
- Prospective new members: to come
If we decouple when CANs and new member orientation occur, then we'll lower burden on the OA core team. If we create a welcome Slackbot, then new members will have a more scaffolded experience joining OA (which reduces the likeliness of drop-off)
We will develop the Slackbot in an iterative manner: We'll start with the most basic functionality that we think a new member needs, test it during new member orientations, and use those experiences to refine/develop further.
MVP functionality - as a new member, I want to:
- See a full list of project channels when I first join the Slack, so that I can take my time to choose which project to join
- Be prompted to introduce myself in #general, so that I start to get acquainted
Potential future functionality:
- Link to Code of Conduct
- How to contribute to Open Austin
- Utilizing the GrapghQL data (i.e. OA members could query upcoming event details using a slash command).
- More to come