How to Make a New Working Group

Owned by Kyle McCormick
Last updated: Jun 04, 2024
3 min read

This page is under construction. Feel free to help build it!

There also an effort to create an OEP to formalize the working group system: OEP 62: Working Groups by kdmccormick · Pull Request #424 · openedx/open-edx-proposals. It’s currently on the back burner, but you can take a look and leave feedback if you’d like.

Table of Contents

Prerequisites

  1. The topic must be related the Open edX platform, its community, or one of its use cases.

  2. There must be adequate control and feedback into the Open edX community. A working group functions with bidirectional communication with the larger community

  3. Generally all communication as to the work of the working group should be public, understanding that sometimes a matter may need to be private. In such cases, please consult with Open edX leadership.

  4. All code produced within the working group must be compatible with a license presently used by Open edX platform.

  5. All documentation produced within the working group must be licensed under a Creative Commons share alike license (CC-BY-SA).

  6. Any code generated by the working must be published in a repository in the openedx GitHub organization.

  7. All code contributors must either sign an individual Open edX CLA be specifically included under their organization's Open edX CLA.

Name and purpose

Come up with a short name for your group and a few sentences describing what your new group will try to do.

Check out the list of existing working groups to see if there are any groups whose purpose overlaps with yours. If so, consider joining that group instead, and/or creating your group as a sub-group.

Announcement and chairperson

Announce your working groups on the Open edX forums. Example: Introducing: the Developer Experience Working Group

If you are unsure whether you want to create the group and want community input, frame it as a proposal. If you’re certain that you want to make the group, frame it as an announcement. Either way, be clear about what you see the group doing and how you see it operating, and seek to find interested collaborators.

State whether you intend to be the initial chairperson or are seeking nominations for a initial chairperson. You will need to find a chairperson for the next steps, even if they’re just acting as an interim chair.

Setup

As the chairperson, set up each of the following. For anything you lack access to do, you can open up an Axim Request (feel free to batch a bunch of them together into one request).

Wiki

Create a wiki page underneath Active Working Groups. Include your name, purpose, chairperson & any other named roles, communication methods, meeting times, and any other info that would help new collaborators jump in and get involved with your working group. Consider adding a sub-page to hold agendas, notes, and recording links for your meetings.

Example: Data Working Group .

Add a listing to the table on Active Working Groups , following the pattern set by the other working groups.

Meetings

You don’t have to have meetings, but if you do, make sure everyone can benefit from them!

  • Create meetings only in the Axim Google or Zoom workspaces.

  • Add public joining links to Open edX Working Group Calendar . In the event’s description, include links to wherever you will hold your meeting agendas/notes.

  • Record your meetings and enable transcript recording, if available.

  • After each meeting, make the recording and transcript publicly available. For Google Meet, we recommend creating a publicly visible folder, linking the folder from your wiki page, and moving the videos there after each meeting.

Slack

Create a new public channel in the Open edX Slack workspace, prefixed with #wg-. Example: #wg-build-test-release

Add yourself (the WG chair) to the @wg-chairs user group Slack.

Forums

Create a subcategory on discuss.openedx.org underneath Working Groups.

Example: https://discuss.openedx.org/c/working-groups/build-test-release

GitHub

Create a new public GitHub repository in the openedx organiztion to hold issues for your working group. Grant access to the repository:

Example repository: https://github.com/openedx/wg-developer-experience

Also create a new publicly-readable GitHub project in the openedx organization. This will let you organize your issues into boards. You, as the WG chair, should be granted admin access to the project.

Example project: https://github.com/orgs/openedx/projects/37

openedx.org

Ask the Marketing WG in #wg-marketing to add your new working group to https://openedx.org/open-edx-community-working-groups/.

Anything else?

These are new instructions. If anything seems missing, add it here!