[tor-dev] IRC meeting to plan sponsor L milestones on Wed July 18, 15:00 UTC in #tor-dev

[Runa A. Sandvik]

On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 11:55 PM, Roger Dingledine <arma at mit.edu> wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 09:37:46AM +0200, Karsten Loesing wrote:
>> Deliverable 5 is totally doable, says Runa.  This deliverable involves a
>> few substeps which we might derive milestones from: rewriting parts of
>> the website is something we can do ourselves; planning some kind of
>> campaign around the videos to be created and not just putting them out
>> there is something we can do, too; writing screenplays for videos is
>> something we'll have to do together with a partner; creating videos is
>> something we'll have to find a partner for; starting the campaign is
>> something we can do.
>
> We should involve Karen in this discussion, since she's already doing some
> sample videos, and she's a plausible fit for parts of the "tech writer"
> role we describe. The question for Karen is how much of a distraction
> it will be for her relative to her fundraising work.
>
> We should figure out what Runa had in mind by "partner", and how much
> of that we can do ourselves; there is currently no money in the 2012
> budget for said partner.

I'd love to see Karen create the videos as she's done a great job so
far. I only said "partner" because we've previously worked with other
organizations on similar projects.

>> Deliverable 6 is doable.  Runa thinks she could either be the community
>> manager by extending her tasks, or we could hire a new person.  She also
>> has an idea who to hire for English, Farsi, and Arabic; there was a
>> brief discussion between Runa and Nick about making an open call for
>> these hires vs. only asking people we know.  Runa thinks that the trick
>> for paid support is to find a way to let anonymous users pay for support
>> and still make sure they get a reply in time according to the service
>> level agreement we have to create.
>
> Andrew is hoping to use this as an opportunity to explore "hire people who
> will do great work and not charge American prices". Apparently our current
> Farsi translator is one such person, and Andrew hopes we find more.

Yep, shouldn't be too hard.

> We have four separate directions in mind for this "community manager"
> notion (not all funded by SponsorL, mind you):
> 1) Relay operator coordinator. Somebody to keep relay operators happy
> and in touch with us, encourage people to set up new relays, organize
> recommended configurations, etc. Especially important in tandem with our
> "network diversity" work at #6232.
> 2) Volunteer-developer coordinator. Somebody to take incoming volunteers
> and help them find good existing projects to work on. Likely involves
> making our volunteer page more usable. Should also include knowing enough
> about every project to recognize and identify good low-hanging fruit,
> and knowing enough about our priorities to make smart decisions.
> 3) Blog/forum/mailinglist coordinator, to make sure our users have useful
> answers, and ultimately to manage and organize the volunteers who make
> sure our users have useful answers.
> 4) Social media person, to be our face on twitter, etc.

Which ones are funded by SponsorL?

> I believe the plan is for Runa to cover #4, and for us to contract
> somebody in our relay operator community part-time for #1 to start. I
> think there is no plan for #2 and #3 yet; but I'd love it if we could
> get somebody part-time for #2.

Like I've told Andrew already; I am willing to extend my tasks to also
include #2 and #3.

>>  Runa is wondering why we want
>> funding for languages no one has emailed us in (Spanish and French);
>> though nobody has emailed us in Arabic, either.
>
> Countries like Venezuela are likely to be on more peoples' radar in
> the coming years. As for French, a lot of North Africa can do French
> better than they can do English. I bet that's at least partly the case
> in Vietnam too.

Makes sense.

>> Deliverable 7 is doable.  Runa is somewhat unhappy that funding doesn't
>> include Arabic.  She says a large number of our users speak either Farsi
>> or Arabic, so not having funding for Arabic translations (and thus
>> relying on volunteers) seems silly; if we have funding for Arabic
>> support, we should also include Arabic translations.  Runa has an idea
>> of who to hire for Farsi and Arabic translation, no idea about
>> Vietnamese and Chinese (but can't be too hard to find someone).
>
> There's totally time to write 'Arabic' into the list if we want. Note
> that just because we promise more languages doesn't mean we get any more
> money though.
>
> Here's a list of languages the funder thought we might want to put on
> the contract: "Arabic, Farsi, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Burmese, Spanish".

Sounds good!

-- 
Runa A. Sandvik