Talking Drupal #530 - Join the Community Working Group

John: This is Talking Drupal, a weekly chat about web design and development from a group of people with one thing in common. We love Drupal. This is episode five 30. Join the community working group. This episode of Talking Drupal is sponsored by Amazee.ai On today's show, we're talking about the community working group, what they do, and how you can help with our guests, AmyJune Hinline, Mark Casias, and Matthew Saunders.

We'll also cover Drupal CMS Geo Images as our module of the week.

Welcome to Talking Drupal. Our guests today are AmyJune Hinline, mark Casias, and Matthew Saunders. AmyJune currently works with the Linux Foundation as their certificate community architect. She's responsible supporting the certification team's efforts in building and maintaining exams and related documentation for exam products in the Linux Foundation's certification portfolio.

Mark has been in Drupal in the Drupal community for a long time, and currently works at interpersonal frequency living in New Mexico. He plays bass in the random. And last but certainly not least, Matthew Saunders is a veteran Drupal contributor and public speaker focused on AI accessibility and neuro inclusive community building.

He brings extensive code of conduct and trauma-informed conflict resolution experience to his role with the community working group. He currently works for a amazing IO as an AI ambassador. Amy June, mark and Matthew, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Hello. Thanks for having us. Thank you. I feel like I actually should have said welcome back to the show because you've all been here before.

It's true. But either way. Welcome. Either way. A welcome is a welcome. So here you go. I'm John Picozzi, solutions architect at EPAM. And today my co-host is Nic Laflin, founder at nLightened Development.

Nic: Good morning. Happy to be here.

John: All right. And now to talk about our module of the week, let's turn it over to Mike Anello, sitting in for Martin Anderson Clutz.

Mike is a developer and trainer for Drupal Easy and a maintainer of a number of Drupal modules of his own. Mike, what do you have for us this week?

Mike: Hello and good. More

John: afternoon, evening, whatever. It's Mike. Mike. People can listen to this whenever they want.

Mike: Hi. Good day. I, good day. So right off the bat, I realized like an hour ago, I'm actually don't even have a module.

I have a recipe, so I don't know if that's a violation of protocol, but we're gonna press forward anyway. It absolutely is not. It's not a violation of protocol. Fantastic. No, we love recipes. Alright, so this is a recipe I discovered earlier this year. It's called the Drupal CMS Geo Images. So it's a recipe specifically made for Drupal CMS and it's, it, you know, it's one of those kind of like you, you apply the recipe and you immediately get a cool result.

So what it does in a nutshell is it will take any images that you upload to a particular media type and it will grab the metadata from that image if it has geospatial information and display that image on a map. And it's pretty dead simple to use. I was originally track attracted to it because it was written by Alia Marrow is, I believe how you pronounce his last name.

He is one of the maintainers of Geo Field and leaflet and all of kind of the geospatial ecosystem of modules. So when I saw that he released a recipe for Drupal CMS, I'm like, oh, I gotta check that out. And it ended up being a nice little demo that I did with a, with a group of our alumni. It had a, a release just a couple weeks ago on November 9th version 1.1 0.4.

It is actively maintained. It has opted into security coverage. It doesn't really have test coverage because it's a recipe. So the modules that are included in, in it, most of them do have test coverage. It does have some documentation on the main project page. It doesn't have a separate documentation site.

The Read me file and the documentation page are the same. I actually did find one little knit in that document in documentation that I need to open an issue for and let 'em know. But otherwise the documentation's pretty straightforward. It has one open issue, which is not a bug, but it only has two issues total.

And I don't really have usage stats on it because it's all together now. It's a recipe and recipes don't have use of stats, so I have no idea. I suspect it's probably one of those things where it's been used as a really cool demo a bunch of times, but no real usage. Yeah, so some of the cool features of it, you apply the recipe, you get a new media type.

Called geo image, which is similar to the regular image media type just with the geospatial fields. You get a a, a view mode for that, and that's what displays the leaflet map or the images. You get a view with the recipe that displays all of your images on a single map along with a filter. You can filter by date, by default.

And it actually, the recipe actually also includes the media library importer module. So this is kind of like a cool first time setup where you can dump a bunch of images in a particular directory and then run the, the media library importer. And it'll import all of them. It will grab their geospatial data and it will put all of them on a map for you.

So it's just, it's just, it just works, right? It just works. It makes for a really cool demo. I, I use it again just this morning just to make sure there's nothing, nothing new or, or no wrinkles in it. But if you need an excuse to play with Drupal CMS and you wanna play with a recipe, this is just a really really solid choice.

I did notice I had some deprecation when I when I installed it and stuff this morning, but nothing that, that caused any issues on the site. So that is Drupal cms, geo images, and the URL is drupal.org/project/drupal cms geo images,

Nic: this, this feels like the perfect kind of recipe too, right? It, it's a fairly.

Flashy use case, it's pretty complex to set up, I think. So it's not the kind of thing that I would probably apply and then release, because again, most likely you're gonna want a different media entity or an existing media entity to have this, but it's very easy to apply and then see how it's built and configure it yourself on your site.

Or if it's a brand new site, maybe you can't just apply it and, and run with it. But it's, it's kind of perfect because it's like self-documenting for the configuration if you need to see what's missing or what you need to tweak. And it, it introduces you to other modules. Like I've, I've never seen the importer one either, and that looks like a useful utility to kind of, you know, yeah.

Kind of have in your back pocket as well.

Mike: Yeah, I agree. I agree completely. I used to use stuff like, and I still do like Commerce Kickstart. I would install that, and then with students we would, you know, look at it and find something that was cool, and then well let. Let's pick apart how that thing was built, which modules, what the configuration was.

So, so stuff like this is, it's a learning tool as well, because if you've never used geospatial modules and Drupal, there you go. You've got it all configured. You can dive into the leaflet settings, you can dive into the geo field settings. You can dive into, into any aspect you want.

John: Yeah. I was like, why would anybody use this?

Like, when you first started talking about it, and then I was kind of like, well, it could be cool for you know, like, like a travel site where you have like a profile and you wanna upload images of places you've been, or like a bunch of different, a bunch of different U Ucas came to mind. I'm interested though you said that it, it integrates with the media library importer module.

Does that, does that module work with like an external data source? Like could you point it at like a, a S3 bucket or something like that? Or does it have to be like, within the file system? Because that feels like it'd be kind of a pain to upload images that way? To me, I do not know the answer to that question.

Oh, all right. No worries. We can, I can research on my own later. I was just curious. Yes. That's an exercise left to the reader. There you go. The listener. Again,

Mark: it's a podcast. I'm just curious, I, I wanted to open up a can of worms on that. You talked about the tracking. Thank you. Do you think that there is a way that recipes can start getting tracking so that use usage of a recipe can be identified?

Do you think that's something that's happening in the community and in the recipes initiative?

Mike: Yeah, that is a bit of can of worms. You know, I, I think there's some, some potential issues with that because of the, what the, what a recipe is, right? It's, it's just a bunch of yamal, right. I think

John: it would have to phone home.

Right. So like, it would have to go through the install process and then if the site had opted in to like, allow for that, well, like you would have, then you could send it back. But ultimately, well,

Mike: and the recipe is meant just to be applied and then Right. And

John: then, and then go away.

Mike: Yeah. So there's not really anything, anything that sticks around to be able to phone home.

So, go ahead Nick.

Nic: Yeah, sorry. It, and John, you said install the recipe. Remember, we're not installing recipes. We're just applying. Run

John: the recipe. Nick, I guess I meant to run the recipe. I believe I apply the recipe. Recipe is the most favored word.

Mike: Yeah. Characters.

John: It's gonna be a long show today, folks, but show

Mike: isn't that the point, right?

To have, you know, enlightening technical discussions that are hopefully accurate.

Mark: Oh, accurate. You want it accurate? Nevermind. I'm out. Oh, sorry. Haven't gone too

Nic: far. There, there is an issue to track that, by the way, mark and I'll, I'll look for that and put in the show notes so that we can, we can keep track of it, but they're discussing strategies to find out kind of how popular a recipe is, because that does have some kind of direct implications of the level of support that they get.

But yeah, it's a, it's a tougher problem than it seems on the surface.

John: All right. Well, Mike, thanks for, thanks for filling in. You did a great job. If folks wanted to connect with you or suggest a module week, how could they go about doing that?

Mike: I'm Ulta Mike pretty much everywhere on drupal.org and social media on drupal easy.com.

John: Awesome. And if you wanted to suggest a module of the week, you can reach out in the Drupal Slack in the talking Drupal channel, or you can connect with Martin directly. You'd be happy to, you'd ha be happy to hear about those. All right, Mike, have a good one. Thank you. Thank you. See you. Thank you.

AmyJune: See you later.

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Mark: All right. And check out Matthew's shirt too.

John: Yeah,

Mark: yeah. There you go. He, he, he brought, he brought the branding with him.

John: Yep. Right here. Right here to our little show.

Mark: Which is a great thing to say in an audio podcast. So, yeah.

John: Don't worry. They can, they can reference the YouTube video if they really feel, feel like they have to, they have to drill down on that.

Okay, so we're talking about the community working group. We're talking about joining the community working group, but let's not put the cart before the horse here, Amy. June. For those who might not be familiar, can you start by explaining what the community working group is and what's the, what their main goals are?

AmyJune: Sure. It's been around for a while. You might hear it called like, the CWG versus the community working group. We're, we're responsible for supporting the health and psychological safety of the Drupal community and adjacent communities. We work on providing resources for healthy and productive discussions.

And there's a a number of ways we do that. And we have two main groups. We have the community health team that focuses on proactive. Things like education, resources, workshops, and anything that helps people collaborate more effectively within our community to kind of help things from becoming a conflict.

And that brings us to the conflict resolution team, which is the reactive side. We focus on if something has gone wrong and someone needs help navigating a conflict or a difficult situation. And we both work together, both teams work together on that same goal. We want the Drupal community to be a place where people feel welcomed because we all know that our community is really diverse.

And so we provide education to, to talk about diversity of our, of our, of our community. We wanna be able to contribute. We want everyone to be able to contribute without having that fear of harassment or harm. A lot of our work is about listening. Educating and helping people build healthier habits that support long-term sustainability within our community.

Because some people, you know, ultimately don't feel safe and will leave. And we're, you know, the, the, the proactive side helps that. And the reactive side, you know, helps the, the situations de-escalate.

Nic: Thank you Amy. June. So now that we kind of know what the community working group helps with in the community, mark, many community members might not realize that there are several subgroups within the CWG, beyond the ones that were just mentioning.

Can you talk a bit about those and how they kind of work together with the greater CWG.

Mark: Actually, I mean, those are the two main subgroups. You've got the community health team, which, which is great. And that's kind of that we meets more on a quarterly basis and we kind of do more slack interaction and working in that basis.

Each person tries to do its own thing, like mental health issues, writing blog posts updating the, the nudges and stuff like that. And then the conflict resolution team, we meet once a week to discuss any issues that are going on or kind of try to point the, the general working group together in, in the same direction of or in the, in the correct direction.

Hopefully by, by, by our standards and then by the community standards as well. But, you know, making sure that everything's taken care of properly and, and watching it over. But those are the two main groups, the conflict revolution, and then the community working group.

AmyJune: We have some subcommittees though, like Mark kind of touched upon.

We have subcommittees that work on tasks like we have this nudge that we use in the community to help with that productive dialogue. And we work on that in groups. We have SMEs that come in and help us, you know, from different industries. We have, you know, SME for the event organizers, we have SM for different geographical places.

Mark: Go and SME is subject matter expert because I, for the longest time people would say SME to me and I'd be like, who's sme? Thinking it was the guy from the story, you know? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So I just wanted to, to clarify that. Experts.

John: Good deal. So, Amy, June, could you give us an example of like what kind of issues the CWG typically handle?

I mean, I think you did a great job kind of giving an overview of like, inclusivity and, and making sure people feel, feel welcome and, and able to contribute. But like, what kind of, what kind of situations do you does the CWG deal with and, and then how do you kind of approach them?

AmyJune: Okay. So I think you're asking maybe what the conflict resolution team deals with versus the, the,

John: the team.

Is

AmyJune: that the question?

John: Yeah, I guess that's a better way of raising it. Absolutely. Yep.

AmyJune: Okay. So just to address the community health side of it the issues that they work on are those proactive ones, right? Like trainings and materials helping support events.

John: And they, they run the code of conduct training, right?

Yes,

AmyJune: yes, yes, yes. I think that's done quarterly or so. And that's something that we do through an external person who used is used to be in our community. Sage from Otter Tech, I think is what it is. Is that right? Mark?

John: And I will say, if you haven't taken that training, I highly recommend it. It is very, very insightful and really, really great if you're running an event and you need that, that sort of thing.

AmyJune: Okay. And then the conflict resolution team, we call it the CRT sometimes. We handle incidents that mostly involve interpersonal conflict. Sometimes it's bigger conflict, but most of the time it's individual conflict that comes up. Misunderstandings that have escalated situations where people feel unsafe or maybe they're unsure how to pro how to proceed in what they're trying to get done.

These interactions can come from Slack. You know, our, our, our workspace, which is I think Rocket Chat and, and Zoo Lip on some other communities that we've worked with that can come from the issue queue. You know, sometimes there's differing opinions in the issue queue and things can escalate working groups, local communities and project teams.

And so, like I said, it's a lot about that interpersonal conflict and our approach. Is through mostly active listening, you know, and empathy and maintaining a level of privacy for people. So, we never wanna jump to conclusions and so having a diverse team within the conflict resolution team is really important. So we can come at from different perspectives. You know, the way I see an issue might not be the way Mark sees an issue. And it might not be the way the person who who reported the issue sees it as well.

So we do try to have that that careful listening and, and, and never assuming anything, making no assumptions. We talk to everyone that's involved. We look for needs. We address concerns and then we work together to find, what do I wanna say? A constructive path forward. Sometimes that can be mediation, sometimes it could be clarifying expectations.

You know, maybe someone reported an issue and they were just not clear on, on, on, on the level setting that was involved. It can, most of the time it's about talking with someone about adjusting their communication style. 'cause we're all from different cultures and some cultures are a little bit more blunt or harsh.

And some people can take that out of turn. But we also help people when someone needs to step back and reset. But the goal is always to try to reduce harm and help people reengage in healthier ways.

Mark: Ways, yeah. We're always trying to bring people into the community, not. Pull 'em out, you know? So that's one of the reasons that we try to say, keep everything anonymous.

We try to keep everything, you know, you know, our, our our our, our reporting form doesn't even ask the, the email of the person that's recording so that we don't have to get them involved if they don't wanna be. And it, it's very, very important that the, the goal is to bring people into the community so that we're working together, not ostracizing anybody or kicking them out because they didn't get along.

So, yeah.

John: So, so being that, being that impartial, impartial third party and, and kind of trying to see both sides and come to an amicable, amicable solution is, is kind of the goal, it sounds like.

Mark: Yeah. And, and I'll, I'll admit, half half of our CRT meetings are us arguing about whether or not who's, who's.

Who's got the, the moral high ground there Because some, some people will see it one way and other people will see it the other way. This person didn't realize what they were doing. Why are they getting admonished for it? This person totally knew what they were doing. Why aren't they getting admonished for it?

You know? So, and that changes from, I would call it, go.

AmyJune: I would not call it an argument, I would call it pro productive dialogue in our meetings. Yes,

Mark: yes, yes. And see how we're arguing about that how, what we're gonna call it. Now we, we, I mean, and, and it's great that we, we have a, a very solid team right now who we known each other for a while and interact very well with each other.

So it, it makes it actually, one of the things I look forward to every week, so,

John: and I mean in context, context and intent, I think are probably pretty important. And it, it sounds like you guys are looking at those things to say like, well, what was the context and what was the person's intent here? Was it harmful?

Or just, you know, the ignorance, right? And let's like, maybe highlight, highlight that and, and educate both parties to, to that aspect,

Mark: right? And then we take it to the community health team and say, Hey, let's work some wording out so that we have a nudge that kind of addresses that, or a blog post that kind of talks about that.

So that people are aware that we're aware that this is a, a thing.

AmyJune: Yeah. And we also monitor like, repeat things if we see something happening repeatedly. Because maybe the first couple of times people misunderstand and that sort of thing, but it's, it's repeated behavior in the issue queue or slack.

Then we kind of react a little bit differently to that. Right.

Nic: Yeah. So Matthew as a brand new CWG team member and we're talking about joining the CWG, can you tell us a little bit about what prompted you to want to join the team and what was the and, and what's the experience that you're hoping to bring to the group?

What perspective are you trying to bring?

Matthew: Thanks. So first I think it's most people in the community know this already, but because I've been talking about it so much since gosh, 2019. But I'm a person with autism, dyslexia, and attention deficit disorder. So my perspective tends to be shaped my by my own lived experience.

I understand what it feels like to be misunderstood or to navigate systems that weren't built for the way your mind works. Joining the CWG felt like a way that I could help create a healthier, more predictable and more inclusive environment for everyone in the Dral community, not just for people who move through the way through the world the way that I do.

So I joined the community working group because this is work that I've been already been doing informally for a long time in the Drupal community, and I wanted to step into a place where that experience could be useful at a broader scale. And that started honestly, with doing that training that John, you were talking about with Otter Tech which I thought was really, really good.

I thought I, I, I enjoyed it a great deal and that led to me becoming a code of conduct contact for both DRAL Colorado and for Dral GovCon. So I've some, had some formal preparation in how to support people when something goes wrong, how to listen, how to document incidents properly. That kind of stuff gave me a solid foundation in community safety, ethical response and, and, and so on.

But I also bring training that's less common in tech, but directly. My wife and I were foster parents for years, and that required extensive work in conflict resolution, tra trauma-informed support because when somebody is coming or reacting from a place of injury, it almost never is tidy. It can come out as sorrow, frustration, it can come out as anger and learning to deescalate those kinds of situations, stick grounded or standard, the underlying drivers has shaped how I personally show up in these community spaces.

So for me, I feel like it's practical experience that translates well to all kinds of different interpersonal challenges that the CWG has to handle. And then there's the, my public work around neurodiversity and inclusion. I've been doing talks for, for quite a few years now, and I'm often trying to build bridges between neurotypical and neurodivergent ways of communicating and processing the world.

And those same pri principles, I think apply directly to community health. The whole notion of clarity, compassion, structural safety, and understanding that people don't all interact in the same way. So I was really, really really grateful and pleased when AmyJune approached me and asked whether I'd be willing to, willing to join the community health committee and I'm hoping that.

The things that I, that I've experienced throughout my life and the training that I've had can help, can help foster a a a good, healthy, strong community. And I think we've got a pretty good, a pretty, pretty healthy community as it stands, pretty supporting community. Yeah, so that's, that's the reason that I, that I joined.

John: I, I mean, Matthew, I think you're, you're, you're very well, very well qualified and suited to be, to be part of the CWG and in the, in the position that you're in. I'm wondering, and I'm, I'm gonna direct this question actually to Mark, like what qualities and experiences make somebody a good fit to the CWG and, and more specifically like.

You know, I think Matthew is a great example of somebody who has a lot of, a lot of different experiences, a lot of different qualifications. But like, are there things that, that maybe the CWG doesn't currently have that you're actually looking to add? Different backgrounds, different skills, that sort of thing?

I mean,

Mark: yeah. The, the, the main quality that we look for when inviting is, well, one, they come to us. A lot of people come to us that wanna join and what can I do to, to join up? We actually approach Matthew because of his because of his talks and, and because of his, his involvement with the Drupal community.

He's one of the first person I've known in the Drupal community. 'cause he is up in Denver. I'm down in New Mexico. And, you know, so we, we've known each other through that. But it, it's the, the, the want and the urge to come with an agenda. What do you want? We're not really necessarily looking for something in particular, but what do you wanna do?

We've had people come in that wanted to do you know, more blog posts about social issues and how bringing that into the community is important. And, you know, basically someone who wants to build the Drupal community. And that's, that's what we're looking for in there. And it would be great if you have a, a niche that you're interested in to, to, to help out in.

We're looking for more people in other time zones than the mm-hmm. Four Americas. You know, we would love people more involvement from our, our European and Indian folks. Now that being said, that's hard to do because we have a monthly meeting that somebody's gonna be in the middle of the night.

Mm-hmm. And that makes it really difficult. Also come join us and work with us, and we'll figure out a way to, to work around that. Maybe have two meetings, one in the evening, one in the, in the morning, and then, you know, kind of work, work that way or more work on a you know, like the Slack meetings are for like the recipe, these initiatives, things like that where we have a what's the word I'm looking for?

Really? Asynchronous meeting though on Slack. Something like that where everybody talks about what they want and we have an agenda. What do you wanna do? What do we need to do? Let's go, go take care of it. So,

John: So it kind of sounds like you. Saw a need right within the CWG, an area where like maybe you could use a little bit more experience a little more, and you kind of sought out a community member and, and that was, that was Matthew, right?

Mark: Yeah. And I'll, I'll be honest with you, he we, we were gonna seek him out earlier, but then he went and joined the Drupal Association board. So, we, he kind of already had his hands full, so we didn't wanna bug him about that. But then once, once he rolled off, we grabbed him and said, thank you, please.

Matthew: I was just gonna say sort of riff off something that that Markie mentioned, which is, is looking for folks that that are outside of the Americas in Europe. I, I feel like, I feel like there's a real importance in cultural sensitivity.

Mm-hmm. And, and sometimes, sometimes things that might feel feel. Rough or, or insensitive in one, in one country is actually pretty normal in the, in the, in the space that that the, the person has come from. And it, I think, I think that unless we have enough diversity from a cultural standpoint in this group, it becomes more and more difficult for us to under understand when and where a conflict is, is, is truly, is truly truly a, a real problem or where it's a cultural mismatch, misunderstanding.

And I think that we're, we're big enough a community, you know, in terms of our hearts, that when, when there is a, a misunderstanding that is it come, comes from a cultural place that we can, we can move past that and learn from it and and become, become. Frankly, better people ourselves. So I, I, I just would encourage folks who are listening, if you are in, in some other part of the world, isn't part of the Western world and you're listening and you're, you're, you're, you're, you're intrigued, please reach out.

We need you.

John: Yeah. I, I would say that's, that's actually a a, a, a problem with a lot of working groups within, within the Drupal ecosystem. I know that the event organizers working group has the same sort of feeling as like, we wanna be inclusive outside of, outside of, you know, north America. And you know, it's hard, but I think everybody's willing to kind of make the sacrifices needed to, to make it work.

AmyJune, you had something to add.

AmyJune: You had asked Mark about personality traits and I think a personality trait that is a good fit for not only the community health team, but especially for the conflict resolution side, is patience and grace. You have to be patient, you have to sift through a lot.

'cause some of us have these knee jerk reactions when we see the issue happening and we want to be like, respond all at once. But having that patience and grace to kind of, witness both all the sides to the thing I think is really important.

John: Yeah. And that's one of, that's one of those things that I think the code of conduct training kind of, kind of dives into quite a bit is like, don't, you know, once you, once you're presented with one side, don't react or offer a verdict, that's not your job.

Your job is just to gate, get all the information, and then bring it back to, to the group and, and, you know, and, and kind of like pro provide it, you know, as opposed to like rendering a judgment. And I think that's, you know, I think it's, it's hard, it's hard for some people, right? Yeah. It's hard

Mark: because, because we're dealing with people's livelihoods, their passions.

Yeah. You know, the, the, we certainly don't wanna be putting our thumbs on anybody unnecessarily. Yeah. So.

AmyJune: We also wanna welcome new community members into our group because they have a whole different perspective than our US veterans. You know, I'm like one of the less seasoned, and I've been in Drupal for 11 years, you know, and so like having new community members would be helpful for our team as well.

Outside perspective is always a good thing.

John: Mm-hmm.

Nic: Before I ask this next question, one thing we're kind of focusing a little bit more on the conflict resolution team, I think as we do when, when the CWG joint CWG joins, because that's kind of the most maybe one of the more visible pieces of the team.

But Matthew, are you on the conflict resolution team or are you just on the CW team? I'm not on the conflict resolution team

Mark: yet. Okay. The way this, we have an onboarding process.

Matthew: Yeah. The way this typically works is that you join, you join the community, health community to begin with, and you spend spend a bit of time you know, learning, learning that sort of the ropes and, and understanding the kinds of things that that are, that could be brought to, to the community as a whole.

And then, and then ultimately if there's a, if there's a space or there's a need, I think that that's when, when when there's a, there's a conversation about bringing other people onto the conflict resolution team.

John: I mean, I think that's. I think that's a nice, a nice thing to mention, right?

Because we're talking about joining the community working group, and somebody might be listening to this going like, oh man, I don't wanna join. And then be like thrown into a situation where like, you know, people are yelling at each other or something's getting out of control. Like, that sounds stressful as heck.

But you know, I, I think you, you just did a great job there, Matthew, explaining like, eh, there's a little bit of an on-ramp and you can, you know, be part of the community health team and, and, and you may have thrown right into it.

Matthew: And you may never, you may never want or be asked to be part of the the resolution team, right?

Like, there, there, this is, this is not, this is not a, a small, narrow tent. And the work that the community health committee does, the community health team does, is really, really important. Because that's the place where we're of, where we're, where we're setting up the foundation to avoid conflict.

That's where we're setting up, setting up the, the, the, the circumstances where, where we can have a, a, a a healthy community that has as few problems as as possible. And that could be as simple as, Hey, I'd like to do, I'd like to do you know, I'd like to help people set up community health se sessions of some kind at their camps.

Or I'd like, I'd like to be involved in a summit, or I'd like to do a talk or. You know, there are any number of things that help, help help our community be as as resilient, robust, and healthy. As, as it as it can be. Remember, this community is going on 25 years now. And yeah. And that's rare.

That's a rare thing in the open source, in the open source world, let alone anything else. Right. So we, I think there's a lot to be proud of, and I think a lot of that is can be, can be tied to the, the community working group and the work that it's done since the very beginning.

Nic: So, AmyJune, or somebody's listening to this and hearing that kind of updated pitch, and they're, they're interested, what kind of time commitment is expected of CWG members that maybe aren't on the conflict resolution team?

AmyJune: Sure. The time commitment, excuse me, varies because our community has those natural ebbs and flows, right? The community health team. A month might include planning a workshop, improving documentation meeting with local organizers or preparing materials for DrupalCon. So sometimes around the major events, the, the time commitment is a little bit more.

We do meet quarterly for an hour. We try to have office hours, which we could be better about doing, opening up community office hours. But the work is going ongoing and project based. We have action items that come out of those meetings. And so really that month the community health side might be working, you know, two or three hours a month on different things, you know, and then as we like, create a new nudge or do something like that, it might be a little bit more, and then the conflict resolution team depends on what reports come in. Some months are light and others are quite active. Again, it kind of goes with events. Sometimes at the typical month for the CRT might include discussing ongoing cases, following up with individuals, you know, sometimes, you know, mark will deal with one issue and Donna will deal with another one, and then David will, you know, help out with the couple.

You know, we kind of, depending on. On where we are as a team in our time and like moving and having a new job. You know, other people kind of, we hold each other up a little bit. But camps, conferences, and other community events request the community working groups time. Sometimes it's reviewing the names of potential speakers, organizers and potential leaders, you know, scholarship recipients.

We vet these people. And the purpose is really to make sure that the community members who are assuming these public facing roles, like speaking at events or initiative leads, that kind of thing that they're in good standing in the community. And this helps with the psychological safety because again, we are that diverse community.

So I'd say on an average a couple hours a month. And again, you know, before DrupalCon we organize the Aaron Windborn award, which consists of, you know, a few articles promotion and that kind of thing. So the community health team, you know. Around the three Drupal cons is a little bit busier.

Mark: That being said we did just release a blog posts about the and win board award and nominate your person.

John: Yes, yes. Everybody, everybody should do that.

So. Matthew, because you're, you're kind of the newest, the newest member here. I'm wondering if somebody's listening and they're like, eh, this sounds like it's great, but I not really ready to kind of jump in and, and join formally. What other ways can, can people support or contribute kind of, contribute to, excuse me, to what the CWG is doing?

Matthew: So if you've got a local community you know, just to start with, maybe you do meetups, maybe you do a little camp or something like that one of the things that you can do is, is is help draft a code of conduct if your community doesn't have one. And for me that was a really awesome experience when we first, when we first adopted a code of conduct for, for, for Drupal Colorado.

And we drew upon a bunch of different sources the Linux Foundation Ubuntu OS Fields the a DA initiative, geek Feminism, and also the Dral Associations code of conduct. And, and every year or two. We come together and review it and update it. Actually, AmyJune is my, is my partner in that in Colorado.

So, you know, once or once a year or once every couple of years, she and I sit down and we, we just make sure that it's still, still in good shape and it's just a, it's a, it's a good way to, to, you know, renew your connection with what the code of conduct looks like and, and, and is super, super helpful.

The second thing that you could do is. Go ahead and take the Otter Tech training, like mm-hmm. It's not that expensive. Might, you might be able to get a little, a little a little stipend to help with cost if that's the case. For example, in Colorado if one of our board members on the Drupal Colorado Board wants to take the training we'll we'll we'll supplement that.

So, so, so the individual doesn't have to bear the costs. And I'm, I'm willing to bet there are lots of communities out there that are doing doing similar things that actually might be a good thing for us to pull together. Right. Mark a list of communities that support that kind of training. In any case take the training.

It'll help you sort of wrap your head around what what this kind of work looks like. And then become a code of conduct contact for your local community and for other communities if you've got the bandwidth. So, for example, while I don't live in the DC region, I'm very involved with Drupal GovCon.

And when they when they heard that I was a trained code of conduct person, they asked whether, whether I would whether, whether I'd serve in that capacity for, for their event as well. And I was happy to do it. And I'm happy to do that at any event that I'm, that I'm, that I'm participating in.

Just just to throw it out there, if you're listening

John: question about that. Yeah. Do you actually have to be at the attempt at the event to serve as a code of conduct individual? Nope.

Matthew: You, you don't. You don't. But I will say that it, it ha. Helps if there's at least one person who's there and physically available.

Because somebody might want to, somebody might be in a, in a moment of extreme emotional strain, and they may need somebody that they know is safe to talk to. And, and I've had that happen once and it was extraordinarily important for that part, particular individual to be able to, to have a person.

And so I think, I think that that it's great. You don't have to be you don't have to be attending the event, but let's make sure that as much as possible there is at least one person, preferably two, but at least one person who's, who's physically at the event.

AmyJune: And then it sounds pretty scary to just jump in and be a code of conduct official at an event.

But it's, we have mentoring, you know, like me and Matthew might, you know, be on the Colorado team, but if someone wants to like, find out what it's like and like observe and be mentored, you know, lots of camps are willing to do that too. It's not like you have to jump into the deep end, you know, you can have the support of, of the other people.

But I also wanna mention like when we, when we decide on those people who are participating in the, in the contacts we try to have diversity in that too, in case it's a, a gendered issue or something like that. And making sure that people feel like there's someone that they can talk to and feel comfortable with as well.

Nic: Yeah. The, to Matthew's point, I think one of the reasons why it's good to have more than one per at least two people is usually a conflict requires more than one person. Right? And having the ability to have both people kind of, assuming it's just two people, like kind of separate and discuss with somebody trusted separately means you're not like picking who talks first and you, and you can kind of, kind of deescalate the situation.

I, I also wanna point out that if you're running a camp, this is the kind of, this is the kind of thing that is good to have a plan for beforehand, right? You don't wanna be figuring. It's kind of like car insurance, right? You want to have it before you have the accident. You wanna, you don't wanna be scrambling during a crisis to figure out how to, like, you may not even find the resolution that day.

Right. A lot of the CWG work happens over time. It takes multiple discussions and planning, you know, it's really about making sure that there's no ongoing harm in, in the moment. But I, I would say the vast majority of camps probably go off without needing intervention or some sort of code of conduct thing.

But really, when you need it, you need it. You wanna have that plan in place beforehand, and you wanna have the, the people to contact. And I think the cwg is kind of at the top of the pyramid, right? They're the, they're the ones that, they're the ones to talk to for, for both planning and final resolution, I think.

But yeah, it's, it's definitely the kind of thing you want to have a plan for before rather than during.

AmyJune: We encourage local communities to, to, to use us, deal with the, with the thing, you know. But if it doesn't, if there's no resolution, then they come to us. But we do encourage local locals to you know, try to help out with that conflict.

Matthew: And, and I would say two other things, you know, that, that are, that are related. Nick, you, you're absolutely right. I've been, I've been, I've been organizing and running Drupal Camp Colorado for this will be in our 19th year. And. And and I've been helping with other camps like GovCon as well.

And I've had one single incident in the entire time that I've been engaged in, in, in, in in the, these activities. And I'm super glad that I'd gone through the, through the, through the training with Auto Tech prior to that because it helped a ton. And then the second thing is that you know.

Amy, AmyJune's point about just jumping in is absolutely correct. And it's not just, just maybe getting mentoring from somebody who's, who's had the training and who's been en, en engaged in, in being a code of contact person for a good long time. If you do the training, you're gonna feel so much more capable and ready to handle an issue.

Sage is so good at their, at their at their role play stuff that, that you go through the, the scenarios and so on. I think you'll probably come out of it feeling, feeling empowered. And feeling like you can, you can be helpful in, in a, in a, in a, in one of these stressful situations. Anyway, that, that's my last two thoughts on that.

John: Yeah, I, I do agree. I think the, the, the role playing aspect of it, I mean, the information is, is great and the education is great, but the role playing aspect really kind of helps you kind of put it, put it into practice in a, in a safe environment. Question for I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask AmyJune, 'cause I, I, I think, I think I brought this up to her a while back and I was just curious.

But the code of conduct training, is there a, are we in the process of developing like a second version of that or a re-up version of that and does it exist and I just missed it?

AmyJune: So. We just discussed this at the last all hands, all the community working group meeting this month is Sage approached us and asked what sort of trainings we were looking for.

And so that's a discussion that's happening within the group. And like as we talk to people at different levels and organizations right now we really would like a continuing education type thing for someone who has taken that first training. And maybe they want a little bit more scenarios or a little bit more role playing in that kind of thing because, you know, all different situations happen.

So we are looking into asking Sage to develop like that, that ongoing training or the refresher course, because that's important because I took the training in what, 2019, you know, that was a long time ago. You know, so, having that refresher course without having to do some of that, that stuff that you do in the first time is, is, is.

Move it. We're, we're working on it. Is the, is the story. Yeah. We haven't missed anything, John.

John: Awesome. Cool. I wasn't sure. A lot of moving parts out there in the Drupal world.

Nic: So Mark, the CWG in general, and I think the conflict resolution team specifically deals with some pretty sensitive community matters.

How do you guys kind of maintain confidentiality for parties involved, but also promote transparency and trust in the community and the process in general?

Mark: Well. We, so the conflict resolution team, all of our meeting minutes become public, but we anon anonymize them completely. So we'll talk about how we have a specific kind of issue, but we won't mention people's, call people out by name or call people out by country or anything like that.

We'll just bring it up that there was an issue with X, Y, and Z. Remove all of our notes of what we did and, and, and whatnot. Just, you know, maybe bullet point it and, and mark it down. And that's, then we, we publicize it. Now that being said, I'm about a year and a half behind of. Meeting notes or public public minutes.

So there's where one of the problems lies is that we gotta get that out there, but we definitely don't want, we, we're definitely not calling anybody out publicly. We want these issues to be handled in a delicate matter where no one gets a wind of of who's involved or, or what. But you know, you know, the, the, the, the chatty circles will know probably if they read up on the notes what, who, where and all that stuff.

But we try to keep it so that, you know, the general public will, would, or those involved will probably know when they see their issues, is actually what I'm trying to say. But yeah, we keep everything as publicly as we can without giving out key information of, of what people are, discuss all of our.

Notes and drafts and stuff like that are locked down pretty hard in our drive. We share between ourselves so we have to use a shared drive, but we keep that very secluded and try, try not to get, let anybody into there. So, but yeah, we definitely want everybody to, again, we want you to feel comfortable because if something happens and then you come back in the community, we don't need people rehashing that issue, right?

We want people to come welcome you in and thank you for what, whatever wonderful thing you're doing in the community.

AmyJune: And that, that being said you know, the separation of the two teams we work on that nudge the nudges, which amplifies productive discussions and keeps things healthy. Now, ev anyone can do that and the community health team does that, but if someone files a report to this conflict resolution team, we don't share that with the community health team.

You know, we really try to protect everyone involved, but stay open about the process. So, so those incidents that get filed or, or, or suggested, you know, sometimes people will reach out to one of the team. We don't share that with the, with the broader team,

John: but you, you do bring it up to bring it back at a high level to try to implement trainings and processes to kind of mitigate or prevent the, the issue from happening again.

Right.

AmyJune: Exactly correct. 'cause we see patterns in our community. Sure. We see patterns and that's that proactive side. Okay, now we, we have these things that we wanna address and what can we do to move forward? Yeah.

Nic: So Amy, June, does the Community Health Working Group also handle things like credit abuse? It's something that I know that Tim has to spend a lot of time. Dealing with, and that affects the health of the community kind of in general. But do you, is that kind of just on his plate or do you guys assist him with helping manage that team?

Two,

AmyJune: we've worked on that in the past and that sort of, those nudges sort of stem from that, like in authentic issues and things like that because some maintainers or other contributors would get frustrated with credit farming. Yeah, I guess that's what we're calling it. And we worked on it as a team, but then the community kind of took it over.

And that's, that's our goal, right? Is we want. We wanna provide resources and things. And so there's a channel now in Slack that sort of does that. And again, if things get escalated or heated, we'll step in. But yeah, Tim does a lot of that now because we sort of handed the community the resources

Mark: and, and that is honest.

That is also Tim's domain. I mean, the, the, we're, we don't control the issue queue at all. We just control the community part of it. We don't have access to, well, actually some of us do have access to, to make those kind of white sweeping changes, but we're very hesitant too. We don't wanna overstep onto something.

We've recently overstepped our boundaries and now we're backpedaling on something as well. So because we, we got these, we got the ability to do it, and then someone did it and we're like, well, we shouldn't have, you know, so we're, we're kind of like, you know, we don't want to overstep. And so where the issue p would be us overstepping if we went down and put our thumb on somebody.

Nic: Okay.

Mark: Sounds good.

John: So before we wrap up here I wanna give, give each of you a chance to provide some, some parting words of wisdom to somebody who may wanna get involved with the community health safety with overall community health, safety and governance. Whether on the CWG or just at their local Drupal event or event in general.

Matthew, what any, any parting words for somebody in that regard?

Matthew: Sure. If you're, if you're a person who, who genuinely approaches the world with kindness and patience and and the desire to, to help things, you know, run smoothly and and help people get along. Get involved in your local community, figure out how you can, how you can help, help, help your local community be as healthy as possible.

And if that feels good, then, then, then expand it a little bit. And and if if it feels like you'd like to be involved more in a, on a a larger level, you know, after you've had some of those good experiences, smaller experiences, I'd say reach out to people on the on the CWG and see whether there's a, whether there's something that you could do within the, within the overall community that that could be helpful.

It really, really does take take a village for us to, to make sure that everybody is feeling like they're heard cared for. And and and that that those. That, those, that, that, that, that compassion and structural structural safety is really, really fundamental. Again, not just, not just at the global level, but also at your local level.

So start local. If you feel like, like that's been a great experience and you wanna move to global speak up and and and you'll find a very welcoming place, I think.

John: Mark, what about you?

Mark: Well, always, my, my best advice I ever give is don't ask Mark for advice.

All right. Amy, June, so no, if you, if you, I, I think Matthew actually landed it perfectly.

I mean, you gotta start small. Start with your local community. Start with your own issues that you're dealing with. Know that when, if people, or you're getting a disagreement with someone, it's not about you, it's about your code. Don't try to justify your, your life based on your code. You are not your code.

And the Drupal is a greater community because of that. You don't have to be this smart to ride this ride. Famously said by Angie web chat come on in. Give what you can. Don't take it personally if someone rejects it and work together to, to help yourself and help the community and bring it up.

John: Do, do you feel like,

Mark: I,

John: I agree. I agree with that, but do you feel like there's a little bit of, like, you, you gotta be a little resilient. 'cause sometimes you might have a, you might have a, an interaction with somebody that's like less than ideal and you know, the goal is like, we don't want you to get discouraged.

We want you to keep trying. But like, you know, ideally it happens flawlessly, no friction. But sometimes you get into something and somebody goes, ah, that idea sucks.

Mark: Well, I, yeah, exactly. And, but it's not. You suck. It's, that idea sucks. That's the difference. So yes, you life is built on friction. The world is built on friction.

It's gonna happen. How you deal

John: with it is the important thing. Wow. You're, you're really good at that. You literally just turned that right around in such a, such a, such a kind and, and friction, friction-free way. AmyJune last, but certainly not least, what do you got?

AmyJune: Oh, I know. I'm not least

John: there you go.

AmyJune: Yeah. I think,

Mark: and we know it too, by the way.

AmyJune: I'll just keep telling everyone. I think like nearing what Matthew said about joining locally is really important, you know, welcoming people at a new meetup, you know, making sure that we work on our communication skills. Encouraging inclusive practices, a modeling kind, communication because you know, you wanna emulate what you want in the community, you know, making sure that you're like a kind and graceful person.

Every act of kindness and clarity reduces friction in our community, and it helps people feel safe to contribute. You know, we, we, we don't always get what we want in the issue queue or in the initiatives and that sort of thing, but that's why we work in teams and making sure that our teams are diverse is one of the biggest steps.

And then, you know, we also have an issue queue in a project in the, in the Drupal issue queue, Drupal under Cwg, where our issues are public and people can help us. Like sometimes we're writing nudges, sometimes we're doing blog articles, things like that. And so people can use that issue cue to help contribute to our team as well.

John: You you, you raised an interesting thought in my brain, Amy, June of that, you know. Communication, communication's, hard written, oral, otherwise. Right. And I'm, I'm somebody that tends to overanalyze, overanalyze kind of my, my written communication and, and my oral communication for that matter. But like, it's nice, it's nice to know there's a nice group of people that can, that can kind of help or, or at least provide that, that sounding board of like, Hey, I wrote this and I'm sending this out to the community.

Like, can you just look at it to make sure I'm not being, you know, off-putting or I'm saying something that's, you know, not, not, not appropriate. Or maybe, maybe I'm just overanalyzing. So, I mean, and I think that's only one small piece of what, what you guys can do and can help with. But, you know, I definitely, I definitely think it's important and I think it's, it's important that people know that, that you guys are at the end of the day here to help.

Yeah.

Mark: Hey, John, for the record. Yeah,

Matthew: your, your oral and written communication is, is excellent.

John: I wouldn't go that far, but I appreciate, I appreciate the compliment. Thank you. All right. On that note Amy, June, mark. Matthew, thank you for joining us again. As always, it's been a, it's been a lovely conversation and you know, I think if people are listening, they'll, they'll definitely gravitate towards the cwg.

Thanks, man. We'd love to have them.

AmyJune: I wanna mention that we do have a Slack channel that's open to the public, a community health channel in the Drupal Slack that people can join and be part of discussions as well.

John: There you go. Awesome.

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John: All right, Amy. June, if folks wanted to get ahold of you, chat about the CWG or any of the number of other things that you do, how could they go about doing that?

AmyJune: I am Volkswagen Chick across many of the spaces that count.

Mark: There you go. Mark, what about you? I am Markie on drupal.org and the Drupal Slack, also on the Drupal community Mastodon that I never check but you could possibly reach out for me there as well. And then if you wanna check on my band's website, it's www.thematic.com

John: and at a conversation with somebody the other day about including www and web addresses and, and anyway, we could talk about that later.

But that, that, that sounds like a different episode altogether. Check out, check out the band and Markey's playing bass there, right? Yeah. Any vocals or just bass?

Mark: Yeah, I do vocals. I have a, a couple songs I sing and then I do background vocals. AmyJune has seen the band. She's actually come to New Mexico to witness the glory that is the random addict.

John: Was it, was it worth

AmyJune: sister's? Well, I mostly went to visit his sister's alpacas, but ah.

John: Alpacas with a side of music he played that

AmyJune: weekend. I

John: got you. Yep, I got you. All right. We have very talented community members here in, in the Drupal community. Everybody's got, everybody's got different talents.

It's lovely. Matthew, what about you?

Matthew: I am Matthew S on dral.org and Matthew S on Dral Dribble Flack. And if you're interested in reading more about the kinds of things that I do around in the neuro, neuro neurodiversity community and ai I am James Matthew Saunders. Do AI on the interwebs note.

There is no www there.

John: Thank you for that. And Nick, what about you?

Nic: You can find me pretty much everywhere at nicxvan, N-I-C-X-V-A-N,

John: and I'm John Zi. You can find me [email protected] or on the socials and drupal.org at John Zi. And if you wanna learn more about eam, you can go to EPA m.com.

Nic: If you've enjoyed listening, we've enjoyed talking.

See you guys next week.

John: Have a good one. Thanks for playing. Ciao. Thank you