A proposal to the Astropy Cycle 4 Funding call
- @jduckles - Jonah Duckles - OrgMycology
- @bduckles - Beth Duckles - OrgMycology
- @dsholler - Dan Sholler - OrgMycology
Working closely with
@BerylKanali - Beryl Kanali - Astropy
Organizational Mycology worked closely with the leadership and newly hired community manager at Astropy in late 2023 to:
- Coach / support the community manager
- Develop engagement tracking infrastructure
- Survey the community about how they use / engage with Astropy
- Conducted qualitative research around DEI and Code of Conduct in the Astropy community.
Potential Structures: We are open to merging this proposal with the community leader's proposal for continued funding, and/or keep this proposal independent. Whatever is easiest logistically, and operationally for the organization is fine for our team. It is our understanding that our last contract was handled under a merged funding request, and we're happy to use that structure again if it simplifies things internal to Astropy.
Organizational Mycology is a consulting organization that works with many open science and open source software communities. Our team members have been in leadership roles within these communities and have helped other organizations build community management, engagement, and governance capacity. We do so with a combination of social science-based introspection and data collection, leadership coaching, and development of sustainable participatory community strategies (i.e., ways for organizations to continue building and evaluating their communities long after we fulfill a contract). These activities are beneficial both for project leaders at a strategic level (e.g., in developing new processes and making administrative decisions) and for community managers at a practical level (e.g., in collecting feedback from the community and fostering healthy community dynamics).
Building on our six-months of successful collaboration with the AstroPy team managing the community hire, we’ve developed a follow-on proposal
- Continued Community Manager Support and Coaching - The OrgMycology team members are available to the community lead on topics including systems automation, community wrangling, qualitative survey techniques and methods and other topics as they arise.
- Qualitative Inquiry Coaching – Supporting Beryl Kanali to continue to grow her skills in interviewing, data gathering and report-out as she has conversations with community members.
- Skills Map Development – Addressing our recommendation to better communicate user-contributotr pipelines. We propose to develop skills maps which can help to map roles of Astropy community members and the ways in which educational material and community progressions take place. We propose to develop two skills maps, one for Astropy Developers (focusing on on-ramps for new developers) and one for Astropy Users (starting with Astropy Learn lessons). These will be developed with community involvement and feedback and shared openly as a resource of the community to own and update as needed. Examples of skills maps
- Technical skills support – Helping and supporting Community Lead as she develops more automations and tools that help her do the work of community manager for the Astropy Community. Project priorities will be set with Community Lead and monthly progress reports will be shared back with the CoCo and community.
- 1-2 - Special projects prioritized by CoCo
- Contribution workshops - desing, support and test-out short workshops for PRs, contributing to documentation, learning about automated testing suites etc.
- How does Astropy want to work to intentionally welcome more newcomers?
- Website strategic facilitations - Drawing from community members vision of a more effective website to be used for a website revamp.
Across our three person team, we have the domain-specific (open science and OSS) experience and coaching skills to leave the organization in a strong position to get the most out of the community manager role, both in its current ½ time and future full-time capacity. We have extensive experience running interactive online workshops, designing surveys and interview schedules, constructing automations, and building active, participatory communities. We also understand and appreciate that community managers often become overwhelmed by the complex demands of their roles; all of our services are designed to alleviate this pressure by making it easier to gather and act upon feedback from the project community. How does this benefit Astropy packages / users / community / ...? Short summary.
Details here as needed for Astropy community members to understand what is planned.
Currency: US $
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Community Manager Support | $6,000 |
| Qualitative Inquiry Coaching | $3,000 |
| Skills Map Development | $12,000 |
| Technical Skills Support | $3,000 |
| 1-2 CoCo prioritized projects | $6,000-12,000 ($6,000 each) |
| Total | $30,000 - $36,000 |
6 Months starting April-September 2024 (could be readily extended if the community sees needs for this support longer-term)
A deposit of 30% of the fee is required to secure the dates and services. This is payable within 7 days of invoice. The balance will be invoiced at the agreed to monthly schedule of work.
Cancellation Policy – 50% of our fees may be incurred for cancellation 10 to 5 working days from the date of a significant portion of work (e.g. facilitated workshop, extended meeting or design session).
100% of our fees may be incurred for cancellation within 5 working days from the date of a significant piece of work.
Any non-refundable expenses such as travel and accommodation that have already been booked will be charged in full.
Travel (if applicable): Passed on at cost. We are also happy for your team to book any travel or accommodation directly. Efforts will be made to share travel expenses with other clients, and to use Zoom/Teams where appropriate.
One of the most difficult activities in qualitative research is participant recruitment. We will require help from the leadership of AstroPy to frame invitations for participation in surveys and interviews and identify the best platform for sending them (e.g., email, Slack, forums).
Much of the proposed work requires AstroPy representatives to make time available to the consultants. For the effort to be successful, we’ll need all participating parties to prioritize the outlined efforts during the 6-month activity window. We have a track record of working well with the Astropy team, but this doesn't mean unforseeable challenges can't arise in the future. The Org Mycology team will work to communicate and share any challenges with the Astropy CoCo and Finance Committee that might arise.
This contract will run through Whale Bytes Ltd, a NZ Company (8241165) trading as Organizational Mycology NZ.
Pay by wire or ACH to: Account holder: WHALE BYTES LIMITED ACH and Wire routing number: 0840095191 Account number: 9600004770793612 Account type: Checking Bank Address 30 W. 26th Street, Sixth Floor New York NY 10010 United States
Agreed to By
Start date: April___ , 2024
Jonah M Duckles Date
AstroPy Representative Date
