Welcome Team BOF - 2017-08-08
Contact - Fabian Rodriguez (MagicFab) - http://debian.magicfab.ca
https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Welcome

* Some useful references:
** The New Member BoF
** Current "Welcome to Debian" page - https://wiki.debian.org/Welcome

Some context first

* How the team / wiki started
** I switched from Ubuntu on all my main systems
** I thought the Debian website, resources and tools would be only marginally more difficult than Ubuntu's Launchpad (!)
** I wanted to invite friends, family, colleagues and customers with 0 or very low tech background to try it
** Laura Arjona worked on the wiki pages after a BoF in a previous DebConf thinking it was abandoned/inactive
** We reorganized it so it would provide 2 landing pages -> Devs -> Users

* Current mission

To help other aspiring and beginner Debian users and contributors. 
(by definition including all Debian roles)

* Current goals review

Move to mission/edit:
** Make Debian more welcoming for the new users
** Make Debian more welcoming for aspiring contributors

** Guide them through the existing resources while improving them
** Help seasoned developers find new ways to contribute.
** Serve as liaison between newcomers and Teams (recommend ways of involvement, whom to talk to...)
** Gather all the existing experience about mentorship in several teams, and offer their guidelines/tricks to the whole community 

Also... grow the team! https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Welcome

Tasks lists ToDo

* What is the current Debian new user experience?
 - https://debian.org -> direct download link, no docs
 - Walls of text, lots of content
 - lots of delays involved by multiple people (from New Member BoF)
 - Lots of roles to understand: DPL? DM? AM? DD? "User"? "Member"? ToDo: Make/find graphic
 - When should one apply to be a Maintainer or Member? For Maintainer...for Members....(uploading/non-uploading)
 - How are contributions recognized?
 - What mailing list(s) should I join?
 - Have dev skills/packaging skills -> Where to start?
 - Local support and resources -> hard/outdated (mailing lists/IRC) -> Jabber? Web-based chat/social network? Presence in other networks? AskDebian marginally active/obsolete now.
 
 * Thoughts:
- Hard to "join the community"
- Making the "Welcome" page an official landing page
- Grow the team! Specially with DDs, AMs.
- Easier/faster work recognition -  important to speedup NM process for example, when a body of work in Debian needs review (not necessarily dev work)
- Create more data sources for contributors.debian.org. For example, translators are shown in the website,
but not credited in contributors.d.o!! adrianorg created a script to fix that, but I have no skills to review, and few time... Similar thing happens with other possible "data sources" so more different
type of contributions are credited in contributors.debian.org
- I *think* that having your name in https://contributors.debian.org is something very motivating,
but you need alioth account, SSO, login in contributors website, and unhide the contributions. Maybe
too difficult for newcomers
- Another thought: Short videos help (for example, show how to make the process alioth > sso > unhide contributions as I explained in the former paragraph), but in Debian there is no "good" place to store videos, maybe we could setup a blog similar to bits.debian.org and embed there the videos (no idea if 
it's easy in pelican), or maybe in wiki.debian.org... (no idea if it's the "correct" place and if moinmoin
allows it...). Well maybe I (larjona) am a bit enthusiastic about videos now because I managed yesterday
to record a screencast with not much hassle :)
(we're reading you)

Debian is not necessarily about package maintenance, for example there are some very active members in this list: https://nm.debian.org/mia/uploaders

Another thought: I *think* (not sure) that we're maybe missing help people to jump from users to contributors.
For example, I'm not subscribed to debian-user nor debian-user-spanish, too much traffic for me. 
I don't know if those lists are "good place" to redirect people finding their way into Debian as
a project, or are restricted to "user support" (for the OS).
We (welcome team) don't use any "permanent" channel (mailing list, forum...) just the wiki and irc.
(end of the thought)