HaCS - Community Impact Proposal

communities/hacs/community-impact-proposal.md

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+# Community Impact Proposal
+
+Conducted by [Pandelis Zembashis](http://github.com/pandelisz) for [HaCS](https://github.com/hacsbcu), April 2017
+
+## Summary of the Community's Needs
+
+### Assessment Feedback
+
+It would seem that we are on the right tracks as feedback was positive. We should continue this trend and document our plans in more detail in future to guarantee the longterm longevity of the community. Since our plans and discussions around the operation and management of the community are well considered they should be maintained.
+
+One point of feedback was to implement a code of conduct to maintain a healthy and welcoming atmosphere. I have noticed edge cases where when we meet in person for meetups and socials discussion can sometimes divulge into inappropriate discussions, a by product of being a primarily male society. If people were made aware of the existence and enforcement of a code of conduct then we could maintain an open and welcoming atmosphere.
+
+On the point of communication all our online communication and discussion occurs on Facebook. The committee currently communicate over Slack and we did try a group slack, however it was not active. This is echoed by Hack Sheffield and the ACSS. They also tried a community slack but it was found to be inactive and segregated the community to the slack users and the Facebook users.
+
+Finally we have tried to develop a welcoming and beginner friendly atmosphere of building and learning. However we seem to have alienated some beginners from our initial meetups earlier in the academic year and haven't done much _building_. It's mostly been learning. However the building has occurred plenty at hackathons, just not organically within our society. However we are being this trend changing and I have some proposals to improve this.
+
+
+## Your Proposal
+
+One of our main issues over the academic year has been maintaining interest over time. We managed to achieve some of our bigger goals this term such as running our own hackathon ( [Bull Hacks](https://bullhacks.io) :ox: ) to inspire our members to build. However some of our core goals remain and we'd like to continue to deliver and improve.
+
+### Documentation
+
+Our committee has considered and implemented many ideas. This is one of the strengths of our society. Of the members that are active, they are very passionate and this leads to many ideas and lots of hard work being put into the running of events and the admin of the society. It would be a shame for this work to be forgotten or the society to fizzle out of existence. In order to maintain the long term longevity of the community in whatever form it takes in the future:
+
+>I propose the documentation of our ideas, ideologies, processes and producers.
+
+This program serves as a catalyst to this as I have already produced a community assessment and now the community impact proposal. In essence I would like to put all our ideas and discussions to paper (or disk :floppy_disk: ). Many of our committee meetings have minutes attached to them so it would be a case of reading through all our old notes and documenting them in a more open fashion. Perhaps in its own repo.
+
+One step towards this has already been made as I have begun to create a [code of conduct](https://github.com/hacsbcu/conduct). It exists in its own repo and discussion around it can happen there. In extension to this I aim to have all this listed on pages on our website. Perhaps built from the repo source.
+
+This is loosely inspired by @mattburman [The longevity of a HackSoc](https://medium.com/hacksheffield/the-longevity-of-a-hacksoc-hackathon-society-4938fae20361)
+
+### Maintaining members
+
+Every year in September we gain a new cohort of first year students who attend the student union society fair. These first year students are excited to try new things, meet new people and make friends. Moving to university can be scary experience and joining a society is one of the ways to _fit in_ and rapidly make new friends and socialise.
+
+Because of this we receive upwards of 100 new signups to the group. The fact that we are a free society also contributes to this as there is 0 barrier to entry. However after the initial hype and excitement of joining university has disappeared we see reduced interaction at in person workshops and meetups. Our first social meetup the year is the most well attended. This is also echoed in lectures as the first lecture is the most well attended and then attendance drops off.
+
+We would like to therefore try harder to maintain the excitement and activity within the group. Im not quite sure how exactly we can go about doing that at this time, but I would like to look into it.
+
+> I propose we plan out our events up to a month in advance in order to be able to better market and promote our events to carry forward momentum from the first week of university.
+
+### Delivering our values
+
+One of our goals should always be to provide meaningful and valuable events and workshops to our members. Our community puts our *members* first. Everything we do should be for the benefit of our current and future members.
+
+We should aim to continue providing workshops, talks and socials for our members. Helping to increase their employability as well as providing them with a fun and safe social environment to interact in.
+
+Our values and goals include
+
+- Helping our members to become more employable
+- Helping our members to build
+- Helping our members to learn
+- Helping our members to make new friends
+
+In order to maintain these goals and values I propose
+
+> We continue to organise workshops and talks for our members. Introduce our members to more hackathons and organise trips to them. Facilitate a community of building and sharing to organically build projects in. Organise socials so that our members can interact face to face.
+
+In addition to the build point I'd like to make it easier for members to contribute directly to the society so for that reason
+
+> I propose we make our website more open and people can contribute to it and improve it.
+
+This is already the case and has happened quite organically. Our site exists on GitHub and one of our members has been maintaining it without even been asked. I'd like to improve this and make it easier for everyone to contribute to by outlining some build steps and hosting it properly and adding in some automation.
+
+### Summary of Goals
+
+- Document procedures, ideas, ideology of the community to ensure long term success.
+- Reduce the attrition rate of members over the academic year.
+- Expand beyond just CS students to include more Art/Media and Networking students.
+- Continue to provide value to our members by running events, workshops and socials
+
+
+## Your Proposal's Execution Plan
+
+### Documentation
+
+In order to document all our procedures, ideas etc, I will need to go through all our old notes from meetings. From those I can compile a list of useful ideas and discussions to pass down to each new society. I should also outline this procedure so that new communities can do the same at infinitum.
+
+### Maintaining members
+
+This one I don't have a definite plan for so for that reason, we'd have to sit down with the rest of the committee and outline some plans for how to combat this. One way may be to be more organised just to carry forward the momentum from the society fair.
+
+We should outline a plan for the first two months of the society with weekly workshops and socials so that our members can be active from day 1.
+
+### Encouraging more building
+
+I would like to make our own website a core part of encouraging building and contribution. It will be setup to be maintainable by the community. This can serve to ease people into working together on a project, defining plans and contributing to OSS.
+
+I will be setting up a build environment all based from the master branch on GitHub. With proper CI and testing that can be adjusted and maintained by anyone.
+
+This website will also serve as an extension to my documentation plan as the source for all these documents.
+
+
+### Delivering our values
+
+We should continue to organise meaningful workshops and talks. To define what is and isn't meaningful we should consult the community periodically to get feedback and then plan accordingly.
+
+We should also try to be more organised and plan ahead more so that we can better promote activities.
+
+## Planning for the Future
+
+### Success metrics
+
+#### Documentation
+
+Thoroughness of procedures and ideas
+
+**Review:** Start of next active committee (September 2017)
+
+#### Maintaining members
+
+Higher percentage of active members out of registered members from years passed.
+
+**Review:** End of each month starting in September 2017
+
+#### Encouraging more building
+
+Number of active contributors to website and number of projects started within the community
+
+**Review:** End of each month starting in September 2017
+
+#### Delivering our values
+
+Well planned calendar and HaCS members achieving highly at their placements and future jobs.
+
+**Review:** End of each month starting in September 2017
+
+
+### Iteration Frequency
+
+The committee should meet weekly for small decisions but the plan overall should get a small review every month. It is at the committees discretion what exact timing is