Being on a committee

Goal:

The goal: To contribute to the ongoing running of a sustainable GPN community by sharing the load that is required to prepare and execute running GPN events, while upskilling as a leader at GPN, working closely as a part of a team, and supporting the progress and longevity of the broader GPN community. 

Job Description:

Responsibilities:

• Completing tasks necessary to prepare for workshops, as described in the checklist, in a timely manner

• Communicating with other committee members and event lead about progress and blockers for tasks

• Helping prepare for tutor engagement and committee bonding events

• Help run and setup tutor engagement  and committee bonding events on the day, when available

• Supporting event lead on the day of GPN workshops, when available

• Keeping up to date with GPN processes and upskilling on any new tasks or new technologies recommended by GPN Australia leadership

• Attend meetings such as retros, health checks, kickoffs and ad-hoc planning, or communicate when not available and ensure you read the notes or actions after meetings.

• Collaborate with your squad members to plan, assign (within or outside of your squad) and execute tasks that are designated to your squad.

• Help out other squads when needed and when you have extra capacity

• Communicate changes to time commitments to event lead and committee members, if you are no longer able to be on the committee or have to reduce your capacity as a committee member, as soon as it is practical.

Time Commitment:

There are different squads within the committee, which have different time commitments. For example, the Event Resources squad has most of their tasks due within a week of the workshop date, while the Content squad has most of their work to do 5-6 weeks before the event date. There is some flexibility within the committee to choose which squad works best for your schedule. 

Below are some estimates of how much time you may spend on your work as a committee member, but factors such as the size of the node, size of the committee, upskilling time and involvement of the university partner, will impact the time you actually spend doing committee tasks.

• Event prep (starts 6 weeks in advance of the event date), 2-4 hours split by squad members (1-2 hours per person) per week.

• Weekly squad meeting, 30 minutes to an hour.

• Weekly squad update message (alternating between squad members), 15-30 minutes to write and send to event lead

• Post-event retro with the committee, an hour and a half meeting

• Pre-event kickoff with the committee, 30 minute meeting

• End of year health check, 90 minute meeting
  
  

Our goal is to have a sustainable committee where no one gets burnt out. So the committee make up is always an open discussion, if the workload is too big or grows as your node grows, we can always too look at expanding the number of people on the committee.

Skills to use/learn:

• Communication and teamwork:

  • Working with your squad members and communicating with them, as well as with other squads and the event lead

  • Making sure your communication is clear and prevents misunderstandings

  • Preventing and resolving conflict within your squad or general committee with the help of the event lead

  • Managing dependencies between your squad’s tasks and other squads.

  • Sharing feedback and ideas constructively with your squad, committee and event lead.
    
    

• Organisation:

  • Understanding the complex operations that happen behind the scenes at a GPN workshop and being part of the process that balances the skills, resources, and people that we have on hand to execute the best possible events that we can.

  • Coordinating with stakeholders and the community to increase our capacity as a node to deliver GPN workshops and community support.
    
    

• Leadership:

  • Having ownership and autonomy over your squads objectives 

  • Providing guidance to fellow committee members regarding your squads responsibilities/ areas of concern.

  • Upskilling new squad members on their assigned tasks. 

  • Providing guidance and instructions on the event day to tutors and other leads. 

  • Being a point of contact for volunteers and students throughout the event.
    
    

• Event management:

  • Working with existing procedures to efficiently prepare an event as a team.

  • Understanding and executing on the fine details required to bring together a large scale event involving volunteers, minors, partners, and sponsors. 

  • Revising procedures to improve the operations of the node.
     

• Systems:

  • Humanitix, to create events for students to sign up to, and send emails to signed-up students

  • Sender/Campaign monitor, to manage and use the mailing lists for students and volunteers.

  • Squarespace, to host the event links for on-the day and information about the node.

  • Google drive, to store the documents needed for organising and running the events

  • Microsoft Teams, to communicate within the committee

Meetings:

Pre-event kickoffs: To get the committee ready to start on the task list for the upcoming event, making sure that the squad assignments are clear and agreed to and sharing any important info about the event (e.g. what content is running). Runs 6 weeks before the event.

Post-event retros: To capture feedback from the committee on how the organising and running of the event went in order to improve processes within the committee. Event lead may take feedback to GPN Australia leadership as well. Runs within 2 weeks of the event.

End of year health check: To gather more high-level feedback from committee about ways of working throughout the year and preferences for committee members to change squads or sign up for new leadership roles (e.g. node liaison). Creating action items for how we can work better together to achieve our goals and start planning committee structure and assignments for next year (may include adding new committee members). Runs at the end of the year.

Squad meetings: To keep communication and collaboration open between squad members, so that they can effectively complete their tasks each week. This is a time to raise blockers or assign tasks for the upcoming week. Runs weekly in the lead up to events.

GPN Australia committee meetings: To have open lines of communication and visibility between the different nodes to share ideas, feedback and progress reports. This meeting is made of delegates from each node around Australia and the GPN/Tech Inc executive (LINK to hierarchy). When the Event lead(s) can’t make it to this event they may ask one or more committee members to step in and be a delegate to give the node update. Runs monthly

Communication:

The most important part of being on a committee is communicating. That is how we share the load, seek help, support others, and learn from each other. Each committee member has their own diverse experience of life and GPN, and this is how we can take advantage of that.

The Committee
No person or squad in the committee works in isolation, so many tasks depend on the tasks that happen in other squads. They all come together by the end to make a fantastic GPN event! To help this happen we need to:

• Communicate when tasks have been complete

• Communicate when tasks have been delayed or hit a blocker

• Ask for help, training, or support when you don’t understand something, don’t have the training/access yet to complete a task, or don’t have the capacity to do the tasks assigned to you personally or as a squad. 

Your Squad
Communicate with your squad members when you’re unsure about how to proceed with a task, do not have capacity to complete an assigned task before the due date or about any blockers. You should also update when a task is completed

The event lead
The event lead’s job is to make sure that the committee is unblocked and that tasks are getting done as needed. You should be communicating with the event lead via weekly updates, but if you need more support or if things are falling behind, they may reach out or you can invite them to an ad-hoc meeting or the weekly squad meeting to get some help.

Communication Methods/Platforms:

Microsoft Teams
The majority of our communication within the committee occurs on Microsoft Teams. Make sure you have it installed on your phone and set up your notifications. You can find how to do that here... 

• Committee Group Chat: This is set up for informal chats that can reach the whole committee easily and quickly. This is the perfect place for quick questions, whole-committee announcements or polls, asking for extra help/support, or fun content of interest to the committee (e.g. GPN-aligned meme content). 
  
  

• Committee and squad Teams teams: In the “Team” section of Teams you’ll have various team spaces set up to discuss different things. Each squad will have their own team space and there will be one for the GPN Committee as a whole.
  
  We will use the Committee Team to make our weekly status announcements so we can all stay in sync on what is complete, underway, blocked, or still to come. 
  
  Use your Squad Team to communicate without your squad. Your node leads will also drop in here from time to time with questions, to check in on progress, or to check in on you as a squad. Try to work in your squad area rather than private DMs so there is more visibility for other squads who may be reliant on your tasks to do their own. 

Email (on your @girlsprogramming.network email address):
As a GPN committee member you will receive your own GPN email. 

• You will receive a kickoff reminder email prior to each event. 

• You will receive sign in instructions for various GPN systems here (e.g. Humanitix).

• Your access to all GPN systems will be linked to this email (e.g. google drive)

• Invitations to meetings will be sent here.

• If you are sharing an email address with a volunteer, student, parent, sponsor or host partner, this should be the address used for all external GPN communications.

Communication tips:

• Communicate Early and Often!
  It is better to send out a message/email keeping people updated on the status of things, even if the full body of work you had hoped to communicate about is not complete.
  
  This is particularly relevant when you need people to action something that depends on you communicating with them. Not everyone is as involved in GPN as everyone else, not everyone checks their messages/emails exactly when you send them So always allow more time for your messages to get to people and for them to reply.
  
  

• Do things other people depend on first
  It’s nice to knock off tasks that are isolated to you, since they are often fast and easy to do (since you don’t need other people's input). But, anything anyone else depends on or needs to know about is a priority, and so is keeping them updated so they can action your messages and make progress on their own tasks.
  
  

• Right message, right place
  It feels bad to feel spammy, but working in a team people expect to hear from you. In fact, they need to hear from you.
  
  If you are posting clear concise messages in the correct channels people will love to hear from you and know that you are out there working towards the same overall goals as them!
  
  If things feel spammy because you are posting non-worky things, feel free to make extra channels to post your memes. 

The GPN Hierarchy:

This is the link to the page where we discuss the hierarchy of the GPN network in case you need to escalate any issue; Leaders at GPN