The Turing Way community is distributed around the world. Our members are from diverse backgrounds, have different skills and interests, work many different jobs, and contribute to this project for a great variety of reasons. They are also, for the most part, unpaid to contribute to this open source project.
To bring the community together, The Turing Way has a variety of different community calls organised throughout the year. These calls may vary from collaboration and working calls to organisational meetings, to public share-outs that demonstrate transparency, to a mixture of all of the above. Due to the international nature of the project, these calls are generally organised online using a platform such as Zoom.
On each page of this subchapter, you can learn more about each type of community call, which are roughly organised into four types: community coworking calls, organising and governance calls, onboarding and welcoming calls, and public celebration calls.
It is important to note that not all of our community calls fit neatly into one category over another. Some may mix practices and purposes (for example coworking as well as celebrations), while others may have a specific purpose (such as decision-making). All are meant to demonstrate our principles of being an open and transparent community.
Because of their scope and size, the Book Dash and Fireside Chat series are documented separately. However, those calls overlap with many of the principles and practices shared in this community call chapter.
1. Coworking calls¶
Weekly Coworking and Collaboration Cafe are coworking calls, open for members working across Community Level and Maintenance Level initiatives within The Turing Way.
The concept of coworking is generally associated with the practice of sharing physical office space with different people who work independently such as remote employees or freelancers. This allows people, who otherwise may feel isolated while working alone at home, to use traditional office setups, create a work routine, and build a sense of companionship with others who they share their office spaces with.
We bring the practice of coworking to The Turing Way using online coworking calls, through which we intend to develop a sense of energy and inspiration similar to in-person interactions but without the time and travel commitments.
Our coworking calls provide opportunities for community members to allocate time to their desired tasks in The Turing Way and get them done, partially or fully, with the support of others in the call who can help discuss their plans, share ideas or hold accountability.
2. Governance-Related Calls¶
Community Forums are our public-facing calls to share updates from across different levels of governance in The Turing Way.
Modelled off a political town hall event, these online sessions are an opportunity to better understand activities across the project and how decisions are made. These calls are a mix of celebration, feedback, and opportunities to build connections with other organisations and initiatives around the world.
Collaborative notes, capturing feedback and highlights are archived on the governance GitHub repository.
3. Onboarding and Welcoming calls¶
Onboarding Calls allows experienced members of our community to offer beginner-friendly spaces for new members of our community.
Members, who may not have previous experience engaging with The Turing Way or any open science projects, may find it hard to navigate different aspects of the projects. Community dynamics, especially for folks who know each other and work well together, can make it intimidating for folks who are still figuring out what part of the project and community is the right fit for them.
Onboarding and welcoming calls are, therefore, organised for beginnings and newcomers to the project in mind. These calls include a general introduction to The Turing Way, the use of GitHub and different resources that can provide good starting points for those starting off with their journey with us.
We had on a few occasions started and paused Office Hours (now retired), which aimed to provide consistent time each week for anyone to join an open call and speak with our Research Community Manager. These calls are not as popular as our Collaboration Cafés and onboarding calls, hence, discontinued after a few attempts to engage with new members.
4. Community Share-Out and Celebration calls¶
Community Share-Outs and Celebration calls are designed for openly sharing and celebrating the contributions of members, such as through Book Dash events. This is particularly organised at the end of Book Dash, where community members working on specific projects like chapter additions, editing existing chapters, infrastructure maintenance, documenting access-related practices, and translating a chapter share with the broader community what they have worked on and where they are inviting help.
In the Collaboration Cafes, there is generally time reserved at the end of the call to share discussions from the two-hour coworking session.
The Community Forums also hold space for celebrating the ongoing work or progress of Working Groups and sharing their work out to other achievements of our community members with the wider public and community.
Resources¶
We want to make collaborative events like these as useful as possible for as many people as possible. Please let the team members know if there are other ways we can make these calls more welcoming and helpful for you.
More templates related to Community Calls are provided in the community template collection.
Joining Community Calls in Low-Bandwidth Environments¶
We understand that accessing online community calls can be challenging for individuals in low-bandwidth environments.
Here are some tips and alternatives for joining our calls:
Using Zoom App: If you’re experiencing low bandwidth on your computer (which could be due to high usage by multiple devices, and/or slow network speeds), turn off your camera, ask the host to ask others to turn off their cameras (especially when you are speaking) or consider joining the call using the Zoom mobile app on your smartphone. The app may provide better connectivity and audio quality.
Calling In: Zoom allows participants to join calls via phone call, which can be a viable option for those with limited internet access. Check the meeting details for dial-in numbers and access codes.
Reducing Video Quality: If video is not essential for your participation, consider disabling your video feed during the call to conserve bandwidth. You can still actively engage in discussions via audio and text chat.
For more information on how to join Zoom calls see the zoom support documentation.
We are committed to ensuring that our community calls are accessible to all members. If you have any specific accessibility needs or suggestions, please reach out to us so we can accommodate them.
For more information on our access-related practices as a community, please visit our Community Handbook.