[group-organizers] Boulder Python's trello board submission process

[Frank Valcarcel]

Thanks, Ned. I've answered your questions below and added some details
about the system.

The submission page is not a Trello thing, or is it?
>

It's just a web form but the backend creates a Trello Card in our
Submissions Board's 'New' list. There is also some logic that creates a
webhook on the card so we can manage automations like sending emails to the
speaker and creating calendar events.


> What are the mechanics behind the scenes?
>

It's a Flask application and it uses Celery for background tasks like the
webhook management. It's up on GitHub
https://github.com/boulder-python/boulderpython.org/ and we have a RTD site
for it as well https://boulderpythonorg.readthedocs.io.

The Trello API integration is done with a fork of the Python library,
PyTrello.


> And what works well and doesn't work well about it?
>

So far we think it's worked well. We pushed to production before we were
feature complete so there are some pieces missing that we'd still like to
finish, but we're very happy with it.

The UX for the submission form could be improved and we'd like to add a
section for speakers to indicate available dates.

We made the decision not to include personal info (e.g. email address and
name) in the Trello cards, so the application still needs an admin area to
match a person with their submission - but we get around this with querying
our database for now.


> It seems to me that making the process public could help attract helpers,
> or hasn't it done that?


We've spoken about adding a public voting side but we're on the fence with
that as we fear it could be discouraging. From an organizational
perspective, it's been a huge improvement to our process! We used to manage
a Google Sheet which I frequently forgot to update, and we would often
forget the importance of coordinating with speakers when they're accepted
and closer to their dates. Now we can automate a lot of this so it happens
in one place.

Another benefit is the archival of talks. So if a member misses a MeetUp,
they'll know that the submission's Trello card will be moved to 'Archived'
and we'll update it with resources from the talk.

---

We'd love to make this project a foundation for other user groups, so this
conversation could be helpful for us to know what an MVP/boiler of it could
look like.

Thanks!

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*Frank Valcarcel*Cofounder, Director of Operations
www.cuttlesoft.com
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On Sat, May 19, 2018 at 7:58 AM, Ned Batchelder <ned at nedbatchelder.com>
wrote:

> Hey all, PyCon is always an energizing experience, so great to talk to
> tons of other organizers!  But it's impossible to finish all the
> conversations that get started.  This mailing list (Python Group
> Organizers) is usually nearly silent, but maybe this is the year
> conversations will continue here?
>
> One thing I heard about at PyCon that piqued my interest was using a
> public Trello board as the pipeline for user group presentations.  Boulder
> is doing it here: https://trello.com/b/wm8hatnW/submissions
>
> I've taken the liberty of including the Boulder Python people on this
> email to ask how the board has been working, and a bit about how it works.
> The submission page is not a Trello thing, or is it?  What are the
> mechanics behind the scenes?  And what works well and doesn't work well
> about it?  It seems to me that making the process public could help attract
> helpers, or hasn't it done that?
>
> Thanks, I'm looking forward to doing something like this in Boston.
>
> --Ned.
>
>
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