Wiki | Lisbon Data Science Academy logo Wiki | Lisbon Data Science Academy

Volunteers

Volunteer Onboarding

Welcome to the official Volunteer Onboarding page which is meant to be your main reference point at the LDSA.

What’s in this page:


Onboarding checklist

Stage 1

When members join the Academy, they usually have a lot of questions. This is why we organise Onboarding Sessions to welcome new members and answer their questions. This is also a great opportunity to meet the team and get to know each other. Although the Onboarding is not mandatory, we strongly recommend that you attend it. Contact the Community AOR for more information on this.

To finish the first stage of the onboarding process, you need to complete the following steps:

  1. ⬜️ Complete one task with the Academy (e.g. help with an SLU, help contacting partners, etc.)

  2. ⬜️ Participate in one sync meeting with the Academy (e.g. Weekly sync meeting, AOR meeting, etc.)

At the end of this stage, the candidate should already have enough information to know if they want to join the Academy or not. If they do, they should move on to the next stage. With the checklist complete, please inform the Community AOR that you’re ready to move on to the next stage.

Stage 2

This is when you will be officially onboarded as a volunteer. Make sure you check all items on the checklist below before anything else. If you need help, ask anyone of the existing member directory.

  1. ⬜️ Read and agree to our code of conduct

  2. ⬜️ Have access to the Leaders of LDSAcademy Slack workspace and other relevant workspaces (e.g. Community, Teaching, etc.)

  3. ⬜️ Have a staff Google Account (@lisbondatascience.org)

  4. ⬜️ Have access to the shared LDSA Google Drive with all the relevant folders

  5. ⬜️ Fill up the Volunteer Onboarding Form

  6. ⬜️ Subscribe to Google calendars (after logging in with your new staff account, ask a member of the community team for the links)

    Note: To add the calendars, (1) make sure you’re logged in to your @lisbondatascience.org account on Google, (2) click on each of the calendar links and click the button at the right-bottom of each calendar’s webpage.

  7. ⬜️ Ask a member of the dev-ops team to add your GitHub handle (username) to the organization’s GitHub (if not added yet)

  8. ⬜️ Go to #introductions in Slack and Introduce yourself! 😀

If you are going to be an AOR Primary Enabler (the lead of an AOR) you also need to sign the LDSA Primary Enabler Agreement.

You’re now official part of the team!

Finding stuff

We have three main places where important reference material is stored. In no way should Slack be a place where you go to find important stuff.

This wiki

This wiki is where we write and keep simple things that need to be distributed as a web page and easily viewable in a browser without the need to login or authenticate anywhere. Examples of this would be this onboarding document or the Starters Academy course description.

There are three main ways to find things on this wiki:

  1. Go here and use the sidebar at the top left of the page as a regular search;
  2. Browse the sidebar and visually scan for what you need;
  3. Use CTRL-F in your browser and look at the results on the sidebar.

Our Google Drive

When you log in Google with your @lisbondatascience.org staff account, if you navigate to Google Drive, you’ll see the LDSA folders under a Shared Drive called LDSA.

Things that should be stored in the Google Drive are for when a specific need arises and a wiki cannot support it. Examples are needing spreadsheets or needing to iterate on an early-stage idea using comments and assigned TODOs.

There are two main ways that you can find stuff in the google drive Index folder:

  1. Use the regular google drive search bar
  2. Browse the folder structure by using the dropdown arrows next to each folder name, starting from the LDSA folder itself.

GitHub

For any general question, feedback, etc., open an issue on the LDSSA/wiki, for anything related with notebook solutions and any other sensitive information that cannot be revealed to the students, please use the LDSSA/batch-instructors repo.

There are also repos specific to certain AORs, such as the Curriculum Development. If you’re working in QA, for example, you’ll be given access to specific repos where you should open work-related issues.

For any other thing however, do use the Wiki issues section.

Communication

Where?

  1. Use Slack for notifications and quick conversations that don’t need to last for more than 48 hours. Any information that is on Slack and is older than 48 hours should be considered unreliable. If it is important enough, it needs to be recorded somewhere else.
  2. Use GitHub issues for traceable discussions. If you need to make a big decision that everyone needs to be aware of and will span multiple days or weeks, it needs to exist as a GitHub issue. In genera it should go to the Wiki repo but, if the issue is specific to the current Batch or DS Prep Course editions, or to an AOR that has their own repo (e.g. Curriculum Development), you can use those repos issue section too. Notice that some repos are public and other private, so careful when opening an issue that might reveal exercise solutions or sensitive information. When QAing before the release of an SLU, for example, all issues should be opened in a private repo (usually something like <course-name>-instructors).

If it’s not a GitHub issue, it doesn’t exist. 🌳

How?

  1. Ask publicly if possible. More people will see the question and you have a better chance of getting a good answer.
  2. When choosing how and where to ask, try to guess what AOR is most likely to have an answer (hint: check the Member Directory) and ask in that slack channel or forum.

Here is a list of important things that you should definitely read and be familiar with regardless of your role in the organization.

  1. Our mission and values;
  2. Our code of conduct - If you’ve been accepted and gone through the checklist you already read and agreed to it;
  3. The Academy - Learn about the difference between the LDSA and LDSSA;
  4. The Starters Academy - Main reference for the format and what will be covered in the Starters Academy;
  5. The academy AORs- We divide responsibilities via things called Areas of Responsibility (AORs);
  6. Member Directory - Who is responsible for what.

Start guide for instructors

If you are coming on as an instructor, there’s some additional technical documentation that you’ll need to be aware of.

  1. The curriculum development repo - This is the source of truth for the curriculum that is being taught during the current batch. When you accept development of an LU, this dictates the topics that you must cover.
  2. batch4-instructors - The learning materials developed for LDSSA (Batch 4).
  3. ds-prep-course-instructors - The learning materials developed for DS Prep Course (2020).
  4. batch<edition-number>-instructors (only accessible to LDSA staff - you need to be logged in!) - This is the single source of truth for the learning material that will be deployed to students. You push to this repo, open PRs to start the QA process, and then via some CD will be sent to the students. Example: the repo for Batch 5 is batch5-instructors.
  5. batch<edition-number>-students (public) - This is is the single source of truth for the learning material from the perspective of the students. They are not aware of the existence of the instructors repo. Example: the repo for Batch 5, for students, is batch5-students.
  6. For the Prep Course, you have a similar structure of repos. One will be the ds-prep-course-instructors-<edition-year>, the student’s will be the ds-prep-course-<edition-year>.
  7. Refer to the Member Directory page to know who to contact for Curriculum, Teaching and QA AORs for the LDSA, as well as the specific AORs for the Prep Course.
  8. Learning Materials Development - < To be done. >
    • How does it work?
    • Setting Up
    • Developing Learning Notebooks
    • Developing Exercise Notebooks
    • Submitting Notebooks
    • Quality Assurance Process

Start guide for QAers [WIP]

< To be done. >