Low participation in working groups in general

[VanCardui]

Source:

Town Hall #1, Thurs 6th June 2024

Problem:

A lot of workgroups started and faded away quite quickly. Maintaining a workgroup is a challenge. Attendance is low.

[VanCardui]

Current situation

• Attendance is low at some Working Groups
• Some working groups fade away soon after they have started.

How we want the current situation to change:

• ?

Who are the stakeholders?

-

Any previous attempts to address this problem?

Questions and possible approaches:

• Is it necessarily a problem if a Working Group fades away? or does this just mean that it wasn't wanted?
• Do working groups need to be big, or could some of them work with just a couople of people? If yes, how would we support that?
• What support to working groups need to sustain themselves?
• What is the process for setting up a working group, and might that be influencing the problem? How?

Ideas:

Measure:

[om-design]

participation over the long term very likely relates to feeling heard

any system that cannot field fresh faces will suffer from bias of the old faces

'feeling heard' isn't possible for TH until asynchronous mechanisms are in place

beware the working groups that exclude members for expediency's sake

[whitevo]

There is a fundamental a flaw where most of people Intersect do not get rewarded and are expected to contribute without financial incentives, which only leaves the ones who are very passionate but might burn out or those who don't need to manage their time to keep paying the bills.

[VanCardui]

In relation to om-design's comment above https://github.com/Catalyst-Swarm/Intersect-Town-Hall/issues/28#issuecomment-2316516316 - do we need to look at some kind of information-gathering about these kinds of issues?

This is probably outside the scope of the Swarm TH proposal. So - is there any way we could use TH itself to collect insights from the community about things like exclusions, not feeling heard, and the need for async mechanisms to enable people to feel heard?

[whitevo]

On Septembers Town Hall, 70% of 23 voters in Town Hall wanted to touch base on a question: What are the underlying reasons for low participation in Intersect's working groups?

One of the 6 recorded point that was brought out was Unclear Onboarding and Role Definition. Many potential participants do not understand where they fit in or how they can contribute, leading to confusion and lack of engagement. There is a need for clear guidelines on what tasks are available and how to get involved. This includes clarity on how tasks are assigned and what roles individuals can take up, even if they are not recognised formally.

You can find more info on Town Hall Summary here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZMvzYAD2SUM7ptg4bSusHaO-zOgHYpgOFs-DZyUIWNM/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.hgnme69mdzl9