Communication Templates

Workshop Invitation

Subject: ACROSS Workshop - [DATE] - [PLACEHOLDER] Invitation

You are invited to participate in the ACROSS Workshop we are holding at [PLACEHOLDER].

[INSERT: Why participant was selected, or other information as you require.]

The workshop will be held virtually over [PLATFORM].

We need confirmation from you that you are available to:

• actively participate (not just call in and listen) in the virtual workshop
• committed to attending the workshop about [TOPIC] on [DATE + TIME]

In order to accept this invitation and receive details for connecting to the workshop, we need you to respond to this email no later than [DATE - 3 days before the workshop].

Thank you again, and we look forward to working with you,

[YOUR NAMES]

Meeting Invite

Subject: ACROSS Workshop - [DATE] - [PLACEHOLDER] Meeting Details

Hello!

Thank you for agreeing to participate in the ACROSS Workshop!

As a reminder, we are holding these workshops to better understand the kinds of work that all of you do to support and sustain open source ecosystems. When we asked for volunteers, you indicated that you could attend and actively participate.

Some important information for this week’s workshop:

• your workshop about [TOPIC] is scheduled for [DATE + TIME]
• you can join the workshop through [PLATFORM]: [MEET LINK]
• you can preview the Slides with the workshop agenda and format: [SLIDES LINK]

You can view the best practices to partipating in this workshop at this link.

Thank you again, and we look forward to working with you,

[YOUR NAMES]

Thank you Email

Subject: ACROSS Workshop - Thank you for participating!

Hello!

Thank you for the time you’ve spent working through the ACROSS Workshop.

We are grateful for your participants, and would like to share the following:

• [Useful outcomes]
• [Any FYI action items]

[YOUR NAMES]

Notetaker Guidance

Subject: ACROSS Workshop - Notetaker Guidance

Thank you for agreeing to be a notetaker for an ACROSS Workshop! Your recorded observations will be critical to ensuring the success of ACROSS.

For the ease of participants, we will not be making recordings of any workshop, so it is your duty to ensure record keeping for the event.

Workshop plan:

• Please review the [ACROSS Workshop Playbook] before your workshop to understand the structure of the session that the Facilitator will drive.
• We have asked participants to speak slowly, avoid acronyms, and to listen to each other
  • If you are confused about any terms, be the person to say “Excuse me, I don’t understand what that term means”.

How to capture:

• Use a Google doc to ensure revisions are captured.
• Ensure you capture
  • Group participants and date
  • Details on the four sections of discussion
  • Details on the retrospective

What to capture:

• Discussions
  • These have been marked in the template per the agenda
• Retrospective discussion
  • This is paramount to ensure that future workshops can learn from the outcomes of earlier workshops, and can be adjusted if required.

What will be captured for you:

• Attendees & Affiliation
  • This was captured when participants volunteered. This is a collaborative effort, so assigning quotes/ideas to people is not required
• Each breakout group will be capturing their own notes.
  • When the groups collect back, ensure a copy of these notes have been gathered (probably their own Google docs, with revision history)

What not to capture:

• Any comment or note from a participant noted as “Off the record”, “In Confidence”, or otherwise flagged as being off the record.
• Your interpretation of what was said. We appreciate that you may have opinions on what was discussed, and if you wish to capture those, please do so in a way that is distinguishable from participants/transcript-like notes. We want to ensure that the source is captured, not the interpretation, as this may lead to lossy information.