(contrib:during)=

# During the Contribution Period

The [Community Coordinator](comm-coord) can help you organise and facilitate
these activities if required.

(contrib:during:q&a)=

## Hold a Q&A session with Outreachy applicants

It has been really beneficial to run a Q&A session with the applicants during the
contribution period. This allows them to ask any clarifying questions they may
have about the projects and/or tasks, or about JupyterHub in general.

```{warning}
Previously, this meeting has been held in the traditional team meeting slot
(third Tuesday of the month), but this may be a bit late into the contribution
period to be really beneficial for the applicants. Consider holding it in the
first one or two weeks.
```

Preparing for and running this meeting involves:

- Distributing a HackMD (or other collaboratively edited document) where
  applicants can add their questions ahead of time, along with the date, time,
  and joining info for the meeting itself
  - We have used Gitter, Discourse, and Twitter to disseminate this info previously
- A day before the meeting, a mentor or the Community Coordinator should go
  through the document and curate the questions into broad topics
  - Applicants may repeat specific questions, or there may be a set of questions
    around a particular topic, and working this out beforehand can help
    structure the meeting and avoid repeating answers
- During the meeting, ensure there is a scribe to document answers from the
  mentors. These notes can then be used to form a Discourse post to point
  applicants to later on in the contribution period.
  - See the [Q&A from November 2022 on Discourse](https://discourse.jupyter.org/t/outreachy-internship-faq/16405)

(contrib:during:sync-up)=

## Hold a sync-up meeting

The mentors should sync-up around week 3 of the contribution period to assess
the current state of the applicant pool. Here are some example questions they
might consider during this sync-up:

- Is one project getting more contributions than another? Why? What can be done
  to encourage applicants over?
- Do any projects have a large amount of high quality applications? Is it worth
  [closing the project to new contributors](https://www.outreachy.org/docs/community/#discourage-new-applicants)?
- Are any of the microtasks proving too easy or difficult? Is there a need to
  create a new microtask?