Looking at the current process here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/fedora-join/welcome/welcome/

I had some thoughts on ways to improve the onboarding experience and I have outlined them below. I've sanity checked this with some community members who liked it and encouraged me to submit this ticket ahead of the upcoming F2F as it may be a useful topic of discussion.

• The person looking to join makes a ticket/reaches out to a dedicated medium. This ticket/channel asks for their timezone, and based on this, a community member is assigned to be their onboarding buddy.
• The buddy answers the ticket, and between them they pick a time that works best for both parties to join a real time communication medium of their choice. A 2hr timeslot should be sufficient. (Jitsi, Matrix, etc).
• They can work through the vital onboarding pieces together, such as making a Fedora contributor account, welcome to Fedora intro ticket and showcasing the type of SIGs available to join and adding them to required chatrooms/tools.
• Once a SIG(s) have been picked, the buddy can update their ticket with any necessary requests for certain FAS User Groups.
• The new member can ask questions on their ticket and the buddy will answer them. (no limit).
• This buddy is responsible for checking in with the person each week for a total of 4 weeks to see if there is anything else they need. (45min slot for this, picked by both parties).
• If no replies in 4 weeks, or if the new member confirms they are up and running, this initial intro ticket is closed.
• Ticket transitions from “Intro” to “Retention”.
• Buddy checks in with the new person on the retention ticket once per month for 5 months, and/or responds to any questions posted there by the new member.
• 6 months from start to finish, the person is considered successfully onboarded.

Admin notes:

• Total dedicated time per buddy per new person is 5hrs over the first 4 weeks, and approx 10hrs in total over 6 months.
• Rotation of buddies per timezone can be set up after seeking volunteers.
• Badges to incentivise buddies; 1, 3, 5, 10, 25, 50 & 100 Contributors Onboarded.
• Potential priority for highly contributing buddies to be funded part or in full for community in person events.

An example of a ticket from the current process, that at least on public appearance, appears to be stalled/inactive can be found here: https://pagure.io/fedora-join/WelcomeToFedora/issue/44