Welcome Aboard: Start Here

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Home » Field Guide » Orienting » Welcome Aboard: Start Here

Thanks for offering to help us out!

We can start building more accessible, care-centered communities now. We can combat ableism now. We can lay the groundwork for a world that works better for all of us.

Putting care—not just care work, but care—at the center of our economy, our politics, is to orient ourselves around our interdependence.

We use prosocial principles to build community on trusted relationships and a strong understanding of purpose. Our induction and on-boarding process happens over weeks and months of working with and getting to know each other. This way we develop mutual understanding and values fit.

Our values are expressed all over our website, particularly in our “love and care” collection, which we ask all volunteers to read. Audio is available for ear readers on each page.

Let’s organize our lives around love and care.

Mission

We exist for the direct support and mutual aid of neurodivergent and disabled people.

We serve our loved people so we can keep on living through the onslaught.

Creed

I center the marginalized and the different. I center edge cases, because edge cases are stress cases and design is tested at the edges. I center neurodivergent and disabled experience in service to all bodyminds.

A disembodied arm with blue skin and a self-care tattoo flashes the sign of the horns

Covenant

We pledge to act and interact in ways that contribute to an open, welcoming, diverse, inclusive, and healthy community.

Two human side silhouette positioned Face to face overlaid with various semi-transparent line connected circular (network node) shapes.

Philosophy

We steer by these acquired phrases. They are compasses and stars that align us on our mission.

Rainbow woven cloth evoking our diversity and interdependence

Interdependence

It is time to celebrate our interdependence. Interdependence acknowledges that our survival is bound up together, that we are interconnected and what you do impacts others. Interdependence is the only way out of most of the most pressing issues we face today.

The many forms of difference. Adaptive Behavior Assessment (ABAS-3), Adult ADHD Self-report Scale (ASRS-v1.1), and Behavior Rating Inventory Executive Function (BRIEF 2) forms spread across a wooden table

Edges

Our designs, our societies, and the boundaries of our compassion are tested at the edges, where the truths told are of bias, inequality, injustice, and thoughtlessness.

Let's organize our lives around love and care
Let's write each other letters and call it prayer
Let's congregate in the place that isn't anywhere
At the temple of broken dreams

First, the Volunteers Room

We use Element.io for team chat. We have our own server and space. We start by inviting you into our Volunteers room and then into the team room related to your volunteer work. All Stimpunks agree to abide by our contributor covenant while in Stimpunks Space.

Next Steps:

Minors and their families have the option of getting Element/Matrix accounts on our private server. In these situations, we will create the account for you and send you log in credentials.

Next Steps for minors/families (do not follow these steps if you did the steps above):

  • Consult the field guide page for Element.io.
  • Log in at https://stimpunks.ems.host with the username and password sent to you.
  • Accept the invites to the Rooms that are waiting for you.
  • When logging in to the Element app, you must specify the host as stimpunks.ems.host or use “@username:stimpunks.ems.host” where username is the username you were sent.

Further Access

After working together for awhile, you gain access to all of our rooms except a few kept limited due to legal and privacy reasons. We’ll also onboard you into other parts of our software stack depending on your role.

Progressive, Project-Based Onboarding

Our communication stack is based on the one we helped develop at WordPress.org and Automattic.com. Stimpunks augments it with the vocabulary of neurodiversity and contemporary progressive education.

Communication

When onboarding new contributors into our communication stack and community, we borrow heavily from prosocial models and the NeurodiVenture model.

Prosocial
NeurodiVenture

Part of those models is an onboarding process that involves collaboration over time.

An intensive 12-month induction and on-boarding process
☞ a foundation for mutual understanding

The Beauty of Collaboration at Human Scale: Timeless patterns of human limitations

At Automattic, we developed a project-based hiring process that also features working with someone over time to build a foundation of mutual understanding.

All positions at Automattic involve a paid trial in the application process, which is a short project or set of tasks that will be assessed by our hiring teams. We’ve found that the best way to evaluate working with someone is to do just that!

Trial projects vary depending on the role you are applying for, but they are based on very real areas of work within our teams.

Depending on the role you are interested in and the time you’re able to commit, the trial can last anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks. Most candidates complete the trial while working full-time and we know life is busy! Because of this, we encourage all candidates to determine their own working hours and schedule during this project.

How We Hire – Automattic

As such, we onboard volunteers progressively into our systems as we work together. We believe strongly in “default-to-open”.

Default to Open

But we don’t give volunteers the keys to everything immediately. We work with you over time, get to know each other, and then let you into everything except a few rooms that must be private for legal/regulatory reasons and to preserve your privacy when reporting and discussing Human Resources/Covenant/Code of Conduct type stuff.

That time is usually a few months if you’re a regular contributor. If you’re an occasional contributor, that’s cool, but it’ll take longer to get to know each other.

So, if you don’t have access to our General P2 or certain rooms in Element, that’s why. Our organization is fairly wide open on our General P2, and we want to get to know you first before exposing those bits of our selves.

We also have a commitment to “bring safety to the serendipity” of online collaboration, especially for the minors in our community and for the folks who have been taken advantage of online because of their disabilities.

🌎 Online: Bringing Safety to the Serendipity

Thanks

Thanks for being part of our community and competency network.

Everyone can contribute.