Corey McKrill 10:28 pm on August 23, 2019
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X-post: Feature and maintenance update for WordCamp.org: July 16 – August 23 2019 edition

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/meta: Feature and maintenance update for WordCamp.org: July 16 – August 23 2019 edition

Aditya Kane 2:00 pm on August 22, 2019
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WordPress meetup organizer newsletter: August 2019

Hello WordPress MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers!

Welcome to another meetup organizer newsletter full of news, information, and inspiration for your local meetup.

Newsletter contents:

  • Diverse Speaker Training Workshops
  • Organizer Best Practices: How to address panic
  • New event format from the Perth WordPress Meetup
  • Reminders

Diverse Speaker Training Workshops

As organizers, have you ever had challenges getting women and people from other underrepresented groups in tech to speak at your meetups and WordCamps?

Check out the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training workshop (#wpdiversity): https://make.wordpress.org/training/speaker-training

Check out their new Intro video (2 min) that explains what this workshop is all about!

This is now up on their page, along with:

  • A new description
  • Updated results
  • The new four step process for meetups to take to run the workshop

Check it out here: http://tiny.cc/wpdiversity

Upcoming training timings:
– Sept 4 at 11am-1pm UTC

Sign up at http://tiny.cc/wpdiversity

Organizer Best Practices: How to address panic

As an organizer of community events, you might run into situations when you need to address panic. This post on the WordPress Community blog, looks at important ways to recognize stressed behaviours and 4 steps to address panic.

There are also listed ways to get in touch with the WordPress Global Community Team, who are very likely to have through their combined experience, would be able to help you in the best ways possible.

This is part of the on-going Organizer Best Practices series of discussions on the WordPress Community team blog.

New event format from Perth WordPress Meetup

The Perth (Western Australia) meetup decided to change up the format of their regular meetup, and they have had some great feedback about it.

Based on the feedback they received, they found members who were developers found some talks not technical enough, and for members who were users they were sometimes too technical.

So for every topic they organizer a meetup around they added a second talk. Their format now is

– Technical Talk
– Networking
– User Talk
– Q & A with ‘the panel’

This is also a great example of using feedback from attendees to iterate on meetup formats.

Reminders

That’s it for now — chat with you next time!

Your friends on the Community Team

make.wordpress.org/community

#newsletter #meetup

Corey McKrill 10:01 pm on August 19, 2019  

WordCamp blocks are live!

After a round of beta testing, four of our WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. blocks are now available on all WordCamp.org sites!

The four blocks are:

  • Speakers
  • Sessions
  • Sponsors
  • Organizers

Each of these blocks is an enhanced replacement of a WordCamp shortcodeShortcode A shortcode is a placeholder used within a WordPress post, page, or widget to insert a form or function generated by a plugin in a specific location on your site.. Most of the same functionality is available in these new blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. forms, along with many new options, while the block editor UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. makes customization much easier than wrangling shortcode parameters.

Documentation for the new blocks can be found on the WordCamp Organizer Handbook.

Going forward, newly created WordCamp sites will use the blocks in their default content. Existing WordCamp sites will still use the shortcodes, however, so no sites should have broken layouts as a result of this change.

A fifth shortcode replacement block, for WordCamp schedules, is still in development. In addition to providing a block editor UI for customizing the output of a camp’s schedule, the new Schedule block will change the HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites. markup of the schedule to be CSS-grid-based instead of table-based. Stay tuned for more updates about this block.

Thanks to all the folks who worked to make these blocks happen: @coreymckrill, @vedjain, @iandunn, @ryelle, @melchoyce, @karmatosed, @andreamiddleton. Also thanks to everyone who gave us feedback during scoping and betaBeta A pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. testing!

Timi Wahalahti 1:41 pm on August 19, 2019
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X-post: Community team update – 15-08-2019

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/updates: Community team update – 15-08-2019

Aditya Kane 1:17 pm on August 19, 2019
Tags: , tools   

Proposal: Speaker feedback tool

In the past, the only ways we have gathered feedback from WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. attendees about a speaker session was to use a survey/poll or collect feedback at the event via paper forms.

There are a few problems with these approaches:

  1. Surveys are sent out after the event and therefore don’t usually have good response rates.
  2. The more time that has passed since an attendee has seen a session, the less detail they might remember, which makes the feedback less precise.
  3. The default survey does not collect very much detail about session content and presentation delivery.
  4. Feedback shared in hard copy isn’t easy to share with speakers (so they can grow their skills) or track (so the organizers can compare year to year).

This is a proposal that we build a special speaker-feedback tool to collect attendee feedback that solves those problems.

Goals of the tool:

  • Collect feedback for individual sessions during the event.
  • Provide easy access to feedback to the WordCamp organizers and speakers.

Where could it live?

  • The feedback tool could be accessed at an easy-to-remember URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org, like <year.cityname.wordcamp.org/feedback>
  • The schedule page could have a ‘Feedback’ button on each displayed session.

Possible requirements worth some discussion:

  1. Because anonymous feedback is more likely to include abuse, should the feedback tool require users to be logged in?
  2. Should there be an automated way to report abuse to the Community Team?
  3. Would it be helpful for organizers to be able to edit the text-based feedback, so as to remove abuse, slang terms, confusing content, and/or to correct spellings before sharing with speakers?
  4. Should there be a way for the feedback to be made public, and if so, should it show up anywhere other than in the comments on each individual Session?
  5. Should there be a way to export the feedback, and should feedback be included in a requested privacy export?

Feedback Formats

Feedback could be given in a few different ways – either on their own or as a combination:

Emojis

  • Pros: Simple, standardized way of showing how an attendee felt about a talk. Encourages positive feedback.
  • Cons: Could come at the expense if useful critical feedback.

Ratings

  • Pros: Can be provided quickly. Usually allows for more accurate sentiment toward speaker sessions.
  • Cons: Can be easily skewed either way. Lower ratings without proper feedback are not very useful.

Free text

  • Pros: Would encourage attendees to be more thoughtful. Should provide more actionable feedback for speakers.
  • Cons: Some attendees will not be willing to provide more lengthy feedback, or they may take a longer time to submit it.

Mockups

Here are some very early speculative mockups thanks to @karmatosed

Version One

Version Two

Possible Future Additions

  • Feedback content could be added as “testimonials” for sessions
  • Allow speakers to add feedback to their WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ profiles
  • Add feedback to WordPress.tv sessions
  • Recommend other talks to attend (or watch on WordPress.tv) after giving feedback

Questions and Feedback

  1. What formats of feedback should we provide (emojis, ratings, text, etc.)?
  2. Do we encourage only positive feedback?
  3. Should responders be logged into WordPress.org in order to leave feedback?

#proposal #tools


WordCamp.org 4:00 am on August 19, 2019
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Weekly Updates

Hello to all our Deputies, WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. organizers, MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. wranglers, and WordPress Community builders! You were probably hard at work this weekend. Tell us what you got accomplished in our #weekly-update!

Have you run into a roadblock with the stuff you’re working on? Head over to #community-events or #community-team in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. and ask for help!

Francesca Marano 12:29 am on August 19, 2019  

Handbook working group meeting recap – August 07, 2019

On August 7th 2019, the Handbook Working Group held its first meeting. Attendees: @lasacco @amyhall @francescodicandia @babssaul @OGlekler @webcommsat

What we discussed

We discussed the order of the tasks we need to perform. We lack a style guide for writing: this makes it hard to review the material because we don’t know what is the tone and voice we should use.

There is a Marketing guide: I pinged Andrea after the meeting and she said it’s a good starting point but the Community tone and voice is a bit different.

Because not all of us are writers we agreed to split in two parallel groups:

  • Style Guide
  • Initial Content Audit

The Style Guide Team

Will review the existing material and write a guide for the Community Team. Andrea is available to help. We will discuss how during next meeting.

Initial Content Audit Team

The people that are not experienced writers can start reviewing the existing materials and pinpoint things that don’t work very well:

  • dead links
  • repeated content
  • slang which might be unclear to non native English speakers
  • typos
  • missing content
  • etc…

Project Management

We will use a TrelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing. board to manage the tasks of the working group: https://trello.com/b/XMMXjqCA

We will meet once every two weeks, on Thursdays at 16:00 PM UTC, for now.

Content revision will be done in Google Docs: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ntH7cYdZc-YWc_se6hXm6S3x_x2lWrKb?usp=sharing

Next meeting

August 22 2019, at 16:00 UTC

We will split into groups and give ourselves goals for the third meeting, on September 05th

We need some team leads so we can make sure there is always someone around to help with meetings, coordination, etc…

Corey McKrill 1:36 am on August 17, 2019
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X-post: Next WordCamp.org ticket scrub on August 22nd, 2019

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/meta: Next WordCamp.org ticket scrub on August 22nd, 2019

Courtney P.K. 9:55 pm on August 15, 2019
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Advisory for wire transfers to Canada

If you are organizing or mentoring a camp in Canada, please take the below advisory into consideration when submitting vendor payments or reimbursements:

For Canadian clients paying U.S. Dollar Wires to beneficiary bank Toronto Dominion Bank (TD Bank) , the only valid SWIFT BIC code for beneficiary bank is TDOMCATTTOR. Any other BIC will be rejected by TD Bank and the wire will need to be recalled less correspondent bank fees. Please call your payees to confirm beneficiary bank details to avoid delays.

If you have any questions about this, please contact the Global Community Team, or ask in the in the #community-events channel in the WordPress.org Slack.

Feedback needed:

Should this advisory be added to the organizer handbook, in the sections about Vendor Payments and Reimbursements?

#payments, #wordcamps

Timi Wahalahti 5:48 am on August 15, 2019  

Discussion: How to handle conflict of interest situations

Recently, I realized that communtity organizers do sometimes face conflict of interest situations ,but the team does not really have clear guidelines about how to avoid them, nor best practices for when there is one.

To give an example of my idea about what kind of conflict of interest situation we might have: Digory is from Narnia. They are also Community Team Deputy, MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. and WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. organizer. Someone who has been working with Digory in previous WordCamp team, applies to have WordCamp Archenland (a city in Narnia). Digory notices the application and does the vetting for it.

Another example: Eustace works for Acme Inc., and is also a WordPress Meetup organizer in the city of Harfang. Now Acme Inc. would like to sponsor meetups in Harfang and pay for the delicious baked apples served to attendees.

Sometimes it is necessary that a person close to the situation (part of the local community, for example), is involved. But sometimes, that person might be just too close to the situation or to others who are involved or impacted.

I’d like us to have a discussion about few questions;

  1. What different kinds of conflict of interest situations we have now and what we might encounter in the future?
  2. How to work around those?
  3. Can we accept the conflict of interest in some situations?
  4. What would be the best approach to disclose situations where someone notices a conflict of interest?

This is a large topic, but very important considering the future of our growing Community program and how it will look. That’s why I’m asking everyone to take a good long time to think about the possible situations, consider them, and discuss in the comments.

Commenting will be open until September 9th, after which I will draft a proposal about handling conflict of interest situations, or publish a new blog post for further discussion.