Welcome to the official blog of the community/outreach team for the WordPress open source project!
This team oversees official events, mentorship programs, diversity initiatives, contributor outreach, and other ways of growing our community.
If you love WordPress and want to help us do these things, join in!
Getting Involved
We use this blog for policy debates, project announcements, and status reports. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to comment on posts and join the discussion.
You can learn about our current activities on the Team Projects page. These projects are suitable for everyone from newcomers to WordPress community elders.
You can use our contact form to volunteer for one of our projects.
We also have regular Community Team meetings on the first and third Thursdays of every month at 11:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC in #community-team on Slack (same agenda).
Following previous discussions on WordCamp camera kits, an immediate action item is to identify equipment that might better meet our needs. There are a number of reasons to update our kits:
The current kits are older, and record in MTS. It would be easier for WordCamp A/V wranglers to handle files that are recorded as MP4s.
It is difficult to get good audio – a key element for recorded WordCamp sessions! – on the current kit. Newer equipment may do a better job of this.
Our kits are unable to connect to more modern venues.
Despite online tutorials, the kits themselves are not as intuitive to set up and use, especially for new WordCamp A/V wranglers.
Keeping in mind that durability, ease of use, quality, and expense are deciding factors, we’d like your recommendations on video and audio recording equipment!
What equipment have you used in the past that worked well? Have you heard of equipment with rave reviews? What do you think would be the best fit for WordCamps?
Helpful information to include in your recommendation would be cost, objective data on ease of use, recording format, and any other information that we can use to clearly compare recommendations. Links to reviews and/or the product itself would be additionally helpful!
Please share your thoughts by Thursday, January 31, 2019.
Hello to all our Deputies, WordCamp organizers, Meetup 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 Slack and ask for help!
Welcome to another meetup organizer newsletter full of news, information and inspiration for your local meetup. This is our first newsletter for the year 2019.
Newsletter contents:
The Annual Meetup Survey for Organizers
Event Format: A spreadsheet of ideas
Diversity Outreach Speaker Training Workshops
The Annual Meetup Survey for Organizers
As announced last month, we changed the schedule slightly and will be sending the Annual meetup survey in January. These are surveys we send out to all members help us get feedback on the meetup program, which can help us on improving things. So more members sharing their views is actually better.
Along with our member survey, we are also sending the Annual Organizer Meetup Survey – which can be accessed at
Please help us improve our support of meetup organizers all over the world by taking 10 minutes to fill out the organizer survey! 🙂
Event Format: A spreadsheet of ideas
During WCUS Contributor day, one of the projects was to search through meetup.com for interesting / unusual meetups event formats and topics that could be recommended in future meetup organizer newsletters, like this one. Now we have a whole spreadsheet of ideas to pick from.
It would be useful resource to go through and use as a reference, for organizers who are planning meetups in their cities.
Diversity Outreach Speaker Training Workshops
The meetups who have been running the diversity outreach speaker training workshop to get more women and other underrepresented groups to start speaking at their meetups and WordCamps have been having encouraging results.
Many of the WordCamps achieved 50% or more women speakers in less than a year.
The Diversity Outreach Speaker Training Workshops will be at the following timings:
Our bi-monthly Community Team chat is happening this Thursday, 17 January 2019. Meeting times are detailed below. We use the same agenda for both meetings in order to include all time zones.
Have you ever wanted to have an event for kids in your community but were not sure where to start? I have been there too.
Did you know that there’s a solution for this? There’s no one perfect solution, but a group of people with experience planning kids events want to share this information with you: from events within your WordCamp to stand-alone kids events.
Our goal is to help prepare others for the creation and implementation of these amazing programs. Through lesson plans, schedules, and teaching methods, together we can create a path for anyone that wants to teach kids the value of a blog.
Where do you come in?
We’d like to form a working group of passionate individuals that want to help further the growth of kids events through the creation of documentation, lesson plans, projects, and resources to help guide and direct those who have little to no expertise or knowledge about educating kids. This material can then be distributed to anyone who wants to start these programs in their communities. Because planning events for kids can pose unique challenges, we want to create and maintain helpful and accurate documentation, so that any WordPress community organizer can plan a safe, fun, and effective event for kids.
Interested in joining this Kids Event working group? Together we will: (each item is optional)
Create a Process for Documentation
Create KidsCamp Documentation
Create Kids Workshop Documentation
Create Kids Club Documentation
Create Volunteer Guides
Create Legal Document Repo
Create Supplies List with Amazon Smile Links (to benefit WordPress Foundation)
Create a Guide for Marketing Kids Events to Schools
Currently this effort is being mostly lead by myself and a few others, but the goal is to recruit a group to take long-term leadership in achieving the above goals. I’m available to spend about 1 year training folks and then hope to pass this on, though that is flexible. Even after that time, I will always be available to answer questions and provide support.
Estimated time commitment:
A bi-weekly group chat: 30 minutes every 2 weeks
1 or more hours per month contributing to the above goals (writing documentation, working on the legal document repo, creating a supplies list, etc)
If you’d like to take part in this working group please comment on this post. I will then reach out to interested folks, to find a good time for biweekly meetings. Other people can join in any time after that as well. If you have questions, please also feel free to comment on the post. I look forward to working with you and together creating something wonderful!
Hello to all our Deputies, WordCamp organizers, Meetup 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 Slack and ask for help!
Please note that these reports are based on data from the Meetup Tracker tool, that was released in October 2018, so they will be useful only for the applications that have a change in their status after this time.
You can see a list of all available reports for WordCamps and Meetups here:
Start talking about the new year goals a little bit – with more in depth discussions in the upcoming weekend Zoom call.
Cover some of the small details that are next for us to tackle
Talk about supporting you to run the diversity speakers workshop in your own city
New Members
I’m thrilled that with the new year, we have a number of folks joining or returning to the group. It’s a great way to start off the year. And with our new focuses for the year, it’s great to have more joining.
And we get that it’s volunteer. People come and go. Do what you need to do. We are glad for any help that we get, no matter how big or small.
To help you get oriented, we have a post explaining what we’ve done so far and where were at at the end of 2018:
In 2019 we have new goals, but this is still a great start, as the end goal in that doc is where I’d like you to start: considering running the workshop in your city. More in that in a bit.
Also! This is new: We have a new, quick questionnaire for new folks to fill out so I can get to know you and help me direct what you’re doing in the team so that it’s fulfilling for you. I’d also like to get all current members to fill it out too, please!
The first thing I would like all folks in the team to do, new and old, is to consider running our speaker training / diversity outreach workshop in your local city.
Before starting to ask people to do this last year, folks were feeling lost on what we are about. Doing the workshop helps you understand it intimately. After that, folks started being able to think through more, make decisions within the team, and jump in where needed.
And then some may be interested in going on to be Trainers in our team to help Meetups around the world run theirs.
Any obstacles you may encounter to running it will likely be things you’ll be helping Meetups overcome, so it’s a great practice and training ground.
You’re welcome to either just pick up the material and run it: http://diversespeakers.info
Or join one of our trainings. In fact, @angelasjin is running one tomorrow that you could attend. This is our sign up form to let us know you’d like to run a workshop with or without training, and also let us know if you would like training:
http://tiny.cc/wpwomenspeak
It’s just suggested. You can of course participate in our team without having run it. Only a few have run it so far. Though most have attended a training, and even just that in itself helped them understand more of what we’re doing and helped them be able to participate more.
angelasjin: I don’t have anyone signed up for the session tomorrow yet, so I’d love for you to join!
@jillbinder: They are currently 2 hours, though one of our goals for this year is to shorten them. It’s a 1h and 20m recording, and then time before to connect with the participants and set them up, and time afterwards to answer questions and help them get the resources they need.
If you don’t have all that time, I can also just give you the script that includes the recordings and what we say before and after. That is also something that we offer to participants if they don’t have the time as well. (Or can’t attend for any reason.)
@jamieschmid: So as a trainer, you play a recording during the meetup and do in person interaction before and after?
@jillbinder: Yes! In person being on a webcam call, as we are training folks all over the world. We also prompt them to participate in the recording in the Zoom text chat window. As in the recording there are exercises that the recorded people are following, and we like the participants to be doing them as well.
@jamieschmid: That’s sort of confusing. Perhaps we can come up with a better name for the train-the-trainers people and sessions. Or vice versa.
@jillbinder: I would like that! There are a number of things I’d like us to look at renaming this year. I’ll mention them later in the meeting.
Reports (what people have been working on)
@miriamgoldman I have a training on the 27th if people can’t make @angelasjin tomorrow. Also trying to prod my team here in Ottawa to kick off WordCamp planning, so I can actually plan to run the workshop here! Oh yes, I applied to WCEU, WordCamp Calgary, and WC Nordic – and our team will be heavily mentioned if accepted.
@angelasjin This morning, I sent out a number of emails to see if anyone wants to join the training session tomorrow. I’ll keep an eye on the queue and will follow up if needed.
@cguntur Not much except keeping an eye on HelpScout.
@jillbinder: I applied to WCEU as well. It would be great if we both get in and talk about our work!
@newyorkerlaura: I also applied at EU, not on a diversity talk.
@newyorklaura: I don’t want to step on @simo70’s toes, but was wondering if there would be any need for practical help during the workshop whether is was handing things out or whatever.
@jamieschmid: I’m doing a WP101 at WCPhoenix and I’ll mention our work.
@jillbinder: Thanks, @jamieschmid! We have a link to share with folks to learn about our workshop and sign up for the training: https://tiny.cc/wpwomenspeak
This Coming Year
The most active team members and I met late last year to talk about how we did in 2018 and what we’d like to do in 2019.
I’d like to share with you in depth what we discussed on a web cam call so we can have more organic discussions about it. We are choosing a time for this official kick off meeting for a Zoom call in the next two weekends. Please choose as many times as you can most likely make it. Please fill it out by 11:59pm Pacific time this Thursday, January 10.
I’ll give a preview now, planting the seeds before our call.
Getting set up so that by the end of 2020, 100 meetups a year are running the workshop
Scaling up our promotions so that more meetups hear about us
Scaling up our ability to support and train so many
Improving the Train the Trainers recording (content and video quality!)
Helping meetups who have run the workshop before do it again. They may have new folks running it who didn’t do it last year, or are coasting off of the success of year 1 and thus are less successful in year 2.
Maintaining our current work
Incorporating previous feedback and collecting new feedback
Making our processes clear! Seems like right now I’m the most clear of anyone and I’d like everyone to know what is going on. smiles
Getting a project management system in place so we all know who is doing what
So year 1 was a lot of getting things started. I let go of perfect in order to get things done.
This year we know more of what we’re doing and so it’s time to start improving. This year I’d like to:
keep our great momentum going
improve that which is really important to improve
help even more meetups
A couple of the first things I’ll want us to be looking at soon:
New name for our group. The current name is long and hard to say, and it is becoming increasingly important as I seek funding for leading the team to have something short and clear.
New hashtag for the group. We started focusing on women. We quickly expanded to all diversity, and never did figure out how to reflect that. Our current hashtag is #wpwomenspeak
@cguntur: Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend a weekend meeting in Jan. But, I would still love to help. I might be able to help with getting a project management system in place.
@jillbinder: Ok, thanks @cguntur! We’ll do our best to write up a good recap. If people on the call are ok with it, I may also record it.
Of note: I am in a business school right now working on how to take this diversity work further and make a bigger impact — and one of my classmates specializes in project management. He’s started helping me think through the needs of the team.
One detail that was previously requested:
We have a Google folder now!
And inside that folder is a document with links to where everything lives, as not all are google docs.
@jamieschmid: Can we create a google doc for brainstorming names?
@jillbinder: That’s a great idea. Would you be willing to get that started, @jamieschmid? (I’m not quite clear what that would look like, and it sounds like you have a clear picture of it.)
@jamieschmid: Yes. I’ll be adding a brainstorm doc to the drive folder/doc list so we can decide on a hashtag for Diversity Outreach-related discussion!
Productivity Help
I don’t know about you, but I was finding I was getting overwhelmed easily doing work, life, and this kind of volunteer work.
(Ok, I do know that some volunteers sometimes took on too much as well.)
A few months ago I started a new, simpler productivity system. Those in the team might have noticed that I suddenly got on the ball again and got a lot more done.
I just started sharing it in a Facebook group yesterday, and I’d love to support this team in “doing more by doing less” as well… So that we all stay centered while still accomplishing what we want to do in all areas…. So if you’re on FB and are interested in what I’m calling the The Simplify Productivity 2019 challenge, it’s over here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/thingdotdo
@jamieschmid: I LOVE the productivity idea! Joining.
Final Questions & Thoughts
@jamieschmid: Someone mentioned HelpScout. What is that and is it something we are using in this team?
@jillbinder: Good q, @jamieschmid! It’s the customer service emailing system that the Community Team (which we are a part of) uses. When meetups fill out the form on https://tiny.cc/wpwomenspeak they go into our Helpscout queue and we communicate with them there. One of the reasons for it is so that anyone on the team who has access can jump in and communicate with them. It also lets us keep track of who is Active, Closed, Dormant, waiting for training, been trained, etc. I request access from the Community Team for it on an as needed basis. So only a handful in our team are on it right now.
Don’t forget to fill out the doodle poll, all. Before the meeting today, this Saturday was winning for our Zoom call, and now the Saturday after is winning. There is still time to sway it.
Thanks everyone for being in the meeting today. Great energy. See you soon!
Next Actions
New members, read: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2018/05/16/diversity-speaker-outreach-training-group-on-boarding-summary/
All members and especially new members, fill out the Welcome Questionnaire: https://jill249.typeform.com/to/Ye0NIe
Fill out the doodle poll for deciding on the weekend’s meeting: https://doodle.com/poll/5a4fz6a5iebtcwuq
@jamieschmid starts up a google doc for brainstorming the name for the group, our new hashtag, and how we refer to the workshop and trainings.
