Graphic Design/Web Design

Description: WordCamps and other events come with a lot of design work. There’s a city graphic for WC Central, a brand for the event itself that gets applied to the site, the shirt, the stickers, the badges, the signs, and everything else. Normally there are enough designers in a town that local designers can contribute, but in smaller communities sometimes that’s not possible. Help out these WordCamps and events by donating your talent and production skills to get them a great look and awesome swag.

Length of Project: Ongoing. Would like someone (or a small team) to take point on this to match up volunteer designers with WCs and other events who need design help, and then designers can pop in and help as needed.

Experience Required: Excellent graphic/web design skills. Access to appropriate software (photoshop/illustrator/gimp/inkscape/etc). Willingness to have a design point of view, but not put your own aesthetic above the needs of the local organizers you’re helping. In Project Runway terms, it doesn’t matter how good it looks if your client hates to wear it! 🙂

Speaker Mentorship Program

Description:WordCamps are a great opportunity to showcase local WordPress talent and help grow the next generation of rock stars. Often though, people can be super smart and talented and interesting, but terrible public speakers, causing the audience to drift, the message to be lost, and the speaker to get a bad post-event review. Or you can get someone with charisma but outdated or just plain incorrect information about their WordPress topic. This leads to organizers wanting to stock the pool with people they know are good speakers with accurate information, even if this means it drastically reduces the number of new speakers. How do we solve this? Free training, of course!

I’m envisioning a 4-prong approach. 1. General public speaking resources. Links to websites, books, videos. I’ve talked to Scott Berkun about helping out with doing something like short videos around this and he was interested/willing, so he’d be someone to talk to. We could also ask the WC speakers who consistently get good reviews. 2. Speaker “auditions” in meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook.. Make all potential WC speakers give a short talk to your meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. group before choosing speakers, and provide feedback. If not immediately local, do via skype or google hangout. 3. Pre-event review of talks. Require (and enforce) a dry run of talk with slides in person or via video 2 weeks before the event, so speaker feedback can be provided and a technical review of slides/code/facts can correct any innacurate information. 4. Buddy system! For first-time or similarly new speakers, match them up with an expert in the field of their talk to provide feedback and information that can be used in the talk.

Figure out what we should do along these (or other) lines to improve speaker quality and continue to encourage new speakers and grow local expertise. Draw up a proposal, and once we’ve agreed on how to proceed we can put together individual groups to work on each method.

Length of Project: 2-3 weeks to create proposal. After that, ongoing groups overseeing each method, preferably with volunteers who can commit to 3 months of active engagement.

Experience Required: Great public speaker, 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. speaker veteran, good writer, familiarity with online resources for public speakers.

New Meetup Starter Packs

Description:When someone starts a new WordPress meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. group, it can be a bit overwhelming. There are lots of little things that make those first few meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. easier, like table tents, signs, a clipboard with a sign-in-sheet, name badge stickers, etc. In addition, figuring out how to get interested people to join the group/come to meetups can add to the stress. We want to create New Meetup Starter Packs that we can send new organizers, so they basically get a meetup in a box.

Length of Project: Several phases to this one. Phase 1. ID the things that are handy to have when starting a new meetup group/running the first few meetups and make a list of supplies, signage, etc that we could provide new meetup organizers to make their ramp-up easier. Also, ID ways to publicize the meetup (coffeeshop and college bulletin boards, other related meetup groups, related local businesses, etc). Make a list of everything we should include in a starter kit to send new meetup organizers. Time commitment probably about 1-2 weeks. Phase 2: Create the materials needed and/or make purchases. Time commitment probably 2-3 weeks. Phase 3: Assemble and start sending out starter kits. Time commitment would be likely a concentrated effort for a couple of days, then an hour or two here and there moving forward as new people apply to become meetup organizers. Phase 3 ideally divided between volunteers in different physical locations (including international) to keep postage costs low.

Experience Required: Current organizer of active meetup group, preferably using meetup.com (or at least some of the 5 use meetup.com).

Multi-event Sponsorship Program

Description: Create a proposal for multi-event sponsorship program for WordCamps/MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook./other events.

There are many large companies (hosting providers, etc) that want to sponsor every 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., every WC above a certain size, WCs with more than x% developer attendees, meetups in developing markets, topic-specific events (theming workshops, hackathons, new user trainings, etc), you name it. Instead of having to reach out to each and every organizer, it would be easier for these companies to just give a 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. payment to the Foundation once a quarter and have it set up automatically. It sounds great, right? Start every event with a block of sponsorship money already in place? You’re right, it would be great!

That said, once you start looking at how to structure deals for this, potential issues become apparent pretty quickly, so it would be best if we structure this in a way that existing organizers can agree on, in terms of the pros and cons. Volunteering for this project would mean talking through the pros and cons in a group, and working on a proposal for how to structure overarching sponsorships so that everyone benefits.

Length of Project: This is a short term “subcommittee” type of project; it would be good to create a proposal within the next 2 weeks so we can get moving on a pilot progam to see how it works. I would expect volunteers to need a time commitment of a few hours a week for about a month to draft a proposal, run it by the group/me/Andrea/Matt, share it with a few potential sponsors for feedback, and turn it into sponsorship documentation for plan.wordcamp.org/meet.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/ (coming soon)/codex/etc.

Experience Required: Experience *managing the finances* of a sanctioned WP event (especially within the past year running finances through Foundation), ormanaging your company or employer’s financial sponsorship of events (of sanctioned WP events is great, but not required).

#multi-event-sponsorship

WordPress Event Type Inventory

Description:Create a list of all the types of WP-specific events we ought to be promoting/supporting (WordCamps, meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook., hackathons, new user training, theme workshops, devcamps, workalongs, help clinics, etc), identify what each type of event needs to be successful, and create prioritized list for each of how we can provide best support.

Length of Project: Short term. Coming up with this initial list is mostly a quick brainstorming and documentation exercise. Say maybe a week or two to complete this project, then after this is done, we can create groups to work on each individual event type.

Experience Required: True immersion in the WordPress community overall, not just one part of it. Addiction to WP community news, awareness of non-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. events.

Next Steps

It’s been great watching the dozens of responses on the first post come in — for all our occasional snarkiness or family squabbles, we really have an awesome community, so seeing how many are ready to pitch in and make it even better is truly inspiring.

So! What now? There are a BUNCH of things around events that need to happen. Many have been in planning stages for years, some since even before my time, and just need some talented people to commit some time to it. A problem we tend to have in the WordPress contributor community (and I’m one of the guiltiest) is being so excited about all the cool things we could do that we overextend ourselves and wind up not making progress as quickly as we could if we each focused on one project at a time. To that end, I’ll ask that of the many potential avenues of contribution I’m about to list as places you can volunteer to help, just pick one for now. Pick the one that has you the most excited, the one for which you think you have the most relevant experience, the one that you know you have the time and energy to make happen in a timely manner, whatever. Assignments to projects will not be permanent, and you can change where you contribute your energies at any time, of course. But for this opening salvo, if you can try to only volunteer for one thing (and to make it something that you’re willing to commit to through whatever milestone/timeframe is identified in the description post), that would be great.

Here we go with some of the first round of projects that can make a big difference to people who want to organize official WordPress events. For each thing, let’s start with a group of 5 volunteers to get it started, then open it up to general participation. If way more than 5 people volunteer for a particular project, Andrea will pick 5 of them to get it rolling (smaller group size = quicker conversations and faster progress getting to the open-to-all general participation stage with excitement/momentum still in place).

Projects for the Events Contributor Group

  • Multi-event sponsorship program for WordCamps/MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook./other sanctioned WPevents
  • Meetup.com transition and administration
  • New “MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. Starter Pack” creation
  • 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. templates
  • WordPress.tv event video management
  • Creation of speaker mentorship program
  • Event planning training materials
  • Review WordCamp guidelines on plan.wordcamp.org, identify any that are in need of revision
  • WordPress Event Organizers Handbook (a la coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. contrib handbook)
  • WordPress Event Type Inventory
  • meet.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//events
  • Graphic design/web design
  • New organizer mentorship program

I or Andrea will post on each of these projects today in separate posts (to keep track of comment/volunteer threads more easily), so for this particular post, try to keep comments specific to calling out projects you think should be represented on this list in the first round rather than the listed projects themselves (make those comments on the individual posts that will be published throughout the day today).

In the individual posts we’ll outline a description of the project, experience required to be in the initial volunteer group, and anticipated length of project/time commitment. You might want to wait to see all of them before volunteering for one. And remember that all of these projects will be open to anyone for contribution after a brief initial project kickoff by these smaller groups to get a plan or proposal in place, so if you’d rather not make a time commitment now you also can contribute more casually as each project moves into the general participation phase.