WordPress.tv Moderator Update: Week 5

Not much to report with regard to publishing 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. videos to the site. We have submissions in the queue for Phoenix, Nepal, and Vancouver, and will be publishing those shortly. For now, the biggest news to report is that we have new moderators to welcome to the fold. Big thanks to @blobaugh, @andrewmorris, and @theadityajain for stepping up, and we look forward to your contributions to the group. As a special prize you each receive a free copy of WordPress, as well as all the WordCamp videos you can watch! 🙂

We also had our first IRC 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. yesterday in the new #wordcamp channel, which at 2 hours long ran a bit over schedule, but was very spirited. Thanks to all who could make it! As we are a very distributed team, these kind of official 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. are difficult to organize, due to scheduling, time zones, etc. Our P2 remains the primary point of communication to us, but I’m also happy to announce that we will keep regular office hoursOffice Hours Defined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time. for anyone who wants to chat in real time. You’re guaranteed to find a moderator (probably me!) if you want to chat, talk business, share concerns, learn how to contribute, etc. Here’s the deets:

We have also expanded our efforts in documenting our processes as well as communicating quality standards to WordCamp organizers. These are works-in-progress so if you have anything to add (or correct) let yourself be heard in the comments under each doc.

#wordpress-tv, #wordpress-tv-event-video-management

Reorganizing Documents

Hi all, I was starting to get a little confused about some of the stuff we started for best practices and wishlists, so I have moved the information into a couple of new documents which are more focused and hopefully a bit easier to work on as we move forward:

Please take a look at these, and feel free to add your thoughts in the comments.  Let’s all work to make WordCamp videos as awesome as possible!  🙂

EDIT: You will also note that the links in the sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. have been updated as well, for quick access.

#wordpress-tv

Meetup Notes – 01/30/2013

Thanks to everyone that was able to attend our first official IRC 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.; it was great to have some new volunteers in the room, and we look forward to your contributions to the group. Here’s a recap of what was discussed:

  • Our basic processes: Refer to the Video Moderator Manual for a quick outline. Note: This doc will grow over time. If you have a suggestion please add it in the comments. 🙂
  • Office HoursOffice Hours Defined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time.: We’ve set a standing IRC chat as “office hours” that will happen every Wednesday from 16:00-19:00 UTC. Office hours not really meant to be organized meetings (though welcomed) but a time when at least one mod can be counted on to be available to the community.
  • Helping 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: Converting and editing videos can be a pretty difficult process, and not one that is in most organizer’s sweet spot. We talked about examining the process more closely, and the need for an updated version of the current process instructions. Anyone with video experience is encouraged to help!

A full log of the chat available here: #wordcamp log 2013-01-30

#wordpress-tv

Review WordCamp Guidelines Committee Update #2 We are…

Review 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. Guidelines Committee Update #2

We are in the final stages of compiling a list of pain points that will be sent out to WordCamp organizers.

We were originally going to send out a small list and dig deeper from there, but decided to send out a list of things we know are issues and ask the WC Organizer community to tell us which ones are more contentious for them.

We will include space for additional pain points that we didn’t think of.

The list will be reviewed by the whole team by Friday, January 31st and ready for distribution on Monday, February 4th.

We’ll also poll non-WordCamp organizers about possible barriers to entry for them in the guidelines.

#review-wordcamp-guidelines

Week 7: WordCamp Base Theme Page Templates Recap

Erick, Konstantin, Andrea and I were present at this meeting.

29 Jan 2013 Update

This Week:

  • Erick began development on the session template
  • Erick and Konstantin weighed in on the Day Of Event template
  • Brandon began development on the Day Of Event template
  • Call for additional contributors was posted by Andrea
  • Moving all future discussions to #wordpress-events on freenode

Next Week:

  • Get the 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. component put into tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/.
  • Add new contributors to the group

#wordcamp-base

Q. When will the first women’s training be, and will these trainings be tied to WordCamps?

Lots of WordCamps (like Phoenix) usually do new-user trainings already, so I’m hoping you’ll take that into account.

— Andrea Middleton

A. March, and sometimes.

Like with WordCamps, we won’t announce the date and open registration until we nail down our venue, but we are shooting for the first weekend in March to run the pilot workshop. We’ll have a variety of training topics; we’re starting with troubleshooting but will eventually have one for new user setup as well. The idea is that these trainings can be run anytime.

If WordCamps want to incorporate them, great, but part of the reason for starting this training series was to make it possible to have trainings more frequently, and not attached to WordCamps. They can be attached, but in many cases it would be better to do a new user workshop a month or week before the WC, then focus on the fun stuff when the time comes.

Full-day workshops take a lot of effort, and while running them is rewarding, it’s always a bummer when the volunteers in those roles miss out on the regular 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. stuff in order to do it. Also, that would give the newbies a little bit of time to get used to WordPress and figure out what they really want to do with it before having to choose from the regular WC sessions (a frequent complaint from new-user-workshop-at-WC grads is that they don’t know enough yet to even choose sessions to attend after the workshop ends).

#training, #wordcamps, #workshops

Team Chat Agenda

We’ll start doing an agenda for each team meeting, and posting notes as a comment after.

  • Status Reports:

— Women’s training, Make site/s, contributor drives, team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. chats (Jane)
— Welcome wagon (Andrea R)

  • Questions about projects covered in status reports (everyone)
  • Roadmap/priorities (Jane)
  • Questions/suggestions about/for roadmap (everyone)
  • Review volunteer assignments

#agenda, #team-chat

Based on the number of questions that keep…

Based on the number of questions that keep getting asked in comment threads about different topics, we’re going to add a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party (by @kovshenin) to all the Make sites that will allow us to add “Ask a Question” contact forms on each team site (using jetpack contact form) and then let a team author turn into a Q&A post from the feedbacks admin screen. The plugin is under security review right now, but should be posted in the next day or two. In addition, @otto42 is adding a top menu to the site theme, so we can start breaking out sections for easier navigation (including a top level Ask a Question item).

#questions, #theme

Meetup Best Practices: Refreshments

At the WordPress Community Summit What the meetup? discussion, we created an action item to get 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. organizers to start sharing best practices. This is the second post in a series on Meetup Best practices for you to share what has worked for your meetup. Each post will pose a small amount questions for meetup organizers to answer. Out of these, I imagine some best practices will bubble up. At a minimum, the knowledge and background should help both current and future meetup organizers.

Last week we looked at Venues

This week, let’s look at the refreshments your meetup does or does not offer:

  1. Does your meetup have any sort of refreshments available
  2. If you do offer them, How does your meetup procure them?
  3. What challenges do you face with refreshments, and how do you try to overcome them?

#best-practices, #meetups-2