WordPress.tv Moderator Chat – Recap

Today we discussed a few things that we have been working on since the Community Summit, and where we are headed for 2015. Full chat archive is here.

  • Moderator Handbook – We’re still working on building this out as a group, so we do also have some documents staged in Google Docs so we can iterate and add any feedback. Final text is then added to the handbook here (linked 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.)
  • Buddy System – To help onboard new moderators we are going to try out a “buddy system” where a new mod is paired with an experienced one. Documentation is here (#) and we also created a few buddy pairs for our newest mods
  • Assisting WordCamps – We have talked off and on and have done some preliminary leg work for this year. For 2015 we are going to actively reach out to an early camp, and offer to provide both guidance (how to set up for filming, etc.) as well as post-production help. If possible we will try to do this in a location where a mod is nearby, and also work video into the contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. for that camp.
  • Return of weekly meetings – We experimented with 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., but in the end decided to return to a standard weekly format as our team has grown to a size where this makes sense. Our meeting time/location is in the sidebar, and we hope to see you next week!

We also added two new mods (Beth Soderberg and Evan Zimmerman) to the squad this week. Glad to have you both! 🙂

#team-chat

This week’s community chat is cancelled due to…

This week’s community chat is cancelled due to that one US holiday falling on Thursday. 🙂 Catch you all in December!

Meetup Deputies

I want to set up a couple of tranings over the next few weeks to train people to review 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. applications and set up/transfer groups onto the chapter program and/or mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. new meetup organizers.

Requirements:

  • You have been an active meetup group member (preferably an organizer but not required).
  • If you are the group organizer, your group is on the chapter account.
  • You can give 1-2 hours per week to the project. (maybe less, but this should be the minimum expectation)
  • You can communicate well in written English.
  • You are comfortable being the bad guy if someone is behaving badly.
  • You are comfortable with promoting the program and it’s policies.

Those who are interested and think the above describes them, leave a comment, and ID days of the week/general time slots that you could do a training hangout. I’ll try to do 3 of them over the next couple of weeks, and can vary the timing to try and make it a little more convenient for the majority.

#community-management, #meetups-2

WPTV Mod Squad Chat this Wednesday

Howdy Mod Squad, let’s have a meeting to discuss recent changes to the Moderator Handbook, and also do a bit of pre-planning for things we’d like to try and accomplish in 2015.

Join us on 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/. at #community on Wednesday Nov. 26th at 17:00 UTC (9am PST, 12noon EST)

Convert to your time zone

Not on Slack? You can get set up here: https://make.wordpress.org/chat/

Hope to see you there!

#wordpress-tv

WordPress.tv Moderator Squad Update

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”
 Helen Keller

In the last five months there have been 39 WordCamps held around the world. Of the 39 WordCamps, 25 were held in cities were video cameras are available for recording the presentations. Of those 25 WordCamps 10 have submitted videos and 15 have zero video submissions. If you have videos that are not getting processed, that are partially processed,  or if you’re not sure if your 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 have been submitted please 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/. me @roseapplemedia and I will help get the process going.

Also mods don’t forget the Description for the videos. It is titled Description on the submitted information and it goes in the ExcerptExcerpt An excerpt is the description of the blog post or page that will by default show on the blog archive page, in search results (SERPs), and on social media. With an SEO plugin, the excerpt may also be in that plugin’s metabox. box just under the editor. Descriptions can often be found on the WordCamp site but if no description is available then please feel free to write one in your own words.

The Last 7 Days

We published 59 videos from 10 WordCamps around the world.

The Top Three Most Viewed WordCamp Videos This Week

Luke Wroblewski: From the Front Lines of Multi-Device Web Design

Matt Mullenweg: The State of the Word 2014

Steve Zehngut: Build a WordPress Theme with Foundation and Underscores

In Process

An updated Mod Handbook is ready for feedback from mods.
Please comment in this doc.

#moderator-update, #wordpress-tv

Community event sponsorship in 2015

One of the goals I had for the Community team working days after WCSF was to iterate on the Multi-Event Sponsorship program for 2015. Kevin Cristiano, Tina Kesova, and Karim Marucchi met with me for a couple of hours to discuss where we thought the program needed to go for next year, and below are the results.

Great things about the multi-event sponsorship program:

  • When WordCamps get their budgets approved, they know they can count of a certain amount (sometimes a lot) of sponsorship money from multi-event sponsors. Reducing the fundraising burden on organizers allows them to spend more time on making great WordCamps.
  • Larger companies that want to support WordCamps but don’t have the time to spend working with individual organizers can just work with WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each., be billed quarterly, and get an email every time a 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. is added to the schedule with useful information about the WordCamp.

Issues with the multi-event sponsorship program:

  • In 2014 many WordCamps (especially in the US) were over-funded before ever recruiting local sponsors. We don’t want to leave out our local sponsors, since WordCamps are local events, but we do want to keep providing WordCamps with a funding “nest egg” at budget approval so that the fundraising burden on organizing teams is eased.
  • WordCamps received lots of financial support in 2014, but more communities are looking at doing more events that are not WordCamps, so we’d like to extend that support to those events, too.
  • Since chapter account 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. now have their meetup.com dues paid by the Foundation and can now ask to have the Foundation pay for their 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. venue costs, it’s appropriate to extend the sponsorship relationship to include meetups.
  • Some WordCamps did not fulfill the sponsorship packages as consistently as we expected them to.

Moving forward, I think the best course is to facilitate the sponsorship of local communities, not just WordCamps. Therefore, this proposed 2015 Community Sponsorship program addresses sponsorship of all official events.

The other big change in this proposal is that we’ll still be billing sponsors based on (projected) attendance, but we’ll be distributing sponsorship funds to events based on need. I’ll give an example based on WordCamp workflow: when a WordCamp’s budget is being reviewed, the organizing team will be asked how much they think they can raise from local sponsors with about 20 hours of work (including the work needed to acknowledge those sponsors). The budget reviewer will then suggest a sponsorship 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. grant to the WordCamp to help them reach their fundraising goals. This will allow us to give more support to new WordCamps (and other events) that don’t have the established fundraising relationships like other, more established events.

In the discussion we had at the Community Summit about the IRS rules that affect how official events can acknowledge sponsors (due to the non-profit status of the WordPress FoundationWordPress Foundation The WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software. Find more on wordpressfoundation.org.), it was agreed that while those rules were a little complicated, following them was preferable to the unattractive alternatives, and that in fact those rules resulted in a much less commercial “feel,” which we like for our official events. When those discussion notes are published, I’ll come back and edit in a link to them. 🙂

Read on for the proposed 2015 Community Sponsorship program in its novella-level entirety, and reply with a comment if you have a suggestion, doubt, or concern. 🙂 Continue reading

#multi-event-sponsorship, #sponsorship

Team Chat Agenda Feedback on the WC orgs…

Team Chat Agenda

  • Feedback on the WC orgs term limits post
  • General check-ins from various project teams
  • If you want to suggest something for the agenda, leave it in the comments

Heads up: I’m not feeling very well this morning, so have asked Andrea to lead the meeting if I am unable to attend because I’m not well enough.

#agenda

Fixed Terms for WordCamp Lead Organizers

During the coworking days after 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. SF, a group of community volunteers gathered to discuss how to help grow the WordPress community in all corners of the globe. Discussion participants included Siobhan McKeown, Tina Kesova, Xavier Borderie, Marko Heijnen, Sam Sidler, Petya Raykovska, Mario Peshev, Dee Teal, Mayuko Moriyama, Shinichi Nishikawa, Catia Kitahara, Birgit Olzem, Andrew de la Serna, Brandon Dove, and possibly some others that I’ve forgotten — please speak up if you were there too!

The group agreed that entrenched leadership is a major barrier to the goal of growing global communities as well as creating more connections to the WordPress project. When only one person organizes community events (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., WordCamps, or both) for many years, that can discourage other community members from getting more involved, especially if people don’t see a need or opportunity for leadership in the community. Official 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. groups allow any member of the meetup to organize an event series within the group, which keeps group leadership dynamic and decentralized, but currently we don’t have any way to promote a similar shared leadership environment in WordCamp organizing. What to do?

Fixed terms! The discussion group agreed that a 2 year (contiguous) term limit for WordCamp lead organizers is a good way to prevent or fix stagnation in WordCamp leadership. The idea is that after a lead organizer has organized WordCamp two years in a row, the community will be asked to propose a new person to take the WordCamp lead organizer role. Experienced organizers would be welcome to participate in the WordCamp organizing team if they wished; they could also take a well-deserved break or become event mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues./deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. and share their wisdom and experience with organizers in other communities. Former lead organizers could take the lead role after a year off, but we wouldn’t want to see two people trading off the lead organizer role more than once or twice without seeing some new faces too.

Now you might be asking yourself: why not just wait for experienced WordCamp organizers excuse themselves when they’re ready to take a break, if ever? Why make an arbitrary limit on how many WordCamps these really experienced people can organize in a row?

It’s tricky, because we love our successful event organizers, and we want them to keep helping us lead the community. However, being a community leader entails more than just organizing an event. A good leader inspires and supports the next generation, stepping aside to let other people take the reins and mentoring those people to become good leaders themselves. Over time, the pool of people who can take leadership positions grows and strengthens the WordPress project overall.

Having a term limit on WordCamp organizing builds this expectation into the WordCamp lead organizer role. By the second year that you lead a WordCamp, you should have identified potential leaders and be mentoring them during that WordCamp to take on the leadership role in the following year. Many WordPress communities have successfully passed the WordCamp lead organizer role from person to person, including Tokyo, LA, San Diego, Portland, Kansas City, St. Louis, Sao Paulo, Salt Lake City, Vancouver, Toronto, Seattle, and Nashville, so we know it can be done.

If you have an opinion about this proposal, please comment in a reply on this post. Input on how to keep WordPress communities open and welcoming is just about my favorite thing, ever.

I’ve removed the Returning Organizer Application from http…

I’ve removed the Returning Organizer Application from http://plan.wordcamp.org/become-an-organizer/organizer-application/ for now. With many new volunteers learning to vet and review applications, we can’t rely on my memory anymore. Sorry returning organizers! We’re going to have to ask you to spend a little more time filling out the application every year, at least for a while. 🙂

#wordcamps

Ally Workshops

The Ada Initiative’s Ally Workshop curriculum is available online (scroll down to resources). This is something we’ve talked about wanting to be able to use for a longish time now, and I have to admit I’m a little bit bummed to be exiting just as it could be a new program for us. I have gone through the ally workshop twice — once at OSBridge and once at AdaCamp, and I do think that it is a useful format for helping people (but especially men) realize that some things they thought were not sexist (or homophobic, or transphobic, or racist, or generally inappropriate) actually are, without it getting called out in a real situation that might inspire defensiveness. That said, the people who tend toward this behavior are not exactly the folks who’ll volunteer to go to an ally workshop in the first place. 🙂

But! How can we leverage these materials best? Ask 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. to do a workshop? Sucker people into it at a WC? Run some test workshops in select cities, with experienced community team members as the facilitators? Create a shortened version with examples that are more specific to our community and that can be conducted in 2 hours so it falls into a normal 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. time slot? Come up with a name that focuses more on being a better WP citizen and less on being an ally (insider terminology)?

As we regroup to tackle the code of conductCode of Conduct “A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party.” - Wikipedia, this could be a good vehicle for communication those expectations that are a little too granular to put in a document like that.

Ideas, suggestions, etc. in the comments!

#ada-initiative, #ally-workshop, #behavior, #code-of-conduct