I shared this idea with a few people last year but I thought I’d share it here so we can see if there’s any interest / traction to the idea or not.
Big idea: Make WordPress’ birthday an action-oriented day: a combo “Awareness” / “Contributor” “Community” day, for the future and all time, aka WordPress Day / WPDay.
Updated to make it clearer I don’t want to replace or supersede individual contributor days – more about contributing vs. a contributor 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 the 10th year we had a huge celebration, and I think it would be cool to build on the awareness of WP’s birthday as a significant date by having the community continue to come together year after year on that date in a worldwide effort.
For those communities who don’t have normal Contributor Days (or WordCamps, or Meetups 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. for that matter) this could be the day they get together to celebrate WP & do some documentation / video tutorials / screen casts / feature requests / bug patches / translations / transcribe videos for WordPress.tv, etc. Code + Cake! Local Meetups could be encouraged/suggested to have a Meetup 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. which falls on or around WP’s birthday that month, etc. [which for our reference is May 27th]
For individuals and/or people who already have a Contributor Day locally they go to (or perhaps there’s no community near them at all), there’s plenty they can do on their own & don’t need an organized event to do it. Maybe it’s a push to introduce at least one person to WordPress – using the mobile app, have them take a spin on your .org site, or set up a WordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ site. Or maybe it’s a day to help that friend who needs to fix their sidebar 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., to understand the difference between a page and a post, to update their Gravatar Is an acronym for Globally Recognized Avatar. It is the avatar system managed by WordPress.com, and used within the WordPress software. https://gravatar.com/., or who should set up sharing buttons on their content. Maybe it’s the day you answer a WordPress.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/ Support forum WordPress Support Forums is a place to go for help and conversations around using WordPress. Also the place to go to report issues that are caused by errors with the WordPress code and implementations. thread for the first or thousandth time, or create a screencast of how to do something and publish it to YouTube, etc., or your own site.
It doesn’t need to be technically-focused (as I know Contributor Days can be a little frustrating if there’s no core Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. devs/committers around to bring commits/tickets to a close), actually, it would be great if there’s a bit of a sliding scale of how people can get involved (above), from content creators to developers to just about anyone. It would be nice if activity that day was service/community-oriented, but for content creators / bloggers who are just users of the product, we could even encourage them to blog about why they love WP / top 5 reasons, etc., on that day.
Also, let it be clear that Contributor Days should happen as they already are / attached to WCs, and this day wouldn’t supersede or replace those in any way! This would be a way for people in the remotest corners of the world to contribute / celebrate.
How could we get the word out?
- Post on wordpress.org/news with some information about the “event”, suggestions for individuals and local communities to get started, and links to helpful resources (the handbooks, the support forums), and plenty of sample activities/contributions for people to do that day (like I listed above).
- Have some sort of hashtag so people can share that they’re getting together – giving back / we can track it ala WP Birthday site (but it doesn’t need an ad hoc site per se, could just rely on Twitter / Facebook searches). The focus wouldn’t be on publicizing what’s being done, but rather just doing it. Badges for those who want to use those.
- To avoid confusion with WP Contributor Days we could brand it WP Day / WordPress Day and use the hashtag #WPDay ? 🙂