A note about running Office Hours

We run multiple sessions of 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. every week at the times mentioned 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. of this P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/.. Office Hours are dedicated times when Community Team 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. are available to answer any questions from the community. We do them in the #community-events channel on Slack and they are a valuable tool for connecting with and assisting community organisers all over the world.

The great thing about Office Hours is that any deputyProgram 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. can run them – you don’t need to be especially blessed or uniquely qualified (other than being a deputy who has gone through the deputy training of course). So…

If you are a deputy who is online at the time that Office Hours is scheduled to start, but no one else has started it yet, then please start it yourself.

All you need to do is announce in #community-events that you are starting Office Hours. You can also pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” in #community-team to see which other deputies are online to help you out. If you know you won’t be online to close the hour-long session, then just ask another deputy to do that for you.

Note that, while Office Hours is a time for community organisers to ask questions, you don’t have to personally know all the answers. It’s up to all deputies to answer as they can, but if you don’t know a specific answer then you are totally welcome to say that you’ll find out and follow up with the individual when you can. You can also ping someone who is likely to know the answer and they will respond when they are able to do so.

A huge thanks to all deputies who take part in Office Hours already! Even if no one asks any questions in some of the sessions, never under-estimate the value of this time for the community and how much of an impact you’re having by being involved in it.

#deputies #office-hours