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Hi, I’m Sabina Ionescu, a member of 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. Europe Communications Team, and we have a project that we’d love your feedback on. Here goes:

Supporting local WordCamps

If you are a local 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./WordCamp organizer, at some point, you might have faced at least one of these challenges:

Not finding enough sponsors for the local meetup
Facing challenges for WordCamp fundraising
Having trouble attracting WordCamp speakers
Not enough WordCamp tickets sold or tickets selling slower than expected

In 2017, the WordCamp Europe Communication team saw the opportunity to support local WordCamps around Europe. The @WCEurope Twitter account was used to promote local WordCamps and send our customized tweets expressing the needs of local WordCamps.

Events like @wordcamputrecht can’t happen without ❤️ from sponsors. Help support #wcut! https://t.co/UiGxV9CONQ

— WordCamp Europe (@WCEurope) October 12, 2017

To send out a tweet like the one above required several actions like finding out which are the events of each month, identifying the lead organizer contact details, explaining how WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. team can help and finally posting the tweet a few weeks before the event.

Heard @WordCampDublin tickets are still on sale. Make history on the 1st edition of #wcdub happening October 14-15th https://t.co/gyKmJeGkZL

— WordCamp Europe (@WCEurope) October 5, 2017

Identifying Meetup/WordCamp needs

So far, this initiative was well received and the WCEU team plans to continue to show this support as we not only see the value in promoting WordCamps, but also the importance they have on building local European communities.

However, there are 50 countries in Europe with sometimes several WordCamps organized in the same country which makes the process of reaching out to local communities quite difficult to go on like before. That’s why we’ve come up with a proposal for managing this process better, which consists of two simple steps:

1. Collecting local communities details

We’ve prepared a form to collect community data (like Twitter official hashtag, Twitter handle, lead organizer’s name) and keep it for further reference for both #Communications and #Community teams. Please take a look at it and comment below this article with your ideas and suggestions:

2. Getting in touch with the WCEU team

Unlike the form above where we collect info needed for promoting communities (like hashtags, Twitter handles, etc.), we’ve also prepared a way of them to directly get in touch with the WCEU team. This form can be used by organizers or WordCamp 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. to reach out to us. The idea behind this form is to be used when facing a challenge (i.e. “we need to sell more tickets”, “we need two more silver sponsors” etc.).

Next steps

After your feedback, our suggestion is for these two links to go in the community handbooks/WordCamp guides and be included in the emails with the local organizers as well as with the mentors mentoring European WordCamps.
Local meetup/WordCamp details
Get in touch with WordCamp Europe

And that’s basically it! Hope this collective effort builds up into a database of local WordCamps that we’ll be able to use over the coming years to help strengthen WordPress communities across Europe. Also, this initiative could easily be replicated by other major WordCamps to support their closeby events.

We’ve notified @andreamiddleton about this and she mentioned @bph has a similar initiative in mind. Also, anyone who has a suggestion on how we could roll this is welcome to contribute!

#wceu

Andrea Middleton 12:29 am on February 27, 2018

Thanks to 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. Europe team for wanting to help promote community activities in Europe!

Will the team be able to promote local communities year-round, or will availability be limited during certain parts of the year? I’m worried if we put the forms in the handbooks, things might fall apart when the WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. team gets busy or takes a post-event break.

I guess we might be able to just put date windows on the offer, but usually everything on the handbook is permanent-ish?
- Sabina Ionescu 10:45 am on February 27, 2018
  
  Good catch. We’ve started 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. announcements in October and we plan to keep them going until June, at least. So I’d say that July, August and September are the tricky ones. But we might be able to find a solution until then.
  
  How about adding a notice mentioning that during summer activity may be a little slowed down? cc @emanuelblagonic
- Emanuel Blagonic 10:51 am on February 27, 2018
  
  I’d say we will cover them all year round. We planned this within our WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. Communications team and the team starts working on September 1st until the August 31st (two months after WCEU), though after WCEU team focus is (mostly on) social media (Twitter/Facebook).
  
  If we add it in the handbook, someone will be available to help from WCEU social media accounts.
Jenny Beaumont 4:39 pm on March 6, 2018

I think this is a wonderful initiative and I’m glad to hear that local communities feel it’s having a positive impact on their events!

As you know, one of my main preoccupations as lead organizer this year is watching over team health, both for this year and looking to future years. Whereas I absolutely think these forms can and should be linked in the WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. handbook that we’re working on, I do not think they should live anywhere outside of our team. Why? Because next year’s team gets to decide if this is something they want to maintain. We need to account for the possibility that a future team may not want to do it for whatever reason. And because of that, the forms should only live permanently in places where we as a team, whoever the team is that current year, can manage them.

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. handbook is, IMO, a place for more universal, less transient aspects of organizing an event. I don’t think we can in good conscience commit future teams to this particular campaign, no matter how much we believe it in now. They need to be able to choose.
Sabina Ionescu 1:20 pm on March 7, 2018

For the past two WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. editions (since the Comms Team was created) we have done the research and the outreach each 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. at a time. Realising the effort needed, we’ve proposed this new process to make things easier in the coming years. I think the WCEU’s involvement and support were the very premises we started this initiative – it was created for helping out future generations. cc @emanuel_blagonic

The contact forms are a way for local WC organizers to reach out to the WCEU team. They are a resource for local WC organizers, so they need to learn about it from their 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./in their handbooks maybe. Additionally, we should also have a chapter in the WCEU handbook as well, to keep everyone involved on the same page.

Not sure how to move this forward. How is it decided if an activity is part of the WCEU Comms Team’s default responsibilities?
Francesca Marano 5:16 pm on April 20, 2018

ETA 14/07/2019 – No activity, topic is closed

Did we reach a consensus on this one? It doesn’t seem like it.
0.2$: completely agree with @jennybeaumont, next year’s team might not have this as part of their plan. In addition, 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. handbook is for the global community, while this is a strictly EU initiative.