Welcome to the official blog of the community/outreach team for the WordPress open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project!
This team oversees official events, mentorship programs, diversity initiatives, contributor outreach, and other ways of growing our community.
If you love WordPress and want to help us do these things, join in!
Getting Involved
We use this blog for policy debates, project announcements, and status reports. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to comment on posts and join the discussion.
You can learn about our current activities on the Team Projects page. These projects are suitable for everyone from newcomers to WordPress community elders.
You can use our contact form to volunteer for one of our projects.
We also have regular Community Team meetings on the first and third Thursdays of every month at 11:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC in #community-team on Slack (same agenda).
Events WidgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.
The Diverse Speakers Training group #WPDiversity (formerly Diversity Outreach Speaker Training #WPWomenSpeak) has created a Roadmap for the length of @jillbinder‘s first contract, May 2019 – April 2020.
We are posting it here for feedback and to interest new volunteers to join the group.
Introduction
This working group helps WordPress Meetups and WordCamps develop a more diverse speaker roster via a training (workshop) that helps folks bust through their Impostor Syndrome and develop a topic, title, pitch, bio, and outline.
Goals by the end of April 2020
Improve the training based on the feedback from the feedback questionnaires results and things Jill has learned
Promote the training and results of training to WordPress community organizers and prospective speakers (identify metrics here — number of tweets/articles/pageviews)
25 workshops held in chapter meetups or WordCamps
Train 30 people to run the speaker training workshop
Train 125 people from marginalized communities to become speakers
Roadmap
Notes
“Andrea” refers to @andreamiddleton. * and bolded – Stretch goals
Ongoing (Daily or Monthly tasks)
[Admin] Checking Helpscout for new signups
[Trainers] Updating calendly with trainings and communicating to participants about them
[Trainers] Run 1-2 Trainings a month
[Promotion] Write monthly Meetups newsletter article by 10th of the month (ish)
May 2019
[Admin] Restart team (Done)
[Promotion] Create new hashtag and update everywhere (Done)
[Andrea and Jill or Team] Vocabulary for workshops vs trainings (Done)
Improving our offering based on the email questionnaires (and the ideas already in Jill’s head) (Done – not yet published)
May – July
[Andrea, Jill, team] Smoothing out our processes
June
[Material] Improving the training based on the feedback from email questionnaires and things Jill has learned
[Promotion] Create a shorter team name (Done)
[Team] Publish roadmap; Recruit more volunteers
[Trainers] Get us using new systems (calendly, require they’ve created a meetupMeetupAll local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. for it, email questionnaire)
[Trainers] Schedule first new training(s) starting in June
[Trainers] Start giving trainings again, 1-2 times a month
[Trainers] Jill record a short video on what this is
[Andrea, Jill, Trainers / Promotion] Create new email questionnaire follow-up system and/or Zoom interviews; Send it out to previous facilitators; Start collecting case studies for marketing ?
June – July
[Translations] Translating the workshop and materials to Brazilian Portuguese and Italian
[Trainers] Contact past attendees and dormant emails (not responded in several months) to let the new speaker wranglers this year know about workshop and see if they’d like training
[Trainers] Contact past attendees to see if they’d like to take it again
[Trainers] Contact past attendees for their info for the “Past Workshops Celebration” page
[Promotion] Put the workshop into the materials for WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. Speaker wranglers and the Meetups info
[Training, Promotion] Create a “Past Workshops Celebration” page on Make WordPress that shows images, stats, and maybe stories of each workshop
August
* [Workshop] Short and long version of workshop
[Trainers] Trainings in different time zones start (to confirm with @angelasjin)
August – September
[Translations] Translated the workshop and materials to another 1-2 languages
September
* [Self-guided Training] Record 10-20 minute “how to use”
* [Self-guided Training] Have team attend a training that we record for Train The Trainers
* [Languages] Start onboarding trainers who can do other languages
October
* [Self-guided Training] Record module facilitator notes
October – November
[Translations] Translated the workshop and materials to another 1-2 languages
January 2020
* [Languages] Start offering trainings in different languages
More frequent trainings start. 3-4 time a month?
Marketing
@aurooba is taking on creating a Roadmap for Promotion. These are Andrea and Jill’s suggestions before consulting with her:
A page somewhere in the WordPress ecosystem to show pictures, stats, and maybe stories of all the places that had our workshops. A little public visibility to encourage people to send us their info.
Visual Roadmap
This is a version of the above put in a summary form so that it could be laid out visually.
We are always looking for folks who care about Diversity in WordPress (#WPDiversity). We are looking for:
Big-picture thinkers
Project management strategists
Content strategists
Marketing strategists
People who can carry out a marketing plan
Trainers (we will train you)
Folks who can do small admin tasks
Folks who can just give opinions here and there to help guide us through the big and little decisions
Translators
and more!
Comment here with your interest, write to @jillbinder on the WordPress Slack, or attend tomorrow’s meeting (2nd and 4th Wednesdays) on the #community-team Slack channel: Wednesday, June 12 @ 5pm UTC.