Meetup Organiser Newsletter: Online Events Edition

Hi there folks!

Welcome to another 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. organiser newsletter – in this edition we’ll be highlighting some upcoming virtual events and providing you with more info about taking your events online!

Upcoming Online Events

With much of the world either on lockdown or in recommended self-isolation, organizers all over the world are taking their events online. The WordPress community is no exception to this trend as many 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, and other events in the community are being streamed online for the whole world to enjoy.

WordCamp San Antonio

As WordCamps begin to move online, the first to do so is 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. San Antonio taking place this weekend – March 28-29. You can see the full schedule on their site (all times in the local time zone of UTC-5) and book your free ticket here. Over the next few weeks and months, we’ll start to see many more WordCamps be presented as live streams. If you are an organizer who would like to get started with this for your community, then keep an eye on the Community Team blog as more info about online events will be published very soon.

WPBlockTalk

On Thursday, April 2 a virtual event all about the WordPress 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. editor will be broadcast live. WPBlockTalk includes speakers from all over the world and, after the live event, will be published on WordPress.tv for you to watch (or re-watch) whenever you’d like.

Online Meetups

It’s not only WordCamps and all-day conferences that are streaming online, but local WordPress meetup groups are also doing it too! You can find all the upcoming online events from WordPress meetup groups all over the world on this page – times will be shown in your local time zone unless otherwise noted. 

Resources for Online Events

If you would like to take your meetup online, we have some resources available to help you get started with streaming your expertly-crafted content to the world. First off, we need to note that for the time being, we won’t be approving or paying venue-related costs for meetup groups, even if it is in advance for when you do ultimately start meeting in person again. We don’t know what the situation will be once in-person meetings are possible once more and it is safer to only pay for those venues once we know how it will work.

In order to assist you with bringing your meetup events online, we have put together a page of resources and tips to provide with ideas and software options for this move. Additionally, Meetup.com has published information on how to indicate that your event is taking place online. If you follow their guide then your events will be listed in the online meetup events page that is mentioned above.

During this time, when everyone is connecting virtually with each other, people are joining forces with other local communities that speak the same language. The Global Community TeamGlobal Community Team A group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. has removed location limitations and reduced the planning process to a minimum. 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. will provide Crowdcast accounts for these longer online events (more info coming soon!) and they will have free tickets for everyone around the globe to be able to join without any financial limitation.

If your community is interested, you can submit the WordCamp Organizer Application now!

Running Charity Hackathons Online

For the last few years, we have included the do_action Charity Hackathon event series in the WordPress community program, and there are some handy recap posts on 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. site all about how these events have been going. In order to keep these going, we have opened the event format up a bit to allow them to be run online. You can find more information about that in the announcement, and if you would like to organize a do_actiondo_action do_action hackathons are community-organised events that are focussed on using WordPress to give deserving charitable organisations their own online presence. Learn more on doaction.org. event, you can apply for one here.

If you have any questions or concerns, 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 help. Please send an email to support@wordcamp.org or join the #community-events Slack channel. Please note that our Meetup.com inbox is not monitored, so please don’t reach out by replying directly to this message.

Thanks for everything you do to grow the WordPress community, let’s keep sharing knowledge and inspiring our Open SourceOpen Source Open 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. Community! 

We’ll see you online soon!