Meetup Organizer Newsletter: July 2020

Hello friends,

It’s time for another edition of our 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. organizer newsletter, packed full of updates from past and upcoming WordPress events, as well as updates and inspiration for your local meetup.

Newsletter contents:

  • Reimagining Online Events: Feedback Required
  • Online Event Updates
  • Upcoming Online Events
  • Tuesday Trainings

Reimagining Online Events: Feedback required

In 2020, as the WordPress Community took big steps in moving WordCamps, Meetups, and other community events online, the focus has mostly been trying to recreate the in-person 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. experience. We feel that this may not result in the best experience for attendees or organizers. Hence, the team is exploring different options on finding out the best ways to use online events as a platform to teach people how to use and contribute to WordPress, while connecting and inspiring WordPress enthusiasts. 

We have published a post to share some ideas from community 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. (like Decoupling online events from geography and exploring shorter online events, for instance) and to solicit feedback from WordPress Community organizers on how to make our online WordCamps more unique. Please share any feedback by commenting on the post before 17 July, 2020. 

Online Event Updates

WordCamp Denver Online
The first online edition of WordCamp Denver was held on June 26th – 27th. The camp, that sold over 2,400 tickets, had 25 sessions in three tracks (Beginner, Marketing, and Power User/Developer). You can find the videos of WordCamp Denver in WordPress.tv and the recorded live stream on the event site.

Featured Online Meetup
The very first meetup group in Spain, the WordPress Sevilla Meetup group, has been meeting regularly for years now. The group that has been meeting regularly for years, pivoted online during the COVID-19 crisis. The group has two presentations a month – a formal session led by a speaker, and an informal session where attendees join hands for an informal lunch meetup. Members of the group joined together for a session on making WordPress themes and plugins compatible with RTL (right to left), organized by Said El Bakkali. The interactive session in Spanish had 38 RSVPs and offered an interesting learning experience for attendees. You can find a recording of the event in WordPress.tv.

An opportunity to highlight your online meetup events
Would you like to highlight recent online events from your local meetup group in our monthly newsletter? We will publish a “call for content” post for the next edition of the newsletter in the first week of July on the Make/Community Blog. Please comment on the post when it is up, or just send us an email to support@wordcamp.org to share about events in your local meetup group.

Badges for Meetup Organizers
Meetup organizers are eligible for a WordPress Meetup Organizer badge in their WordPress.orgWordPress.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/ profiles. We have observed that many meetup organizers don’t have badges. If you are a meetup organizer, and would like to get a Meetup organizer badge, please reach out to us at: support@wordcamp.org with the name of your Meetup and the WordPress.org profile URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org, to request the badge.

Upcoming Online Events

WordPress Meetup groups across the world are currently organizing online events in lieu of in-person events due to COVID-19. Now you can attend online 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. and WordCamps across the world. You can find out about all upcoming online events here: https://make.wordpress.org/community/events/online/

If you are holding a meetup online, please use the tag #OnlineWPMeetup so that the Marketing team can find you and bring you some communications and marketing support. We’d also like to remind of our Online events handbook page that offers a wealth of information on organizing online events. 

Here are some highlighted WordPress events and workshops coming soon:

WordCamp Minneapolis/St. Paul 2020
The first edition of WordCamp Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN is coming up on August 21st, 2020. The one-day event has opened up their call for sponsors, and volunteers. Ticket sales for the event have also started. Get your free tickets now!

Diversity speaker training
The Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) is holding workshops in July to support diverse voices to share knowledge and stories at online WordPress meetups and WordCamps. They have the following events scheduled for July 2020:

Don’t miss this opportunity to participate in these diverse speaker training workshops. Sign up now! 

You can read more about the Diversity workshops here: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/02/wpdiversity-workshops-in-july-different-this-month/

Tuesday Trainings

Through Tuesday Trainings (#tuesdaytrainings) we publish a different topic on the WordPress Community Blog to train organizers and interested community members in a variety of skills, while also adding additional training documentation to our handbooks. 

We published some tips for managing online meetups that offer organizers a lot of ideas on how to effectively manage meetups. The post talks about sharing expectations before the meeting starts, a space for check-in, being respectful of time, as well as social hangouts, among others.  

Encouraging diversity in Meetups and WordCamps is extremely important. To help organizers in making their meetups more diverse, we organized a panel discussion that delves into several ideas on how organizers can make their meetup events more diverse and inclusive. The discussion also contains links to useful resources that will help organizers in making their events diverse and inclusive. 

In addition to these topics, we also did an exploration on de-escalating conflict in text communication and Thoughts on WordCamp Mentorship as part of our Tuesday trainings, last month. 

The WordPress Community thrives from knowledge-sharing. Would you like to organize a Tuesday Training of your own? Please email us, with a brief pitch about your topic, its format (blog post/panel discussion/webinar), and an abstract of the topic to: support@wordcamp.org. 


If you have any questions, 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 SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel. 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!

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