With the launch of a new series of workshops coming up rapidly, we need to find a way to manage the signup process for discussion groups. A manual process will not be ideal considering the volume of discussion groups we’re planning to see as a result of the workshops, but we don’t have a tool in use to manage signups in an automated fashion.
Proposed immediate solution to manage discussion group signups
Create a new WordPress group on Meetup.com named “Learn WordPress” where we can post each discussion group as an individual event. This would allow us to work with a platform we’re already familiar with while allowing attendees to easily sign up for discussion groups. An additional benefit would be that the discussion groups would show up as events in the dashboard events widget A 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. since Meetup.com events within the chapter program are already pulled into the system. It would also allow us to limit the number of attendees for each session to a size that is reasonable to hold a discussion (20?) and allow for a waitlist of attendees who could either join the session if people cancel or be added to the next discussion group on the topic.
We would use the Make Meetings plugin to show all of the upcoming discussion groups on the site and link each discussion to its corresponding event on meetup.com.
We would be able to implement this immediately.
Proposed eventual method to manage discussion group signups
Create a use case specific tool (perhaps using Camptix or a fork of it so it doesn’t have to be built from scratch) to have sign-ups happen on site. The greatest benefits of this would be that everything happens in one place with no need to send attendees away to a third party site for signups and information.
We would be able to implement this eventually.
Other ideas discussed
While I landed on proposing Meetup 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. for immediate use we also discussed scheduling and signup through Calendly and ScheduleOnce, but after reviewing each it seemed too unwieldy for our needs. I also chatted with some folx about use of CampTix but it’s only set up currently to allow one event per site.
Questions or suggestions
- Do you have any suggestions or input on the proposal for immediate use?
- What do you think is a reasonable limit on the number of people per discussion group?
- Do you have any suggestions or input on the proposal for eventual use?
We’re on a tight schedule to make this happen so I’d appreciate any feedback you have in regards to these ideas by Thursday, August 13, 2020.
#learn-wordpress, #proposal