Meetup Organizer Newsletter: February 2021

Hello friends,

Welcome to the February 2021 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. We are off to a great start in 2021, and we have a lot of exciting news to share with you. Read on to find out more!

Newsletter contents:

• Meetup organizer resources
• Online event updates
• Tuesday Trainings
• News from the WordPress world

Meetup organizer resources

• Organize a Learn WordPress discussion group for your meetup: Looking for a speaker for your meetup group? You can now organize a discussion group, a watch party, or both based on an existing Learn WordPress workshop! Check out some tips on  how to manage a successful discussion group.
• Reserve a Zoom Pro account for your meetup group: 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. now has five Zoom Pro accounts that you can reserve for video-conferencing for your online meetup. To book, fill up this zoom request form, and a community deputyProgram 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. will get back to you.
• Online WordPress 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.: You can now catch up with upcoming online WordCamps and check out all online meetups across the world, as well!
• Marketing team support for your online meetup: The WordPress Marketing team can help promote your online meetup. Reach out to them in the #marketing 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 for more information and follow the @WordPressEvents pilot on Twitter and Facebook. The team also has Question & Answer resources for WordPress 5.6, which you can use or adapt. Contact the team if you would like to contribute to such resources.

Online event updates

Ongoing WordPress events 
WordCamp India 2021 (online) is wrapping up on February 14 and 15 (Saturday and Sunday), with speaker sessions. The event features speakers including Matt Mullenweg and Josepha Haden, amongst other noteworthy speakers from the WordPress world. Free tickets for the event are still available if you would like to join the event.

Upcoming WordPress events 
Check out these upcoming WordCamps that are coming up later this year. Visit their websites to learn more. 

• WordCamp Prague 2021 (February 27, 2021)
• WordCamp Centroamérica 2021  (April 15-17, 2021)
• WordCamp Greece 2021 (April 16-18, 2021)
• WordCamp Japan 2021 (June 20-26, 2021)

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. charity hackathons and open-source workshops in 2021
Following the impact of online do_action charity hackathons and open-source workshops last year, 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. has published its plans for online do_action charity hackathons and Open-source workshops in 2021. Meetup organizers can now apply for an online do_action event or organize an introduction to open-source workshop. 

Diverse speaker training group: Interactive, Transformational Watch Party!|
The Diverse Speaker Training Group (#WPDiversity) is organizing an Interactive, Transformational Watch Party on the topic: How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events. This workshop is for Meetup and 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. organizers and your marginalized and underrepresented community members.
Date: February 18th, 2021 (Thursday) from 5.30 PM to 7.00 PM UTC.
Don’t forget to sign up for the event right now!

Checklist for safe, in-person WordPress events
Close on the heels of last month’s post on bringing back in-person meetups, the Community team has published an update explaining the process of using a checklist to ensure safe, in-person meetups later in 2021. Please note: WordPress events will continue to be online until the team has made a final decision on this topic.

Tuesday Trainings

Through Tuesday Trainings (#TuesdayTrainings), the Community team publishes a different topic on the WordPress Community Blog to help organizers and interested community members learn a variety of skills while also adding additional training documentation to our handbooks. Check our latest Tuesday Training posts: 

• How can I best support my meetup group during these challenging times?
• How do I get speakers for my meetup?

News from the WordPress world

• Full Site Editing (FSE) updates: You can now submit questions on FSE. Don’t forget to check out the FSE testing guide. The FSE team has also published call for help from local communities! To know more, check out the #fse-outreach-experiment Make/WordPress Slack channel.
• The WordPress 5.6.1 maintenance release and WordPress 5.7 Beta 2 release is out!
• Version 9.9 of the GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party was released on February 5, 2021. Check out the: “What’s next in Gutenberg?” to catch up with what’s new in the Gutenberg world. 
• WordPress project Executive Director, Josepha Haden (@chanthaboune), has shared the big picture goals for WordPress in 2021. 
• You can now catch up with Q4 2020 updates from the WordPress project.
• The Community Team will be releasing Annual meetup survey revisions for 2020 by the end of Q1 2021. Please share any feedback you have on the survey in the comments.
• The Community team goals for 2021 have been published!
• Read Meetup volunteer Pooja Derashri’s story in this month’s People of WordPress.

---

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 Slack channel. Thanks for everything you do to grow the WordPress community. Let’s keep sharing knowledge and inspiring each other with our contributions! 

We will see you online soon!

#meetup-organizers-newsletter #newsletter

The following people contributed to this edition of the Meetup newsletter: @_dorsvenabili, @meher, @nalininonstopnewsuk @webcommsat

#meetup-organizer-newsletter