Report: Diverse Speaker Workshops June 2021

During the pandemic, the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) has been delivering our Diverse Speaker workshop to the global WordPress community online directly.

Each month, we are reporting at the tag #DiverseSpeakerWorkshopsReports how these workshops are going.

June 2021

Speak up! Black Speakers In WordPress Workshop, June 5 & 12, 2021

By special request, we held a workshop for people in the WordPress community who identify as Black or African American and are based in North America or Europe.

Facilitators: @alliennimmons, Tarsha McCormick, and @jillbinder

Number who attended: 13
From number of cities: 12
From number of countries: 1 (United States)
Self-reported increase in public speaking confidence after taking the workshops: 13%

Testimonials

“Before I took this workshop, I was unable to identify other African-American/Black speakers in various areas of WordPress (Development, Design, Marketing, etc). Thanks to this workshop, I was able to make connections and encourage the next wave of storytellers of 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. Project and its Community. I would DEFINITELY recommend this workshop to anyone who is looking to achieve the necessary confidence level and tools to effectively put together submissions for events in tech. I wish that a hands-on workshop like this was available before I submitted my first topic for consideration!”

– Joe A Simpson Jr, UXUX UX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it./A11YAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) Advocate, Castaic, CA

“As a repeat speaker at 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., I’m always thinking about how to make my presentations better. I came away from the Speak Up! workshop with some practical ways to make my speaker submissions and presentations more effective.”

– Ray Mitchell, Owner – Made for You Media, Winston-Salem, NC

Diverse Speaker Workshop AMER/APAC, June 30, 2021

Facilitator: @volkswagenchick

Number who attended: 4
From number of cities: 4
From number of countries: 1 (Canada, India, Philippines, United States)
Self-reported increase in public speaking confidence after taking the workshops: 36%

Testimonial

“I felt like you were reading my mind on some of these points about what holds us back from speaking. And the brainstorm prompts are all really, really good. I walked away with a ton of ideas and newfound confidence. I’m excited to talk now. This workshop works!”

– Erika Lewis, WordPress Dev, Washington DC

Thank you

A lot of people contribute to making these workshops successful. Thank you to each and every one!

Upcoming

Love this? Come attend a workshop!

Watch https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/wpdiversityworkshops/ for our next workshop announcement.

If you are holding a WordCamp this year, we would like to help you get more great speakers. Please get in touch with @jillbinder and we will arrange a #WPDiversity speakers workshop for you.

#diversespeakerworkshopsreports