Tuesday Trainings: How can I recruit organizers for my Meetup or WordCamp?

If there’s a question you’d like to see answered, or a topic you’d like to see discussed, please share it in the comments or email support@wordcamp.org with the subject line “Tuesday Trainings”. Now onto this week’s topic!

Organizing a WordPress 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. group or 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. can be a lot of work! If you want to grow and develop your local WordPress community, you will need others around you to help. But how do you find the right people to join your organizing team?

Meetup Organizers

As stated in the Five Good Faith Rules, WordPress chapter meetup groups allow events to be organized by any reliable and trusted member of their community. Reliable and trusted community members:

  • Actively participate in meetup events
  • Help without being asked
  • Are team players — they are constantly around and dependable
  • May be the first to arrive and the last to leave an event
  • May be interested in organizing meetup events around their area of interest and/or expertise in WordPress

Potential quality team members may not always be the loudest, most outgoing person. Keep an eye out for the quiet achievers who are loyal and regular attendees of your meetup events — they could be quietly encouraged to take on an organizing role!

It is expected that all Meetup co-organizers agree with the principles in the same Five Good Faith Rules that you also agreed to when you became an organizer.

WordCamp Organizers

Your WordCamp organizing team should consist of people from your immediate area who want to promote WordPress and help grow the local community. Members of a WordCamp organizing team can come from:

  • Your meetup group’s co-organizers
  • Active members of your local meetup group
  • Businesses that are built on working with WordPress
  • Local bloggers using WordPress

But of course, it is not limited to the above! The most important things to remember while forming your organizing team: Recruit from your local community, and distribute the organizing responsibilities. Too few people handling too many things leads to things getting missed, and/or people getting burned out!

It is expected that all WordCamp organizing team members and volunteers agree with the principles in the Agreement among WordCamp Organizers, Speakers, Sponsors, and Volunteers.

Representing WordPress

Remember that organizers are representing WordPress in an official capacity. When representing WordPress, one is expected to uphold the principles of the WordPress 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, including the GPL. This helps protect the user/attendee, who might not realize that by using a non-GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples. 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 or theme, they are giving away the rights that WordPress provides them.

Want to learn more?

Here is some recommended reading:

Questions?

Contact the Community Team, or come join the conversation in the #community-events channel in the Making WP Slack!

Are you a Meetup or WordCamp organizer and have more tips for recruiting an organizing team? Please share your ideas in the comments!

#community-team, #tuesdaytrainings