Tuesday Training: Topical Resources for Meetup Organizers

Have you ever felt stuck planning topics for your 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.? Do you have people interested in presenting, but would like support in preparing the topic?

The Training team is eager to help! The Make WordPress Training team began during WordCamp San Francisco 2013 with the goal of helping Meetup organizers and other training providers. The mission and goals of the Training team have expanded over the years, but helping 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. is the foundational level of all content we create on Learn.WordPress.org.

What resources are available?

Learn.WordPress.org has several types of content available:

• Lesson plans – A walkthrough how-to guide about WordPress features and topics, including suggested exercises and questions for participants.
• Workshops – On demand video for the direct learner. These can be presented to an audience.
• Courses – An in-depth study in a topic, with quiz questions. Suggest these to attendees interested in studying specific topics further independently.
• Social Learning Spaces (formerly Discussion Groups) – similar to an online Meetup. Topics are presented with live questions and answers.

Want to see all our topics and formats in a suggested order? See the Learning WordPress Pathways.

How do I use a lesson plan to organize a WordPress Meetup?

Lesson plans are excellent resources for Meetup Organizers! A lesson plan is basically a script on how to organize a workshop or a meetup on a topic. For a meetup organizer, lesson plans provide step-by-step instructions on how to organize an event on a certain topic. Think of it as a script or a playbook for your meetup event!

Do you know what the most exciting thing is, though? You can use a Lesson plan as a guide to organize a WordPress Meetup! Here’s how!

1. Go to Lesson plans
2. Review recent lessons and filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. based upon your audience
3. Select one or several lesson plans (as time permits) to present to your Meetup group
4. Share the topics with the presenter (if other than you)
5. Familiarize yourself with the topic, practice the exercises suggested
6. Present the topic to your group. You can even share the lesson plan on your screen.
7. Share your feedback about the lesson plan and how presenting the topic went.

Topics as a series

Several Meetup groups, such as the Hartford CT group, have found success in following a series of topics month to month. You can review the Learning WordPress Pathways to view topics in a sequential series.

You can string together multiple lesson plans in a single event, or continue these topics month after month. New content is available related to recent releases here as well, and it can be a great opportunity to conduct a series of sessions getting familiar with Full Site Editing and more.

Recent Lesson Plans

Feeling excited already? Here are some of the latest Lesson plans from Learn that you could use for an upcoming meetup!

• Introduction To Common Plugins
• How to Create a Menu with the Navigation Block
• How to Build Low-Code Block Patterns
• How to Create and Register a Block Pattern
• Template Parts
• Difference between Reusable Blocks, Block Pattern, Templates, Template Parts
• Use Duotone Filters to Change Color Effects
• How to Style Your Site with Global Styles
• How to use the List View

Get Involved

Would you, or Meetup attendees, like to share ideas for content? Would you like to feedback about the materials? Or would a participant like to help create the content? You can visit #training Slack channel and explore additional ways to contribute.

#tuesdaytrainings