2023 WordPress Meetup Survey: Key Findings

Background

The WordPress annual 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. survey was open for responses from November 17, 2023, through January 14, 2024. The following Make Community posts relate to the survey creation and distribution:

• Survey announcement (November 17, 2023)
• First Reminder: Annual Meetup Survey (December 19, 2023)
• Second Reminder: 2023 Annual Meetup Survey (January 8, 2024)

About the Survey

In 2023, we didn’t have the bandwidth to prepare and coordinate two separate surveys for Meetup organizers and members in several languages as we did in 2022. Nevertheless, we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to collect feedback from the global community before setting the Community Team goals for 2024.

We decided then to create a unified survey for all meetup members and organizers in one language, English. 

After the survey was closed, a working group worked on the analysis and this presentation of the findings. The Community Team members who actively participated in the survey results analysis are Luis Miguel Climent, Juan Hernando, and Isotta Peira.

Two important premises to take into consideration when reflecting on our findings:

• The survey was open for two months, this limited amount of time might have prevented members from filling it.
• The survey was only available in English, which might have prevented members from more diverse backgrounds from filling it.

Global overview: 595 community members from 65 countries have participated.

Findings: 2023 Annual Meetup Program Survey

We sought to answer the following questions through the meetup program survey:

• How can we increase the number of WordPress events?
• How can we increase the number of WordPress users worldwide?

Challenges

Similar to last year’s survey, we’ve found common challenges that our communities worldwide are facing:

• The lack of free venues
• The lack of information about our community and the resources available for the organizers
• The lack of ideas for engaging event formats
• The lack of time to organize and contribute to events
• The lack of speakers and new technical topics

Actionable Insights

Not surprisingly, we noticed many trends related to ideas that we’ve been hearing from many communities in the past months:

• The need to reach students and collaborate with schools and universities to include WordPress in their curricula
• The need to increase our community and event visibility on social media and online
• The need to improve communication and training for community leaders
• The need to inspire organizers and community members
• The need of attracting to our community speakers and professionals from outside the WordPress bubble

Suggestions of realistic actions to take in 2024

The survey analysis working group suggests the following action to address some of our community’s most impactful challenges.

• Plan cross-team projects:
  • With the Marketing Team to increase WordPress community and events visibility on social media and with media partners.
  • With the Training Team to prepare training material for teachers to include WordPress in their curricula.
  • With the Training Team to prepare material about the latest WordPress updates for 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. to discuss and for speakers to include in their talks.
  • With the MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team to improve the discoverability of our events and contribution opportunities in the WordPress infrastructure.
  • With Five for the Future to increase the number of sponsorships for active contributors.

• Improve Community Team documentation, communication, and programs:
  • Increase and diversify the communication channels to share resources (meetup venue fund program, free Zoom accounts for online events, resources for organizers like examples of where to make local contacts: associations, types of businesses, etc.).
  • Highlight one meetup per month in the newsletter/web of events, showcase format ideas used elsewhere, share stories on how to grow the local community, and attract speakers.
  • Create a program for speaker mentoring and make it available to all Meetup groups.
  • Organize dedicated training sessions for organizers about community management, leadership and event organization.
  • Create a program for meetup mentoring with scheduled check-ins between the Community Team and the meetup groups to resolve doubts, and have dedicated volunteers mentoring organizers who need support.
  • Create a starter kit for event organizers with the basic information they need to simplify the onboarding process before using the exhaustive handbook. The kit should include tools and a framework for deciding the day and time for events, better engaging with group members, and attracting speakers from outside the WordPress bubble.

Pinging the Community Team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. so this post stays on their radar for when they will present the discussion to define the 2024 goals. @leogopal, @nukaga, @st810amaze, @peiraisotta.

Discussion

In the comments, please share your reflection on the following questions:

• What stands out to you in these findings?
• What feedback do you have about the actions we suggest?
• What other specific actions would you suggest to the Community Team to include in our 2024 plans?

On behalf of the Community Team, we want to thank everyone who helped create the survey, everyone who filled it, and every person who shared their suggestions. The biggest thank you goes to each of you making the WordPress Community every day with your contributions, your time, and your passion.

The following people have contributed to writing this post: @lmcliment, @unintended8, and @peiraisotta.

#meetups, #community-team, #highlight, #meetup-organizers, #survey