The WordPress Campus Connect (WPCC) program has been growing steadily, with around 3 to 4 applications coming in each week, and the time it takes to move an application from “submitted” to “you’re approved, here’s your event site” has stretched to days, sometimes longer. Most of that wait isn’t the decision itself, it’s the manual steps around the decision: vetting against the checklist, writing the notes into the tracker, triggering the email, creating the site. @_dorsvenabili and I are working on cutting that wait by automating the parts that don’t need a human touch.
Here’s what we’re building, and why each piece matters. We hope to be able to achieve all our dreams listed below.
Automated first pass on the vetting. Today every application is read by a program 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. who walks through the criteria and writes notes into the tracker. The criteria are documented well enough that an agent can do most of that first pass, and a vetter can pick up from there. The agent (already built by @piyopiyofox and being tested by @clk87) will run hourly, leave its notes in the existing “Add Private Note” field, and move the application to a new “Needs Action” status so the right person knows it’s ready for human review.
A simpler status list for Campus Connect. WPCC currently uses the full WordCamp 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. status list, which has eighteen statuses, most of which don’t apply to a campus event. We’re trimming the Campus Connect list to eight statuses that match the actual lifecycle: Needs Vetting, Needs Action, Needs More Info, Approved For Pre-Planning, Declined, Canceled, WordCamp Scheduled, WordCamp Closed.
Automatic actions when an application is approved. When a program supporter moves an application to “Approved For Pre-Planning,” a follow-up organizer email goes out with instructions on how to proceed, the site is created and its url shared with the organizer, an admin notice appears on the post, and an audit log entry lands in the private notes field. Today those are four separate manual steps that happen in different windows.
A small change to the application form. Applicants will need to read and check a box acknowledging the WPCC organizer agreement before submitting, should their application be approved. Checking the box is treated as equivalent to signing the agreement.
The technical breakdown lives in the tracking issue we filed: WordPress/wordcamp.org#1714. It covers the six steps we’ll land in order, the dependencies between them, and the open items where we still need final copy.
We’ll post follow-ups here as the project progresses and as we learn from the first batch of applications that go through the new flow. If you’ve vetted WPCC applications recently, or if you’re a Campus Connect organizer who’s been on the receiving end of the wait, your feedback would help us a lot. Please drop questions, concerns, or ideas in the GitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged by the repository owner. https://github.com/ issue or in the comments below.
