Community Team Meeting Agenda for 1 February 2024

The Community Team chat takes place the first Thursday of every month in the #community-team channel on SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.

This meeting is meant for all contributors on the team and everyone who is interested in taking part in some of the things our team does. Feel free to join us, even if you are not currently active in the team!

Asia-Pacific / EMEA friendly meeting: Thursday, 1 February 2024 at 12:00 PM UTC
Americas friendly meeting: Thursday, 1 February 2024 at 21:00 PM UTC

You will find a preliminary agenda for the meeting below. 

If you wish to add points to discuss, comment on this post or reach out to one of the team reps: @peiraisotta, @Shusei, @leo, or @nukaga. It does not need to be a blog post yet, the topic can be discussed during the meeting nevertheless. We use the same agenda for both meetings.

Call for meeting host
If anyone is available to host the second sessions of the Community Team monthly meeting at 9pm UTC, please reach out to one of the team reps, who are all based in APAC and EMEA countries: @peiraisotta, @Shusei, @leo, or @nukaga.

Check-ins: Program and Event Supporters / Contributors

  • What have you been doing and how is it going? 
  • What did you accomplish after the last meeting? 
  • Are there any blockers? 
  • Can other team members help you in some way?

Highlights to Note

Here are a few things everyone should be aware of.

Open Posts

Check out these new and ongoing discussions needing review, feedback, thoughts and comments.

Announcements / Newsletters

Open Floor

This is your chance to discuss things that weren’t on the meeting agenda. 

We invite you to use this opportunity to share anything that you want with the team. If you currently have a topic you’d like to discuss, add it to the comments of this post and we will try to update the agenda accordingly.

Hope to see you on Thursday, either in the Asia-Pacific / EMEA (12:00 UTC) or Americas-friendly version (21:00 UTC) of the meeting!

#agenda, #meeting-agenda, #team, #team-chat, #team-meeting

WordCamp Asia 2024 Contributor Day: Help Needed!

As we kickoff 2024, one of the three flagship WordCamps, 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. Asia, is around the corner.

WordCamp Asia 2024 organizers have been in contact with the team reps asking for the potential table leads for the event. As two of the current team reps, Junko and Shusei, being organizers and Leo and Isotta not being able to attend the event, we are asking for help with anyone who would like to lead the Community Team Table.

Who would like to lead the table?

The organizers are looking for someone who could lead the table. Those who will be leading the table will be in contact with the organizers to prepare for the event.


If you are interested in leading the table, please comment in this post so that the current team reps can get in touch with you.

What will the table lead do?

Table leads will be the facilitator of the Community Table. The Community Table often has various topics to discuss and work on. Table lead(s) will be in charge of making sure that people who attend the event have a smooth experience. The tasks may involve the following:

Topics for discussion

Lastly, one may have a topic they would like to discuss during the day. If you have any topics you would like to discuss or work on, please comment here so that the table leads and team reps can work together to decide on the focus points for WordCamp Asia 2024 Contributor Day.

Thank you all for showing interest in joining the Community Table at WordCamp Asia 2024. Beside the table leads nominations and topic proposals, if you have any comments regarding the preparation of WCAsia 2024 Contributor Day, please leave a comment.

Additional Resources

Here is some additional information from WCAsia, WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. and WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event. 2023 Contributor Day.

#community-team, #contributor-day, #wcasia, #wordcamp

Community Team January Meeting Recap

Attendance: @bobdunn-trainer, @golosins, @jonoaldersonwp, @joostdevalk, @michelleames, @nukaga, @patricia70, @peiraisotta, @samsuresh, @st810amaze, @tacoverdo, @webtechpooja

Notes: @peiraisotta, @st810amaze

This recap is a summary of the Community Team monthly meeting. It will cover the discussion points, ideas, and decisions that came up during the meeting. The aim of this recap is to provide a quick overview for those who were unable to attend as well as an overview for everyone. These meetings were based on the Agenda for January and are held in our #community-team SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel on Make WordPress.

You can find the meeting chat log here:


Please leave your comments if you have any feedback. 

Additionally, each agenda item discussed may have its own Make post related to its topic with more information and you can add to the discussion directly to that post.

Chat Summary

Here are some discussion points from the meeting.

New WordPress Events Page

Contributor Working Group

Action Items

Next Meeting

Community Team Meetings are held the first Thursday of every month. There are two meetings to support different time zones. The meetings will take place on #community-team on Slack.

Call for Meeting Facilitators

The Community Team Monthly Meetings happen on the first thursdays of every month. These meetings can be facilitated and run by any member of the community team, and is a great opportunity to engage with the rest of the community and team.

If you are interested in facilitating any of these meetings in the future, please feel free to comment or get in touch with any of the Community Team Reps.


If you wish to add points to discuss, comment on this post or reach out to one of the team reps: @peiraisotta, @Shusei, @leo, or @nukaga

#community-team, #meeting

Community Team Engagement Program Supporter Survey 2023

In the past months, we’ve asked to the Program Supporters and Managers of the Global Community TeamGlobal Community Team A group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. how they feel about their contribution to the team. By raising awareness among the team about the challenges that we are currently facing, we hoped to identify possible solutions to increase satisfaction, engagement and contribution.

Goal of the Analysis

Identify recurrent challenges that prevent Program Supporters and Managers from proactively performing team’s tasks to empower contributors and improve team members’ experience.

The Process

  • The survey was directed only to the Program Supporters and Managers
  • The questions focused on the most recurrent tasks performed by the Community Team: HelpScout triage, event application vetting, and event orientation
  • We received 30 responses
  • We asked ourselves close and open-ended questions
  • @peiraisotta collected and analyzed the responses
  • To analyze the open-ended questions, I experimented using Chat GPT first to find most recurrent trends, and then double checking myself

The findings

  • Time availability is the biggest challenge
  • A poor onboarding experience translates into lack of confidence and challenges to proactive contribution
  • Most of the team would benefit from working in smaller task-oriented groups
  • Many team members want to improve their leadership and project management skills

Possible Solutions

  • Define a more structured and complete onboarding process
  • → Create working groups/task-oriented teams with veteran and new supporters
  • → Implement a clear task assignment & tracking system
  • → Increase the number of internal trainings & create new learning opportunities

Next Steps

  • I asked the Program ManagerProgram Manager Program Managers (formerly Super Deputies) are Program Supporters who can perform extra tasks on WordCamp.org like creating new sites and publishing WordCamps to the schedule. to have a sync meeting before mid-October, so we can discuss and decide together actions and improvements to propose to the team for 2024.

Presentation

We’d love to give everyone the chance to go through the presentation whenever they prefer, so here below you can find a 5 minute video to follow along.

Community Team Engagement Program SupporterProgram 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. Survey 2023 – Video Presentation

If the video presentation doesn’t suit you, below is the pdf file:


The Google Slide format is available and downloadable at this link.

Please feel free to share any feedback or thoughts related to this analysis in the comments to this post. I want to thank the whole Community Team and each one of its contributors for the passion and caring of their contributions: this has a huge and positive impact on our community.

A special thank you to @mysweetcate for her patience and support while I was working on this analysis.

#community-engagement, #survey

Proposed 2024 Global Community Sponsorship Program

If your company is interested in global sponsorship, please indicate your interest by emailing support@wordcamp.org by November 30, 2023.

After deliberation and conversation with current Global Sponsors, we have the proposed draft for the 2024 Global Community Sponsorship Program. If you know a company that you think would be a good candidate for global sponsorship, please suggest they review this post, provide feedback, and email support@wordcamp.org for more details!

TL;DR

In 2023, the in-person 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. number increased by 60% compared to 2022. With the new Next Gen Events, we expect the number of events to keep growing in 2024. Package rates will increase from 2023 to 2024 to reflect that growth, as well as the rising cost of hosting events.

Highlights from 2023 that will be kept in 2024

  • One package for the whole program, with three tiers: Gold, Silver, and Bronze.
  • For top level sponsors (Gold), the option to have one brand as the global sponsor, and select affiliated brands for representation at each WordCamp (one brand per WordCamp). This is in reflection of the high number of mergers and acquisitions in the WordPress space in recent years.

Questions? Feedback?

If you have any questions, observations, or critical feedback about the program in general or these proposed changes, please comment on the post! Thank you for the diligent work in creating this year’s program, @kcristiano, @sippis, @harmonyromo, @angelasjin, @cbringmann, and thank you to our current Global Sponsors for their input.

Read on for full detals

#global-sponsorship

Contributor Working Group: Mentorship Chat Agenda | August 17th 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER)

It’s time for the next Mentorship chat of the WordPress Contributor Working Group. We’re meeting this Thursday (August 17th) to continue our work on improving the contribution experience of WordPress – in light of the graduation (and success) of our Mentorship Program Pilot. For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post and our past chats.

Meeting times

We will be holding these chats in multiple timezones to make accommodations for as many timezones as possible. These chats will continue to be held on the Third Thursday of every month.

The chat will be held on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack. Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file which contains calendar entries for our upcoming chat, so that you won’t miss it. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. Everyone interested in improving the contributor experience in WordPress and building future mentorship programs are welcome to attend!

Pinging some of our active working group members as well as facilitators/mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. from our latest mentorship program pilot:

@adityakane, @angelasjin, @askdesign, @carl-alberto, @casiepa, @cbringmann, @coachbirgit, @courane01, @desrosj, @foosantos, @francina, @harishanker, @javiercasares, @jeffpaul, @jominney, @juliarosia, @kafleg, @leogopal, @leonnugraha, @meher, @milana_cap, @kirasong, @mrfoxtalbot, @mysweetcate, @nao, @nomadskateboarding, @onealtr, @oglekler, @patricia70, @patriciabt, @realloc, @sereedmedia, @st810amaze, @sumitsingh, @sz786, @thehopemonger, @thewebprincess, @topher1kenobe, @tobifjellner, @unintended8, @webtechpooja, @yoga1103

Agenda

Last week, we wrapped up the pilot cohort of our mentorship program – congratulations to us! While the program is still fresh in our minds, let us use this week to look back at it, and share our learnings and feedback.

1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins
How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves.

2. Evaluating our Mentorship Program’s Pilot Cohort
First of all, kudos to everyone for facilitating the huge success of our mentorship program. We would not have been able to achieve what we did, had it not been for your hard work! Let us take a look at our pilot program, and share any open feedback on how it went. Please feel free to talk about what worked, what did not, and where the program could be improved. Let us also discuss any pending tasks from the program as well as any pending next steps.

3. Next Steps for our Working Group
Now that our pilot program is over, it is time to start working on the next steps for our group. What should we do next? Should we host another cohort, and if so when? How do we facilitate mentorship in WordPress going forward?

4. Questions, thoughts, and open floor!
If we still have time after all that intense discussion, we’ll open up the floor for discussing mentorship broadly and our program!

Additionally – since many working group members will be attending WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event., let us explore whether we can meet informally at the event, possibly on contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.!

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #mentorship-chat

Recap of the Contributor Working Group’s Mentorship Chat on June 15, 2023

Welcome to the recap post of the contributor working group’s mentorship chat that was held on June 15th, 2023. In this chat, we finalized the dates for our pilot mentorship cohort (July 12th to August 9th), and kicked off project management in preparation for the same.

In attendance: @adityakane @oglekler @yoga1103  @st810amaze @onealtr @tobifjellner @javiercasares @courane01 @sereedmedia @juliarosia  @harishanker  @leonnugraha  @patricia70 @webtechpooja @casiepa @realloc @peiraisotta @coachbirgit @angelasjin @chaion07 @ronakganatra @fitehal @sumitsingh @siddhantwadhwani @carl-alberto @kafleg @hapiucrobert @devinmaeztri @zunaid321 @christopheramirian

Notes: @harishanker

Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/06/14/contributor-working-group-mentorship-chat-agenda-june-15th-0700-utc-apac-emea-and-1600-utc-amer/

Meeting Start

EMEA: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1686812403775139
AMER: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1686844802822219

Project Updates

We kicked off the chat by sharing our project updates thus far:

  • Thanks to @leogopal, we now have a fully-fledged GitHub project board for our project. Our group will be working on adding tasks and content to the board. Group members also shared their wordpress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ and GitHubGitHub 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 be the repository owner. https://github.com/ profiles to be added to the board. 
  • We also have a draft of the call for mentees post which is ready for publishing. 

Updates from 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. Europe 2023

The Contributor Working Group had an informal tribe meeting at WordCamp Europe 2023 with nearly twelve participants. We did an informal discussion of the program, introduced the pilot, and brainstormed different aspects of our program. In the discussion, we arrived at two important updates:

  • Our pilot cohort will kick off on the second week of July (July 12th) and will run for four weeks until August 4th. We discussed this at the cohort and group members approved the same. 
  • Continuing from our last chat, we finalized the following teams were finalized for our pilot. 
    • CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.
    • Community
    • Docs
    • Photos
    • Polyglots
    • Support
    • Test
    • Training

Wins from the past month

Our group did not forget to celebrate some wins from the last month! 

  • Our contributor mentorship program was featured on the June Edition (Episode 57) of The Official WordPress Podcast – WP Briefing. Support from @chanthaboune – our executive director, was a great encouragement for our group and for our work!
  • At WordCamp Europe 2023, our group and our work got a lot of attention with several folks expressing interest in being a mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues., mentee, or a facilitator. Our mentorship program also found a prominent mention in the event’s keynote session with Matt Mullenweg, Josepha Haden, and Matias Ventura. Check out the Q&A video of WordCamp Europe 2023 to catch the moment!

While our wins were humbling, we reminded ourselves that we still have miles to go! 

Implementation and Project Management for our Pilot

With dates finalized, we started working on steps to implement our pilot program. We’ll be using our GitHub Project Board to coordinate everything. The action items are divided into high and medium priority, and we sought group members’ help in proceeding with it.

High Priority Action items

  • Call for Mentees announcement
    We already have a draft post going which we aim to publish by early next week. Make/Marketing has also offered to review and amplify the same
  • Finalizing our mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.
    Many group members have offered to become mentors for our program, we hope to finalize at least 5-10 mentors. For our cohort. 
  • Recruit Make/Team Representatives and support their involvement in our pilot.

As shared earlier, we have the following teams in our pilot program. Core, Community, Docs, Photos, Polyglots, Support, Test, and Training. Group members offered to reach out to these teams to get support for our program. 

Medium Priority Action Items

Group members can note down changes or suggestions in this Google Doc: Suggested Changes to Learn WordPress Contributor Courses

  • Prepare mentor script or playbook 📜
    We’re working on a detailed step-by-step guide that mentors can use to adequately support mentees as they go through the contributor mentorship program. We’re collaborating together in this task using this boilerplate script document.
  • Facilitating the program ⚓
    We also asked cohort members to support by facilitating the program (keeping the cohort active and overseeing program progress). While all group members will be engaged in this, anyone who has more bandwidth to support was encouraged to join. 

Making Progress Towards the Pilot Program

With less than a month remaining until the pilot program, we decided to meet more frequently. Our idea is to: 

  • Try a weekly sync on our task, synchronously or asynchronously in the #community-team channel. 
  • Do at least one synchronous audio/video chat before our event.
  • Start a dedicated channel for the working group discussions, but default to public in #community-team as much as possible. 

Discussions

  • We discussed the possibility of a multilingual cohort. While the mentorship cohort will be in English, we’ll try to make it as local as possible by assigning mentors based on language preferences. @javiercasares is also attempting to translate our cohort’s content to Spanish for Spanish language speaking mentees. He has already kickstarted work on the same and is looking for collaborators! @coachbirgit has offered to support German mentees, while @leonnugraha has kindly offered to support mentees from Indonesia. 
  • @angelasjin suggested that we amplify our program in the #team-reps channel to get broad support from team representatives. 
  • Our group members felt strongly about the need for a dedicated channel to discuss the program. So while we will attempt to work in public as much as possible, we will also create and use a dedicated SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel for focussed discussions. 
  • @pascalcasier offered to do an onboarding for group members to the TV team!
  • @milana_cap offered to onboard new contributors to the Docs team.
  • We’re attempting to do yet another contributor working group at WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event. (around contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.). @s810amaze has offered to help broadcast it live.

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #meeting-notes

#mentorship-chat, #mentorship-chat-recap

Contributor Working Group: Mentorship Chat Agenda | June 15th 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER)

It’s time for the next Mentorship chat of the WordPress Contributor Working Group. We’re meeting this Thursday (June 15th) to continue our work on building a Mentorship Program for WordPress and shipping its pilot program! For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post and our past chats.

Meeting times

We will be holding these chats in multiple timezones to make accommodations for as many timezones as possible. These chats will continue to be held on the Third Thursday of every month.

The chat will be held on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack. Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file which contains calendar entries for our upcoming chat, so that you won’t miss it. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. Everyone interested in building a mentorship program is welcome to attend these chats.

Looping in folks that had expressed interest in the program: @coachbirgit @williamsba1, @megabyterose, @wolfpaw, @soulseekah, @courtneypk, @leogopal @milana_cap @unintended8 @webcommsat @meher @kcristiano @meaganhanes @annezazu @kafleg @dpknauss.

Also looping in the folks who attended the last chat:

@adityakane @nao @oglekler @yoga1103 @kirasong @leonnugraha @st810amaze @onealtr @carl-alberto @tobifjellner @javiercasares @sz786 @meher @courane01 @jeffpaul @sereedmedia @cbringmann @angelasjin @juliarosia @askdesign @nomadskateboarding @patriciabt @javiercasares @gounder @unintended8 @webtechpooja @thewebprincess @desrosj @askdesign @francina and @nomadskateboarding

Agenda

We now have a fully-fledged pilot for our mentorship program, and it’s time for our group to start working together to make sure it rolls out as planned!

1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins
How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves.

2. Sharing wins and updates
After our last meeting, our group has made a bunch of progress on our program and have drawn significant attention too! We also held a tribe meeting at the WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. Contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. which was a huge success. We’ll spend some time going over updates from last week so that all group members are up to speed!

3. Implementation and project management for our pilot!
We’ll be kicking off our pilot program soon, and need to start working on things. Let’s talk implementation, create a plan to start working on things, and decide how we work together towards implementing the pilot!

4. Questions, thoughts, and open floor!
If we still have time after all that intense discussion, we’ll open up the floor for discussing mentorship broadly and our program!

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #mentorship-chat

Contributor Working Group: Mentorship Chat Agenda | May 18th 07:00 UTC (APAC/EMEA) and 16:00 UTC (AMER)

The contributor working group is gearing up for its next Mentorship chat on Thursday (May 18th) to continue its work on building a Mentorship Program for WordPress! For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post.

Meeting times

To make accommodations for as many timezones as possible, we will be holding these chats in multiple timezones. Based on feedback from last week, we will continue holding these chats on the Third Thursday of every month.

The chat will be held on the #community-team channel of the Make/WordPress Slack. Here’s the link to a handy `.ics` file which contains calendar entries for our upcoming chat, so that you won’t miss it. These chats have also been added to the Make/Meetings calendar. Everyone who is interested in building a mentorship program is welcome to attend these chats.

Looping in folks that had expressed interest in the program: @williamsba1, @megabyterose, @wolfpaw, @soulseekah, @courtneypk, @amethystanswers @leogopal @milana_cap @unintended8 @lesleysim @itsjustdj @evarlese @prathameshp, @webcommsat @meher @kcristiano @leonnugraha and @dpknauss.

Also looping in the folks who attended the last chat:

@adityakane @nao @oglekler @yoga1103 @kirasong @st810amaze @onealtr @carl-alberto @tobifjellner @javiercasares @sz786 @meher @courane01 @jeffpaul @sereedmedia @cbringmann @angelasjin @juliarosia @askdesign @nomadskateboarding @harishanker @javiercasares @gounder @unintended8 @webtechpooja @thewebprincess @fitehal @desrosj @askdesign @nikita22 and @nomadskateboarding

Agenda

Last week, our focus was on finalizing a Minimum Viable ProductMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia (MVPMinimum Viable Product "A minimum viable product (MVP) is a product with just enough features to satisfy early customers, and to provide feedback for future product development." - WikiPedia) to test out our Mentorship Program. This week, based on all our findings, we have finalized a pilot for our mentorship program and start working on implementation steps.

1. Welcome, introductions, and check-ins
How is everyone doing? New members joining the group can also introduce themselves.

2. Mentorship Program Pilot
Based on discussions from our last chats, the working group has identified a pilot program for our projectwide mentorship! We briefly go through the pilot program to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Here’s the link to the draft blog post announcing the program’s MVP/Pilot and a white paper about the program.

3. Implementation and Assigning Tasks
Now that everyone is on the same page on the pilot program, we start talking about implementing our mentorship program! We will try to come up with a plan to implement our program, identify a list of tasks, and put out a call for volunteers to help with the different tasks. We will also try and find a project management tool to keep track of our work!

4. Next steps
Based on next discussion this week, we will identify a task list for the group until next week.

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

#contributor-working-group #mentorship-program #wpcontributors #mentorship-chat

The Next Generation of WordCamps

Since 2006, WordCamps have been a staple way that WordPress enthusiasts meet. The Community team has long held that the purpose of all WordCamps, and WordPress events broadly, was to connect WordPressers, inspire them to do more with WordPress, and encourage them to contribute back to the project. 

Especially in recent years, how the WordPress community meets has fundamentally changed. And, as more and more events are organized, several challenges have emerged, some we experienced even before the pandemic. To address these challenges, organizers, community deputiesProgram 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., and mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. have begun to discuss different ways of meeting. 

To that end, let’s embrace these challenges and modernize our events by making some big shifts to why and how we meet. 

A new purpose

Connection, inspiration, and contribution are undeniably important to WordPressers. However, as events have returned, communities see that people are much more selective about what events they attend and want to know what they will gain by participating. 

The following proposed purpose of WordPress events is based on conversations with various community members:

WordPress events spark innovation and adoption by way of accessible training and networking for users, builders, designers, and extenders. We celebrate community by accelerating 21st-century skills, professional opportunities, and partnerships for WordPressers of today and tomorrow.

What does this mean for our events?

The hope is that a period of innovation and experimentation will follow this critical shift in the purpose of our events, with the following outcomes: 

  • Events curated for clearly defined audiences, resulting in a clearer idea of what attendees will gain from participating. For example events for students, for designers, for contributors, etc. 
  • A more precise focus around event content type or topic. This also will help further clarify who the event is for. For example events on AI and WordPress, user experience, enterprise, etc. 
  • A variety of event formats that are freshly exciting and engaging to attendees. For example workshops, unconference, job fairs, pure networking, etc.

But wait, where does this leave current WordCamps, 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., and flagships?

While experimentation of “Next Gen WordCamps” is strongly encouraged (someone, please help me come up with a better name than that!), meetups, currently planned WordCamps and flagships will continue. Here’s what the Community Team anticipates:

  • Local meetups: I strongly recommend that we continue encouraging local meetups. These are our most easy-to-access events because they can be organized by anyone and are started fairly quickly. They provide consistent, local, in-person connection and are a great, lower-barrier way to build community management and event organizing skills. With that in mind, let’s continue to 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.!
  • Currently planned WordCamps: All currently planned WordCamps can continue as is and the Community Team will continue to support them. New applications for WordCamps will be encouraged to experiment with different formats. 
  • Flagships (WordCamp US, WordCamp Europe, WordCamp Asia): These will remain our largest, broadest event that fully capitalizes on the energy of a large crowd. They’ll be the place to highlight the latest, greatest, and coolest in WordPress and where we are going. 

As we experiment with “Next Gen WordCamps,” the community team can reevaluate our full events program and how events coexist happily. 

Some suggested next steps

This change will inevitably generate a lot of excellent discussions. Let’s embrace a period of experimentation and lean into the ingenuity of the WordPress community. 

To that end, organizers who want to try out a “Next Gen 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.” are invited to begin pitching their ideas (come chat in the #community-events channel or email support@wordcamp.org). As long as the idea matches the new purpose and aligns well with WordPress community 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. values and community spirit (think five good faith rules, our desire to be inclusive, diverse, and as welcoming as possible, etc.), we approve the idea and provide some financial support from the global sponsorship fund. Organizers will be expected to publicly share the pitch and write a recap of the event, with some evaluation of event success.

With innovation comes the need for revised tooling and logistics, and future posts will request feedback on and discuss those needs. This is also a great opportunity for a beautiful blue sky exercise post on event types and formats.

Share your thoughts

This is a change; change always comes with questions, challenges, thoughts, nervousness, and excitement. Please share everything you’d like! In particular, it would be helpful to hear: 

  • What are your thoughts on the updated purpose for WordPress events?
  • What do you envision “Next Gen WordCamps” to look like?

Do you already have a specific idea in mind for a new event type? Use this form to share it with the Community Team!

#next-gen-events