Welcome to the official blog of the community/outreach team for the WordPress open source project!
This team oversees official events, mentorship programs, diversity initiatives, contributor outreach, and other ways of growing our community.
If you love WordPress and want to help us do these things, join in!
Getting Involved
We use this blog for policy debates, project announcements, and status reports. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to comment on posts and join the discussion.
You can learn about our current activities on the Team Projects page. These projects are suitable for everyone from newcomers to WordPress community elders.
You can use our contact form to volunteer for one of our projects.
We also have regular Community Team meetings on the first and third Thursdays of every month at 11:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC in #community-team on Slack (same agenda).
tl;dr: Recruit a local organizing team and distribute responsibilities. Too few people handling too many things means stuff gets missed or people get grouchy.
The first step once you’ve been approved as a primary organizer is to put together an organizing team. This team should consist of 5-10 people from your immediate area who want to promote WordPress and help grow the local community. Out-of-town friends do not belong on your organizing team; though you are free to solicit advice from people anywhere, the actual organizing team should be local.
It may be tempting to try and do it all yourself or with a business partner, because you know you can do it or you know you are comfortable working with this person. Challenge yourself, though, and remember that WordCamps are about building local communities. Get to know yours, and involve more of it in the planning of the event. Though you will act as the primary organizer, you should have enough people on your organizing team for everyone to take charge of 1-2 areas of responsibility:
Note that all hands will need to be on deck for the first step of finding a venue and generating fundraising leads, but appoint one person to oversee each so things stay organized.
If any one person winds up with too many things assigned to them, things will fall through the cracks, or that person will be burnt out by the time WordCamp happens. Keep assignments focused, and make use of community volunteers as much as possible to share the effort.
Where should members of the organizing team come from? The meetup group. Businesses that are built on working with WordPress. Local bloggers using WordPress. There’s no one answer, but make sure you’re part of the local meetup group and you’ve invited meetup group members to be part of your team.
The expectation is that all WordCamp organizing team members and volunteers will agree with the principles in our Organizer’s Agreement.
Past WordCamp Organizers: What divisions of labor worked well for your team?
Tip: Here is a quiz on this article. Read quizzes page if you have any questions about quizzes and how to navigate them.