Community Team Meeting Agenda for 7 March 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, 7 March 2024 at 12:00 PM UTC
Americas friendly meeting: Thursday, 7 March 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

#community-team-3, #agenda, #community, #meeting-agenda, #team, #team-chat, #team-meeting-2

#community-team, #team-meeting

X-post: Training Team Update – February 2024

X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/updates: Comment on Training Team Update – February 2024

Events of the Month – January 2024

In a continuing effort to provide some real-time information for event organizers and the community alike, below is a month-in-review post with recaps of the prior month’s events and how they fared financially, in terms of ticket sales and budget.

Updates on WordCamps Held Before January with Open Budgets
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. Tokyo, Japan (Oct 21)
Final Tickets Sold: 424
Approved Attendee Total: 400 
Budget Notes*: Transparency Report has been submitted and is in review. 
Open Items – Finances: still in review
WordCamp Manila (November 11)
Final Tickets Sold: 289
Approved Attendee Total: 230 
Budget Notes*: Transparency Report reviewed but awaiting a few answers to open questions
Open Items – Finances: Open questions sent January 10, 2024 & follow up email sent February 19, 2024, with a deadline of February 26th for a reply
WordCamp Udaipur (December 2)
Final Tickets Sold: 300
Approved Attendee Total: 350
Budget Notes*: Transparency Report has not been submitted
Open Items – Finances: Email check in was sent January 11, 2024, and additional time was allowed for completion. A deadline of March 4th has been set for the final report submission
WordCamp Ahmedabad (December 9)
Final Tickets Sold: 1051
Approved Attendee Total: 800
Budget Notes*: Transparency Report has not been submitted
Open Items – Finances: Post event email check in was sent January 11, 2024, and an additional email was sent February 19, 2024, to request the report.
WordCamp and Events Held in January
Kolkata Career Camp (January 6)
Final Tickets Sold: 158
Approved Attendee Total: 250 
Budget Notes*: Transparency Report reviewed and budget closed
Final cost $3,240 USD/ 270,013 INR and cost per person/day of $17 USD/ 1,709 INR.
Event closed with additional Global Sponsorship funds used of approximately $450 USD / 37,825 INR.
Open Items – Finances: There was a small balance on hand with the organizer after the event totaling 3,805 INR that was transferred to WC Pune to assist with some of their outstanding expenses.
WordCamp Nepal (Jan 12 – 13)
Final Tickets Sold: 859
Approved Attendee Total: 800 
Budget Notes*: Still awaiting Transparency Report submission and final numbers. 
Open Items – Finances: Still Awaiting final Transparency Report**, and the team has been in communication to say the information will be submitted as soon as possible.
WordCamp Zaragoza (Jan 19 – 20)
Final Tickets Sold: 260
Approved Attendee Total: 225 
Budget Notes*: The budget appears almost complete. The only remaining vendor to be paid appears to be for the accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) services.
Open Items – Finances: One more vendor to pay
Jakarta Web Challenge (January 27)
Final Tickets Sold: 171
Approved Attendee Total: 130 
Budget Notes*: Transparency Report reviewed and budget closed
Final cost $3,090 USD/ 48,285,772 IDR and cost per person/day of $18 USD/ 282,320 IDR.
Event closed with a contribution to Global Sponsorship funds of approximately $2,351 USD / 36,737,528 IDR.
Open Items – Finances: There is a surplus with the local organizers totaling approx $633 USD / 9,902,372 IDR that will be returned to Central via PayPal.

Budget Notes*: An event closed on budget if the approved Global Sponsorship amount is what was utilized. If an event is able to raise more sponsorship income or ticket income, or the expenses are less than amounts listed in the approved budget, the additional funds are contributed back to the Global Sponsorship fund. If, on the other hand, an organizing team raises less sponsorship income or ticket income than planned, or expenses are higher than originally budgeted, the additional amount needed to cover all expenses is covered by the Global Sponsorship fund and will be stated as additional Global Sponsorship funds used. This amount represents funds in addition to the approved Global Sponsorship amount.

The goal of WordPress events is to provide a space where community members can come together and share knowledge, build relationships with other members and sponsors, and spread love for WordPress. The goal is never to make money. Because WordPress Community SupportWordPress Community Support WordPress Community Support PBC is a Public Benefit Corporation, created specifically to be the financial and legal support for WordCamps, WordPress Meetup groups, and any additional “official” events organized within the WordPress Community Events program. pays taxes on any income at year end, we strive to hold events where income is equal to expenses.

Transparency Report**: WordCamps that run funds through WordPress Community Support (WPCSWordPress Community Support WordPress Community Support PBC is a Public Benefit Corporation, created specifically to be the financial and legal support for WordCamps, WordPress Meetup groups, and any additional “official” events organized within the WordPress Community Events program.) – meaning WPCS collects ticket income and sponsorship income, and pays vendors directly – are not required to submit a Transparency Report. 
Alternatively, organizing teams that run money locally collect all or some of the ticket income and sponsorship income directly. The team then uses the collected funds to pay expenses of the event. The organizing team is responsible for completing a transparency report after the event where they submit receipts/documentation for all expenses, support for ticket income collected, and support for sponsorship income collected. More info can be found here.

#community-team, #wordcamps, #events-of-the-month

Meetup Organizer Newsletter: February 2024

Hello, Organizers!

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 just around the corner, and there are still a few tickets available. If you’ve been waiting until the final moment to decide whether to go, now is the time to grab your ticket!

WC Europe Call for Volunteers closes on February 28, apply now!

Curious to see all WordPress upcoming events worldwide? Check out the new event page! You can 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. by country, month, and event type and connect with the WordPress communities around the world!

Watch the State of the WordState of the Word This is the annual report given by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress at WordCamp US. It looks at what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and the future of WordPress. https://wordpress.tv/tag/state-of-the-word/. 2023 in your language!

At the last State of the Word we experimented with AI technology! Now you can watch the whole event while listening to Matt Mullenweg speaking the following languages, assisted by AI: Spanish, French, Brazilian Portuguese, German, and Japanese.

Choose your favorite language and enjoy! 

Feeling bold and creative? Apply to organize a brand new event!

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. organizers are the pillar of the WordPress community. With your experience in community and event management, you have probably come up with several ideas for events that would have a powerful impact on your community, but would not fit the format of traditional WordCamps. 

Don’t let this prevent you from giving your community a wonderful event! Apply to organize a creative WordPress event. Innovation is encouraged!

Talking about new and inspiring WP events, have a look at the winners of the Kerala WordPress Photo Festival!

GatherPress Pilot Program

A group of community leaders published the proposal for a pilot program to test GatherPress, a community-developed pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party., within interested and active WordPress meetup groups. For detailed information and join the pilot head to the proposal.

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. of the Month

This month, let’s celebrate the WordPress Meetup Groups of Terni (Italy), Delhi (India), and Gdynia (Poland)!

Gdynia, Poland
 Delhi, India
Terni, Italia

Meetup Organizers, we want to feature you!

We’d love to publish pictures from Meetups all around the world in each newsletter. Do you want your Meetup to be featured? Share 1 picture with the Community team! Rename your picture as “Meetup-name_event-date” and upload it to this folder. The formats supported are JPG and PNG. Please remember, always ask for permission from your group members before taking the picture and sharing it with us!


A special thank you to our Global Sponsors: Bluehost, GoDaddy, Automattic, WPBeginner, and Woo!


If you have any questions, Community Team 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. are here to help. Please email us at support@wordcamp.org or join the #community-events Slack channel. Thanks for everything you do to grow and support the WordPress community—let’s keep sharing knowledge and inspiring each other with our contributions!

See you online soon!

The following people contributed to this edition of the Meetup newsletter: @peiraisotta, @bjmcsherry, @courtneypk, @devinmaeztri, @mysweetcate, @hellosatya#community-team, #meetup-organizer-newsletter, #newsletter

#community-team, #meetup-organizer-newsletter, #newsletter

Documentation Update: Meetup Organizer Newsletter

Every month, the community team writes and schedules the 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. Organizer Newsletter with the help of the Marketing Team.

I’ve updated the Program Supporter Tasks and Tools handbook section with a new Meetup Organizer Newsletter page.

Feel free to update the documentation if needed or reach out to @program-supporters in the #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.

#documentation-updates

Jakarta WordPress Web Challenge

Website: https://events.wordpress.org/jakarta/2024/web-challenge/
Top Participants: https://events.wordpress.org/jakarta/2024/web-challenge/top-participants/
Event Recap Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giz3TYOkrQI&t=10s
Organizer Recap: https://events.wordpress.org/jakarta/2024/web-challenge/web-challenge-2024-recap/

Jakarta WordPress Web Challenge took place on January 27, 2024. The team discussed having a small 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. in 2023, but after the NextGen project was launched in May, we began brainstorming about a new idea in July 2023. @rioburhan, who brought up the original idea, submitted his idea in August, and we started planning the event in October 2023.

The event aims to create a space for WordPress developers to learn from each other. It is a web competition, but the event offers a variety of activities such as:

  • Web pitching by the finalists
  • Web showcase/exhibition for the top 20 websites
  • Workshop for beginners
  • Talk show
  • Sponsors exhibition
  • Community booth

Lessons Learned

  • We started with 3 organizers at the beginning of the event, but we onboarded a few more organizers closer to the event, realizing the amount of work we needed to cover. The more activities, the more details need to be managed.
  • Using government facilities required us to anticipate some bureaucracy and have a plan B.
  • We used a platform called Mayar. We learned how to create and manage the coupon code for all the participants so we could use the Event Dashboard (Tickets –> Attendees) to confirm attendance.
  • We invited sponsors to become more involved as emcees, moderators, and workshop co-facilitators, and to provide prizes such as hosting and licenses.
  • Almost 55% of the participants were first-timers.
  • We tried to reach out to non-WordPress communities and had folks from PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. https://www.php.net/manual/en/index.php Indonesia and the Laravel community.
  • We had a great event without a welcome dinner, after-party, and the need to produce swag.
  • We aimed to provide the Transparency Report within 2 weeks and slightly missed our target. It was relatively easy as we collected all the receipts/invoices and updated our budget along the planning process.

#community-events, #next-gen-events, #wordpress

Project: Reactivation of WordPress Latam Communities

Several months ago, I received a very special invitation from @Isotta to embark on an equally extraordinary project: the Revival of WordPress Communities in Latin America. This call resonated deeply with me, awakening an unwavering enthusiasm and commitment to the revitalization of our WordPress ecosystem in the region.

In this post, we are delighted to present to you the progress and details of this significant project. From the initial planning to the concrete actions we have taken, we want to share with you the journey we have undertaken to revive and strengthen the WordPress communities in Latin America.

Main Objective

Reactivate and strengthen WordPress communities in Latin America to foster collaboration, mutual learning and active participation of members.

Specific Objectives

● Increase active participation
● Create monthly interaction events
● Create strategic and collaborative alliances

Propose activities

  • Form collaborative team to lead the project
  • Translate important handbook material into Spanish
  • Prepare material: Course to become an organizer
  • Organize monthly 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. in LATAM time to teach the course and encourage other communities.
  • Offer individual or group mentoring to the different meetup groups.
  • Have a support channel for organizers.

Project Stages

Stage 1

  • Months: February and March 2024
    • Activities to be carried out
    • Formation of the team
    • Material preparation

Stage 2

  • Months: April – June 2024
    • Activities to be carried out:
      • Course Calendar
      • Communication with the organizers and volunteers of the meetup groups.

We are convinced that together we can achieve great things and build a vibrant and thriving WordPress ecosystem throughout Latin America.

#community-management, #meetups-2, #wordcamps

Announcing the Second Cohort (2024 Q1) of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program

We are thrilled to share the exciting news about the launch of the second cohort of the WordPress Contributor Mentorship program, starting next week, Monday, February 19th! This program offers a special chance for those enthusiastic about WordPress to immerse themselves in the project and make impactful contributions.

Who Are the Mentees?

This cohort is made up of over 50 diverse contributors, each either matched with 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. or part of a task-focused project under the guidance of multiple 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.. These participants were chosen from a pool of 76 applicants from around the globe. All those who submitted an application should have an email waiting for them with the application results.

Program Breakdown

This cohort will span over a six-week period:

  • Weeks 1 and 2 (February 19 – March 3): Kick-off session, initial mentor/mentee check-in, setting contribution goals, and online workshops.
  • Weeks 3 and 4 (March 4 – March 17): Focus on onboarding mentees to their chosen Make/WordPress teams, with support from team representatives, to make their initial contributions.
  • Weeks 5 and 6 (March 18 – March 29): Wrap up, set a 30-60-90-day goal, and a graduation session.

After these six weeks, mentees will gain a solid understanding of the WordPress project, contribute to their chosen Make/Teams, and prepare for continued involvement. Following the pilot cohort’s success, this cohort’s timing is again aligned with the WordPress 6.5 release, providing mentees with a firsthand look at the release process of WordPress.

Our Mentors

The success of this program is largely due to our dedicated mentors who provide one-on-one support, guiding mentees through their WordPress journey.

Project/GroupMentor(s)
6.5 DocumentationAnand Upadhyay @anandau14
Bengali Polyglots OnboardingMuhibul Haque @devmuhib
Community ThemesMargarita Cabrera Ramirez @onemaggie
Ganga Kafle @kafleg
Community/Polyglots/SupportArthur Kasirye @thehopemonger
CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.Kira Schroder @kirasong
Anne McCarthy @annezazu
Benjamin Zekavica @benjamin_zekavica
Docs SprintJenni McKinnon @ninianepress
India Event ReactivationAditya Kane @adityakane
Alexander Gounder @gounder
Aravind Ajith @aravindajith
Yogesh Londhe @yoga1103
Learn WordPress Content TranslationJenny Dupuy @jdy68
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.Steven Dufresne @dufresnesteven
Courtney Robertson @courane01
Photo Directory Reviewer TrainingTopher DeRosia @topher1kenobe
Polyglots & SupportTor-Bjorn Fjellner (Tobi) @tobifjellner
Polyglots Documentation OnboardingEstela Rueda @estelaris
Spanish Community + WPTVNilo Velez @nilovelez
Spanish Community Mentoring and Community OnboardingJuan Hernando @unintended8
Spanish Polyglots OnboardingJosep Morán @josepmoran/
SupportKavya Gokul @properlypurple
Sustainable ContributionPatricia Brun Torre @patricia70
TestOlga Gleckler @oglekler
Pooja Derashri @webtechpooja

Join and Follow Along

In the spirit of openness and collaboration, we invite the WordPress community to follow our cohort’s progress. While not everyone can be assigned a specific mentor,  those interested are welcome to join the #contributor-mentorship channel on Make/WordPress 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/. Here, you can engage in public sessions and stay informed about the developments of the WordPress 6.5 release and the broader contributor community.

For future updates on this program, you can check come back to this URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org:
https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/mentorship-program/ (RSS)

Acknowledgments

This program couldn’t happen without the tireless efforts of our mentors, the Contributor Working Group, and all involved in organizing and supporting this initiative. Your dedication to fostering growth and learning within the WordPress community is invaluable. Let’s make this cohort a success together to enhance mentorship within the WordPress project and empower more contributors!

@adityakane @angelasjin @hellosatya @javiercasares @KafleG @kirasong @nao @oglekler @onealtr @patricia70 @ratneshsonar @unintended8 @webtechpooja @yoga1103 @coachbirgit @josepmoran @harishanker @alexcu21 @alexdeborba @annezazu @askdesign @gusa @nilovelez @tobifjellner @tokyobiyori @topher1kenobe @voboghure @ninianepress @malgra @soberbanda @anandau14 @devmuhib @leogopal @matteoenna @lumiblog @krupajnanda

#wpcontributors, #5ftf, #contributor-working-group, #five-for-the-future, #mentorship-cohort-july-2023, #mentorship-program #contributor-mentorship-program

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

The next Mentorship chat of the WordPress Contributor Working Group is on the cards. We’re meeting today – on Thursday (February 15th) to continue our work on improving the contribution experience of WordPress. For more information on the working group and its plans, check out our launch post and past chats.

Today’s chat is particularly exciting, because we are launching the second cohort of the Contributor Mentorship Program next week (February 19th)!

Meeting times

We will hold these chats in multiple time zones to accommodate as many participants all over the world 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 containing calendar entries for our upcoming chat so 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 is welcome to attend!

Pinging some of our active working group members:

@adityakane, @alexcu21, @angelasjin, @casiepa, @cbringmann, @coachbirgit, @courane01, @devmuhib, @foosantos, @gusa, @harishanker, @javiercasares, @jeffpaul, @jominney, @josepmoran, @juliarosia, @kafleg, @leogopal, @leonnugraha, @matteoenna, @meher, @kirasong, @milana_cap, @mysweetcate, @nao, @ninianepress, @nomadskateboarding, @oglekler, @onealtr, @onemaggie, @patricia70, @ratneshsonar, @realloc, @sereedmedia, @st810amaze, @sumitsingh, @thehopemonger, @thewebprincess, @tobifjellner, @topher1kenobe, @unintended8, @webtechpooja, @yoga1103, @hellosatya, @alexdeborba, @annezazu, @askdesign, @nilovelez, @tokyobiyori, @voboghure

Agenda

In the last mentorship chat, we finalized plans for our next cohort. Last week, thanks to y’all’s timely feedback, we published the call for mentors and mentees for the next cohort!

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

Any volunteers for notetaking, next agenda drafting, or next meeting host?

2. Mentorship Cohort #2 status update
We closed our call for 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. and mentees last week, and we are close to announcing our selected mentors and mentees (waiting for some final confirmation/feedback from mentors). At this point, we will chat about the current state of the selection process for transparency.

3. Draft Program Schedule
A draft schedule for our program is ready! We will be discussing the same in this chat for members’ feedback.

4. Call for Help
As the program is about to launch, we’re going to need a lot of help from our mentors and mentees to make it happen! We will define the areas where help is needed in the chat, but to summarize:

  • Documentation Tasks (Review 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 guides, showrunning documents, checklists)
  • Facilitators (Folks who can engage the mentees throughout the program and run the program broadly)
  • Onboarding sessions hosts (We need representatives from Make/Teams to host sessions on various topics for our group)
  • And finally, some additional mentors (While our call for mentors is closed, we are looking for additional mentors who can support our pool of mentors)

All available tasks can be found here: https://github.com/orgs/WordPress/projects/102/views/4?sortedBy%5Bdirection%5D=desc&sortedBy%5BcolumnId%5D=Labels

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

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/

  • Please make use of the Slack #contributor-mentorship channel for open discussion.
  • Don’t hesitate to share any relevant information for mentorship in general.

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 by the repository owner. https://github.com/

Looking forward to seeing you soon!

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

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:

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.

Circle graph of the survey's answers by number and country: USA 186 (31.3%), India 46 (7.7%), Spain 40 (6.7%), Canada 32 (5.4%), Germany 32 (5.4%), Italy 31 (5.2%), Netherlands 21 (3.5%), United Kingdom 19 (3.2%), Australia 18 (3%), Brazil (2%), Costa Rica (1.7%), France (1.7%), and Other 138 (23.2%)

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
Circle graph titled: Most recurrent challenges for Meetups: Venue and Attendance (39%), Awareness and Perception (29.3%), Organizational Struggles (17%), and Technical Learning Curve (14.7%)

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
Bar graph titled 'What ideas do you have to attract more WordPress users to join the community?'. All vary from 8% to 6% in this order: Diverse offer of topics; Promotion & outreach; beginner-friendly initiatives; Community Engagement and Networking; Onoline Presence and Accesibility.

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