When we come together we step outside of our comfort zones and regular thinking and open ourselves to new, innovative ideas. When you’re gathered together, away from the distractions of regular life, your mind opens and creativity flows.

While there was lots of innovation around online events, COVID stopped in person events in its tracks, but that seems to be changing.

This post gives us a place to share ideas on how we can support organizers who are trying to restart in-person events in their communities.

What is Blue Sky Thinking?

Blue Sky Thinking is just another way to say “brainstorming”. The idea is simply that the sky is the limit to any ideas you might have to share. Even if it seems unachievable now, who knows when the right pieces might exist to make it possible.

So, for our purposes here, share your ideas below with kindness and compassion as your only limits.

The Goals of This Exercise

We have three goals to meet in this exercise:

• support organizers as they navigate COVID concerns
• help attendees feel safe and comfortable
• offer resources and options that make being together at in person events exciting and interesting

If we don’t meet the first two, then the community is unlikely to use our ideas.

Why? The people we’re trying to bring with us have changed. This article from Andrea Middleton dives into that a little more.

The Organizers We’re Helping

As people, we’ve been through a lot. We’ve all made some painful choices and worked extra hard just to manage what used to be simple tasks. We’re tired and we’re more cautious than ever.

If we’re feeling that way in general, how much harder must it be for those organizing and attending events?

However, if our organizers feel supported and our attendees feel safe, they’ll more readily embrace ideas we’ve laid out for them to implement.

There’s a very good chance this could be achieved by continuing to clearly state our COVID guidelines and how we help organizers implement them, as well as easy to access channels for both organizers and attendees to ask questions.

It’s Time for Your Ideas to Reactivate In-Person Events

Once people are more comfortable being together, we can move one step further and help make organizing events a little easier.

Fortunately for us, WordPress has been far from idle in the pandemic. New programs like Learn and the Photo Directory have been launched, just to name a few. Along with what’s new, there are also some resources that are still relatively unknown to the community like the do_action events.

These new and existing resources could be used to help ease the weight of planning and streamline a return to events with less additional effort on our part.

But let’s not stop there!

Through brainstorming, we can look at the resources we have with new eyes, and possibly even use them as a prompt for more ideas. Who knows where your creativity and unique perspectives can take us!

This is Blue Sky Thinking after all. Don’t let what we have done or current resources limit your creativity. Any and all ideas are welcome here. How we do it or if we can do it are irrelevant. This is a purely open sandbox.

Before You Share

Remember:

• this is asynchronous brainstorming
• there are no wrong answers
• be kind to fellow brainstormers
• the discussion on implementation will come later

Guidelines:

• Share your Concept
• Answer what you can from this list (no pressure here)
  • Why do you think this is a good idea?
  • Who would benefit?
  • Does this meet Community team goals?
  • Does it use any existing resources?
• Post your response by April 22, 2022

Let the brainstorming begin!

#discussion #wordcamps #meetups #brainstorming