Welcome to the official blog of the community/outreach team for the WordPress open sourceOpen SourceOpen 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. 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 12:00 UTC and 21:00 UTC in #community-team on Slack (same agenda).
Events WidgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.
The Community Team bi-weekly meeting is happening tomorrow. The 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!
Below is a preliminary agenda for the meeting. If you wish to add things you’d like bring to into discussion, comment below or reach out to team reps @sippis or @kcristiano. 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.
Preliminary agenda
Deputy / Mentor / Contributor check-ins
What have you been doing and how is it going? What you got accomplished after the last meeting? Are there any blockers? Can other team members help you in some way?
2021 Financial Update for the WordPress Community Harmony provided an update on our financial health after we gracefully weathered the storm that was 2020. In summary, WPCSWordPress Coding StandardsA collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) to validate code developed for WordPress. It ensures code quality and adherence to coding conventions, especially the official standards for WordPress Core. began the 2021 year with just over US$1.3M on hand from which approximately US$465K is owed to the Global Sponsors for their future sponsorships. WPCS also has approximately US$305K in prepaid expenses to various vendors. Cautious spending of WPCS money will still be necessary for the foreseeable future.
Daylight Savings Time adjustment DST is here soon again and some parts of the world are moving their clocks. In previous years, we have moved the meeting times accordingly one hour forward after EU/UK has started the DST on 2021-03-29. What we should do this year, move the meeting times like we have done in the past or stick with the same UTC times regardless of DST?
Proposal to improve the organizing experience for online WordCamps Over the past year, WordPress event organizers around the globe have learned so much about the process of organizing WordCamps, meetups, and other events online because we had to do that to keep going. Now that we’ve had a year to come together in this new way several of us have seen common obstacles. We want to tackle the three most common ones; tools, documentation and money. Please leave your feedback and share this post with everyone who organised online WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. during 2020, their feedback would help a lot!
Request for Feedback: Community Team Stats Dashboard MetaMetaMeta 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 posted an idea about team-specific dashboards asking would help us with our job and what kind of metrics would be helpful. Instead of figuring out the ideas metrics for our team in the comments of the original post and making the comments threads long over there, let’s have the initial discussion in our own P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. blog.
Request for feedback: Review for the dedicated deputy communication channel The private #community-deputiesSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel was created in December, so it’s time for the first review as we agreed. If you are active deputy, please share your thoughts. The post is also an open invitation for all community members to ask questions about the channel, which could help us with the review. If the result of the review looks like there’s no justification for private working space for deputies, the channel will be shut off at the beginning of April. In case the experiment continues, we will do another public review in three months.
Open floor
Opportunity to bring things into discussions that weren’t on the meeting agenda and if anyone has something they would like to share with the team. If you have a topic in mind before the meeting, please add it into the comments of this post.
Hope to see you on Thursday, either on Asia-Pacific / EMEA or Americas friendly version of the meeting!
Preliminary agenda was put together in collaboration of @sippis and @kcristiano.
After the discussion on my proposal about a dedicated communication place for deputies, we agreed to experiment with a private #community-deputies channel in SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. In the discussion, we also agreed to do a public review after three and six months to see how the channel has worked and decide its continuation. The channel was created in December, so it’s time for the first review.
The purpose of the channel is to be a safe place for all deputies to discuss sensitive and private aspects of our work, get peer-support when needed and ask second opinions for event applications. It’s not meant for discussions that could take place in public forums like this blog, #community-team or #community-events channel.
Guidelines for the channel are:
As we all are busy and have an abundance of unread notifications, please avoid irrelevant chatter.
Help to create a safe and welcoming space for all deputies. Be empathetic and help answer questions when you can!
If you feel that the discussion should take place in a public forum, say it and help to move the discussion to the #community-team channel or Community Team blog.
Any decision making that will affect the broader community will be made in public. Help others be aware of when they might be making a decision that should happen after public discussion.
As this year has continued being really strange, I think we really can’t use many numeric metrics while reviewing the channel. That’s why I’d like us to have an open, free form, discussion. Here are some questions to help start that discussion:
Has there been discussion about topics that should have been taken place in public forums instead?
Have you got help with some issue in the channel, which you’d normally handled by yourself or asked help from another deputy in a private message?
Has the channel helped you feel more connected to the team?
In general, what is your feeling about the discussion that has taken place on the channel?
Should we continue to keep using a private deputy channel?
Active deputies, please share your thoughts and raise new important questions to the discussion. This is also an open invitation for all community members to ask questions about the channel, which could help us with the review.
Discussion is open until 2021-03-29. If the result of the review looks like there’s no justification for private working space for deputies, the channel will be shut off at the beginning of April. In case the experiment continues, we will do another public review in three months.
In recent weeks, all Community Team Deputies were contacted personally through SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/., and asked to provide feedback on contributions to the Community Team in 2020. Deputies were also asked about their plans for contribution in 2021, and how team reps and fellow deputies could provide better support.
The check-in was done with three things in mind: to know how many active Community deputies will continue in 2021, if and where there is need for more training, and to get feedback on how to improve the deputy experience. The number side of results is also meant for tracking deputy engagement long term, as the Community Team expressed interest in regular check-ins.
In this post, I’ll be sharing a summary of results and general conclusions.
Response rate and deputy balance
All 35 active deputies were contacted, and 25 (71%) of them answered in a given time (one week). From those 25 deputies, 24% (6) are fully sponsored, 32% (8) are partially sponsored and 44% (11) are contributing on a voluntary basis.
Time contributed
It’s worth noticing that deputies are very active contributors on the wider WordPress project. From all who responded, 60% (15) answered that they contribute to other teams. Over half of deputies contributing to other teams also contribute to more than one team outside of Community.
The year 2020
Deputies estimated that during the year 2020 they have contributed a total of 1051 hours monthly to the Community Team.
Number of deputies
Total hours estimated
On average per deputy
Fully sponsored
6
650
108
Partially sponsored
8
164
21
Fully volunteer
11
237
22
All
25
1051
42
The year 2021
Deputies were also asked to estimate how much time they plan on contributing to the Community Team per month in 2021.
They estimated that they would contribute 906 hours per month in total, around 36 hours on average per deputy. The estimates predict an approximately 14% decrease in contributed time when compared to this year.
Total hours
On average per deputy
Difference in hours from 2020(% change)
Fully sponsored
600
100
-50 (-7%)
Partially sponsored
164
21
0 (+/-0%)
Fully volunteer
142
13
-95 (-40%)
All
906
36
-145 (-14%)
Ways to contribute
Deputies were asked to tell how they have contributed to the Community team during 2020 and in which way they would like to contribute during next year. Deputies had a pre-formed list of options to choose from and a free field to list other ways that were missing from the list. Options were the same for both years and deputies were allowed to select as many options as they liked.
2020
2021
MeetupMeetupAll local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. application vetting
18
16
WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. application vetting
Developing Community Team (Writing proposals or comments on the P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/., etc)
16
14
Participation on a working group
10
13
The following observations were made from the answers:
56% of deputies wish to contribute in more ways than they had this year
16% of deputies want to contribute in fewer ways than they have this year
Routine, administrative tasks, like triaging HelpScout, are not popular ways to contribute amongst fully volunteer deputies. Instead, they prefer to contribute to local communities.
More deputies wish to work with local communities and events during 2021
Partially volunteered deputies expressed interest in routine, administrative tasks during 2021
Estimates on tools
Deputies were asked to estimate when they last participated in a discussion or used tools that are specific to deputy work. This part of the results is for historical analysis, rather than measuring how the team or individuals did in 2020.
This month
Last month
In the last 3 months
In the last 6 months
This year
Not this year
Attended a Community Team bi-weekly meeting
14
3
2
1
2
3
Posted or commented on the Community Team blog
14
3
2
3
1
2
Logged in to HelpScout
13
5
0
2
3
2
Logged in to WordCamp CentralWordCamp CentralWebsite for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each.
17
1
2
3
2
0
Observations from open questions
Deputies were asked to answer a few open questions: where they feel their contribution is most impactful, what team reps could do to better support deputy work, and if there are any blockers in contributions to the team.
Some observations can be made from responses to these questions:
Almost all of the deputies feel that their contribution is most impactful when mentoring event organisers and local communities.
Only a handful and mostly experienced deputies mentioned things related to Community Team management (proposals, team development, mentoring others, documentation etc.) as contributions that they feel are impactful.
Nearly half of the deputies felt that they had received enough support from team reps and fellow deputies.
Some deputies felt that the Community Team should do more outreach, frequent updates on what the team is doing, and highlight project-wide updates with the team more often.
Some things in the team are moving too fast or too much information is put out in a short period, making it challenging to follow with everything happening, especially for fully volunteer deputies.
There were suggestions for how tools and work procedures could be improved. For example, having shifts could help deputies maintain a regular cadence for routine tasks.
Deputies that found writing proposals most impactful wished for more active engagement from other deputies on Community Team blog posts, and help in getting more voices heard from the wider community.
Almost all full volunteer deputies have had time allocation challenges, because of COVID-19 implications or other things happening in their personal life.
Any follow up thoughts?
Did these results raise some questions, thoughts, additional observations or interpretations? Was there anything that came up in these results that you think we need to discuss in greater detail? Please share your mind freely on the comments! Please share your thoughts before 2021-01-07.
Big thanks to @angelasjin and @courtneypk who did the deputy check-ins with me and helped with this post!
I’d also like to use this opportunity to thank a few fellow deputies that are going to take a break from deputy duties. @francina and @bph have been long-term deputies developing the team, a great inspiration to others and really valued members of the team. Thank you for all your contributions! Luckily we still get to collaborate on other aspects of the Community Team and wider WordPress project.
Our bi-monthly Community Team chat is happening this Thursday, 05 November 2020. Meeting times are detailed below. We use the same agenda for both meetings in order to include all time zones.
P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. posts needing review/feedback
Call for participants: Diverse Speaker Workshops October & November 2020 – Jillbinder – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/16/call-for-participants-diverse-speaker-workshops-october-november-2020/
Addressing Mailchimp and Newsletter service privacy concerns – Hari Shanker R – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/19/addressing-mailchimp-and-newsletter-service-privacy-concerns/
Meetup Organizer Newsletter: October 2020 – Hari Shanker R – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/20/meetup-organizer-newsletter-october-2020/
WordCamp.org URL Migration Complete – Ian Dunn – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/27/wordcamp-org-url-migration-complete/
Tuesday Trainings: Organizing WordPress Meetups Part 1: Getting Started – Cami Kaos – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/27/tuesday-trainings-organizing-wordpress-meetups-part-1-getting-started/
Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on October 28, 2020 – Jillbinder – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/29/recap-of-the-diverse-speaker-training-group-wpdiversity-on-october-28-2020/
Proposal: Event Schema for WordCamp.org – Joost de Valk – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/30/proposal-event-schema-for-wordcamp-org/
Getting more Learn WordPress Discussion Group leaders and attendees – Timi Wahalahti – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/30/getting-more-learn-wordpress-discussion-group-leaders-and-attendees/
Recap of Contributor Working Group Meeting (#WPContributors) for Oct. 21, 2020 – Christina Workman – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/30/recap-of-contributor-working-group-meeting-wpcontributors-for-oct-21-2020/
Proposal follow-up: Dedicated communication place for deputies – forming the guidelines – Timi Wahalahti – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/11/02/proposal-follow-up-dedicated-communication-place-for-deputies-forming-the-guidelines/
Tuesday Trainings: Organizing WordPress Meetups Part 2: Supporting an Online Meetup – Cami Kaos – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/11/03/tuesday-trainings-organizing-wordpress-meetups-part-2-supporting-an-online-meetup/
Months ago, I posted a proposal on creating a new dedicated SlackSlackSlack 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 deputies. After a long and really good discussion, the deputies reached a consensus and would like to give the channel a try, after a set of guidelines have been formed. If you don’t have an idea what I’m talking about, and the idea of a private channel sounds bad to you, I suggest reading the original proposal and discussion that followed that.
It’s now (finally) time to form those guidelines and embark on this experiment together!
These guidelines aspire to be encouraging and not discouraging. These are more to give an idea on the purpose of the channel, rather than creating an uncertain feeling around whether something can be raised to the discussion in the channel. My hope is to keep these as short and clear as possible.
To provide extra clarity on who will be in the channel, and how it will be used:
All deputies with “Active” status in this sheet will be invited to the channel.
The main purpose of the channel is to provide a safe space, and to improve peer support for all deputies, especially those new to the role. In this channel, deputies who are uncertain or hesitant can raise issues or ask questions with a smaller group first before doing so publicly. The channel can also be a place to discuss applications that need a second opinion, or for discussions about financial issues that require confidentiality. If some discussion that takes place could be public, it will be moved to a public forum (#community-team channel or this team blog).
No decisions that affect Community Team, event organisers or the greater WordPress project will be made in the private channel.
We’ll do a public review on the Community Team’s blog on how the channel has worked after three and six months
My proposal for the deputy channel guidelines are:
As we all are busy and have an abundance of unread notifications, please avoid irrelevant chatter.
Help to create a safe and welcoming space for all deputies. Be empathetic and help answer questions when you can!
If you feel that the discussion should take place in a public forum, say it and help to move the discussion to the #community-team channel or Community Team blog.
Any decision making that will affect the broader community will be made in public. Help others be aware when they might be making a decision that should happen after public discussion.
Feel free to share your ideas, thoughts, additions and changes to these proposed guidelines before 2020-11-19. After that, I’ll move forward and ask Slack admins to create the new channel for us.
During the just concluded WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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, each team had to organize an onboarding call before the d-day (contributor dayContributor DayContributor 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/.). We had ours in the Community for an hour, and it was great to be able to put a face to each names we see all the time on SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. and hear each other.
Hence, we (all present at the community team onboarding call for WCEU2020) propose we host one video call monthly for 20-30 minutes to check on each other and possibly learn something new about the other, or offer support where we can!
Next Steps – Picking a day and time to begin this in July 2020.
We would all like to hear your feedback on this proposal! We feel this would go a long way in bridging the gap and boundaries that exists in our world today! Please share any thoughts you may have including possible date and time of the month this may hold 💥💥
We have 36 WordCamps currently on the schedule (yay) but 20 of those events don’t have featured images set so the default is showing on the WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. Schedule.
We have a saved reply ready to go in HelpScout named: WORDCAMP: Banner and “About” text request
If you have a few moments to send out a reminder please sign off on the spreadsheet so we don’t have duplicates sent out. Ideally all WordCamps should be notified by Wednesday, December 11, 2019 with the goal of having all images updated by the end of the year.
Once organizers respond with an image, deputies with admin access to Central.WordCamp.org can update the files.
I want to propose that we rename #outreach to #community-team and follow CoreCoreCore is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and MetaMetaMeta 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. in their sub team channel naming convention which for the Community team would be #community-usage.
For example, the events room would be renamed to #community-events. The way slackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. works means that any channel name changes will not effect or kick anyone out of any room they are currently a part of, just that they will see the name has changed.
Part of the reason why is because many people who are looking for the community team do not look or realise we are in #outreach. This includes a core committer who i would label as an advance Slack user. In fact, when I told them the community team uses #outreach for our community channel their response was
Oh, that’s what that channel is
Weird
I’d expect #community and #community-usage #events I can see potentially being different
But #outreach I always thought was like for engagement with the wider community
Kinda like #marketing
They also pointed out that when searching for a channel, people automatically search for community and get a response of No match found. Did you spell it correctly?
I have also noticed that the #outreach gets messages regarding people doing outreach for their products. Although not often, the mistake is understandable considering what the channel is called. Back when WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/ took to Slack, we were called #community – but many people thought it was a water-cooler location for anyone to have a natter. This was the reasoning behind the switch to #outreach. Instead, I would like to propose we call it #community-team which makes it clear that the channel is for the Community team.
The other reason why I would like to propose these changes is because I’ve been trying to get into updating the handbook, but it’s a really boring process to do on your own and talking about it in #events or #outreach, the conversation gets lost in all the other conversations that are happening in there.
I think that the Core team and the Meta team’s use of #team-thing has meant that conversations are kept focused on the channel topic. It allows for people to only follow conversations that they are interested in and helps with the timezone issue where we have people across the world wanting to follow one particular topic.
At a minimum i can in vision the following channels
#community-handbook – for any editorial issues people find, and want to report and also for handbook writers to gather together and improve the handbooks we currently have.
It could be extended to – if people feel like it could be helpful to WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. mentors #community-mentors – a support location for people mentoring WordCamps in a similar vein to the forum support for the moderators.
And later maybe #community-deputies – a support location for people who are doing deputy work in a similar vein to #community-mentors. It would also give a clearer view of what it is that deputies do for anyone wanting to join the deputy program as they can see the things deputies discuss and talk about.
All these channels will still be accessible to everyone so there is no issue with transparency.
