Tag Archives: community

Matteo Enna 12:03 pm on June 5, 2024
Tags: #team-meeting, , community, ,   

Community Team Meeting Agenda for 6 – June – 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, 6 June 2024 at 12:00 PM UTC
Americas friendly meeting: Thursday, 6 June 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.

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.

  • Current challenges of WordPress Events. Shaping the future
    • Events program has seen significant challenges in bringing new users and new attendees in recent years due to many factors. To that end, this conversation aims to examine the events program’s current state and explore what changes could attract fresh users to the WordPress Project. Read carefully and share feedback before June 28, 2024. 
  • Recognizing Contributions and Acknowledging Challenges
    • This conversation is posted on the Sustainability blog to address the challenge of recognizing all contributions across the project.
  • Project Health Dashboards
    • Following the discussion about the contribution recognition challenge, the whole community is invited to share ideas and feedback about what tools we can use to create dashboards for the contribution teams. Please join the conversation and leave feedback before June 17.

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

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

Shusei Toda 4:40 am on May 2, 2024
Tags: , community, , ,   

Community Team Meeting Agenda for 2 – May -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, 2 May 2024 at 12:00 PM UTC
Americas friendly meeting: Thursday, 2 FMay 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, #community, #meeting-agenda, #team, #team-meeting

Isotta Peira 2:39 pm on March 6, 2024
Tags: , community, , , , ,   

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

Cate DeRosia 8:44 pm on February 27, 2023
Tags: , community,   

Proposal: Modify the Events and News widget to show topic-based meetups worldwide

Published on behalf of Amber Hinds (@amberhinds on Make Slack)

The purpose of this post is to discuss proposed changes to the Events API that displays upcoming events from Meetup.com 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. groups in the WordPress admin dashboard widgetWidget A 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..

Background 

Topic-Based 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.

In April of 2021, a proposal was created to allow topic-based meetups in the Meetup chapter program and in May 2021, meetup applications for topic-based groups were accepted.

There are currently three meetups in the chapter program that are topic-based rather than city-based:

These meetups have a city location of San Francisco, CA because that is the location of WordPress headquarters, however they each offer online events via Zoom that are open to anyone in the world (rather than in-person events). 

The WordPress 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) Meetup and Learn WordPress Online Workshops are holding events at times that are optimized for people around the globe so that some events will always be in the daytime, regardless of where you are in the world.

WordPress Events and News Widget

The WordPress Events and News admin dashboard widget displays upcoming events filtered by proximity to a city. This geographic radius makes sense for in-person meetups where people are unlikely to drive long distances to attend a meetup.

For the three topic-based meetup groups, this means that their events are only visible in the WordPress admin Events and News section if someone has set their location to San Francisco.

A challenge of the current geographic restrictions is that many users will be presented with a message telling them that there are no events they can attend and prompting them to start their own meetup. While we do want to prompt people to start meetups in their cities, it’s a missed opportunity to not make people aware of upcoming events that they can easily attend online.

Proposed changes: Allow events from topic-based meetups to show in the Events and News widget worldwide

The WordPress admin dashboard Events and News widget is a key way meetup groups can reach attendees to promote their events and may be the first exposure a new WordPress user has to the meetup chapter program. 

While the current geographic restrictions on event display make sense for a city-based group, they do not make sense for a group that is not city-based, holds events exclusively online, and which is intended to have worldwide speakers and attendance.

Benefits of this change

Changing the Events and News widget to include meetups from WordPress Accessibility Meetup, BlackPress Meetup, and Learn WordPress Online Workshops will accomplish the following:

  • Expose more people worldwide to virtual learning opportunities.
  • Provide increased resources to people in rural or other areas without a city-based meetup, thus leveling the playing field for people learning WordPress in these areas.
  • Increase the potential speaker pool size for these groups as more people become aware of them and participate in meetups.
  • Create a better user experience by showing virtual events in the WordPress dashboard rather than no events at all.

Why WordPress Accessibility Meetup

In the case of the WordPress Accessibility Meetup, making events show worldwide will also serve the goal of increasing general awareness of what accessibility is and emphasizing the importance of building accessible websites. 

Many people have never heard of website accessibility or realize that they need to take people with disabilities into consideration when building websites. The more people who are exposed to the concept of accessibility, the more likely we are to see improvement in the overall accessibility of WordPress websites – whether it’s because content creators will learn to enter their content more accessibly or because 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, theme, and web developers will put more thought into developing with accessibility in mind.

The first step to making the web accessible is ensuring everyone knows about and has easy access to learn accessibility best practices. Putting WordPress Accessibility Meetup events in everyone’s WordPress dashboard is a major step towards growing awareness around the importance of accessibility.

Why BlackPress Meetup

BlackPress is a global WordPress meetup group that aims to raise awareness about WordPress in the global community of creators of Black African descent, and help connect them to other community members and grow participation and sponsorship toward WordPress.

People of Black African descent are underrepresented in technology careers and within the WordPress community. Many people who identify as Black may benefit from a group that supports their growth in WordPress, but may not know that the BlackPress Meetup exists or know to look for a group like it. Making the group’s events show worldwide will help people in their target demographic find the group, thus potentially increasing the number of Black identifying people participating in the WordPress community.

Why Learn WordPress Online Workshops

Learn WordPress is a community initiative to make more training resources on WordPress available to people all over the world. While making this group’s events appear worldwide doesn’t have the same social benefits that the other two have, the meetups held through Learn WordPress Online Workshops have a broad appeal and are specially created to help people work in modern WordPress. 

Things to Consider

If this proposal is approved there are some things to consider, a few of which were brought up in the original discussion on allowing topic-based groups.

  • Will there need to be changes in the events widget to display online event timing correctly across the globe?
  • How many topic-based meetup groups can the Events APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways. support?  
  • Should the Events API handle each topic-based meetup group equally? 
  • Should the events be divided into two lists under headings for “Local Events” and “Global Events”?
  • Should the total number of displayed events increase to account for the large number of weekly events held by Learn WordPress Online Workshops?
  • Because there will no longer be “no upcoming events” results, where would the prompt to start a meetup group be moved to?
  • Could there be a way of filtering global events by language so that people could choose to see events happening only in their preferred language?

Request for Feedback

Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts on including events from topic-based meetups in the Events and News widget worldwide.

#meetups, #community, #diversity

Vedanshu - a11n 11:25 am on December 24, 2018
Tags: community, , , , , ,   

Slack notifications for WordCamp and Meetup application updates


In the WordPress project, multiple teams (#meta, #core, #polyglots, etc.) make use of 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/. notifications to surface new, interesting changes in their team’s respective channel. This includes notifications on new commits, tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. issue updates, new translation strings availability, etc.

(Screenshot of a commit notification)
(Screenshot of a commit notification)


These notifications serve at least two purposes:

1. People interested in following these teams have a very convenient way to look at recent and ongoing activities.

2. It provides a way to acknowledge contributors.

In the WordPress community channels, we don’t currently use this tool, but there may be some cases where having these notifications would add lot of value for us.

These include:

  1. Someone sends a new application for a 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.
  2. Someone sends a new application for a WordPress chapter 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.
  3. A new WordCamp is set to Scheduled status
  4. A new WordPress meetup group is now active in the chapter
  5. A WordCamp application is declined
  6. A Meetup application is declined

For reference, you can see status of some active WordCamp applications here.

These notifications could include whether the event is a WordPress or a Meetup, city and country of the event, description of the update, and 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/ usernames of people who were involved in vetting the event application.

I have written some initial code for this, and it could look like:

(screenshot for when a new WordCamp application is submitted)
(screenshot for when a new WordCamp application is submitted)


(screenshot for when WordCamp is scheduled)
(screenshot when a WordCamp application is scheduled)


(screenshot for when a WordCamp application is declined)
(screenshot when a WordCamp application is declined)


A few more things to note and discuss here:

  1. We can perhaps send these notifications to #community-events,  #community-team, or both of these channels.
  2. The props section will include usernames of everyone who added notes to the application listing and/or changed the listing’s status.
  3. We would also want to send notifications when an application is declined, and not just when it is received or scheduled, in order to credit the 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. who nevertheless did the  work to vet and respond to it. It could normalize the process of declining the application, because it is not uncommon for subsequent applications to be approved.

What do you think? Should we have these notifications? If we have them, then should they be more granular, or less granular? What changes in language or overall appearance would you suggest? Leave your thoughts in a comment on this post!

#community, #slack

Sabina Ionescu 10:18 am on January 9, 2018
Tags: Communications, community,   

Calling European WordPress Communities

Hi, I’m Sabina Ionescu, a member of the 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 Communications Team, and we have a project that we’d love your feedback on. Here goes:

Supporting local WordCamps

If you are a local 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./WordCamp organizer, at some point, you might have faced at least one of these challenges:

  • Not finding enough sponsors for the local meetup
  • Facing challenges for WordCamp fundraising
  • Having trouble attracting WordCamp speakers
  • Not enough WordCamp tickets sold or tickets selling slower than expected

In 2017, the WordCamp Europe Communication team saw the opportunity to support local WordCamps around Europe. The @WCEurope Twitter account was used to promote local WordCamps and send our customized tweets expressing the needs of local WordCamps.


To send out a tweet like the one above required several actions like finding out which are the events of each month, identifying the lead organizer contact details, explaining how WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. team can help and finally posting the tweet a few weeks before the event.

Identifying Meetup/WordCamp needs

So far, this initiative was well received and the WCEU team plans to continue to show this support as we not only see the value in promoting WordCamps, but also the importance they have on building local European communities.

However, there are 50 countries in Europe with sometimes several WordCamps organized in the same country which makes the process of reaching out to local communities quite difficult to go on like before. That’s why we’ve come up with a proposal for managing this process better, which consists of two simple steps:

1. Collecting local communities details

We’ve prepared a form to collect community data (like Twitter official hashtag, Twitter handle, lead organizer’s name) and keep it for further reference for both #Communications and #Community teams. Please take a look at it and comment below this article with your ideas and suggestions:

2. Getting in touch with the WCEU team

Unlike the form above where we collect info needed for promoting communities (like hashtags, Twitter handles, etc.), we’ve also prepared a way of them to directly get in touch with the WCEU team. This form can be used by organizers or WordCamp 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. to reach out to us. The idea behind this form is to be used when facing a challenge (i.e. “we need to sell more tickets”, “we need two more silver sponsors” etc.).

Next steps

After your feedback, our suggestion is for these two links to go in the community handbooks/WordCamp guides and be included in the emails with the local organizers as well as with the mentors mentoring European WordCamps.
Local meetup/WordCamp details
Get in touch with WordCamp Europe

And that’s basically it! Hope this collective effort builds up into a database of local WordCamps that we’ll be able to use over the coming years to help strengthen WordPress communities across Europe. Also, this initiative could easily be replicated by other major WordCamps to support their closeby events.

We’ve notified @andreamiddleton about this and she mentioned @bph has a similar initiative in mind. Also, anyone who has a suggestion on how we could roll this is welcome to contribute!

#wceu

Bridget Willard 5:39 pm on February 1, 2017
Tags: community, dev, , Marketing Community, techsupport, websitehelp,   

Monthly Newsletter Marketing for the Community Team to WordCamp

Editorial Calendar for Community Team to Empower & Educate 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. or 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. Organizers

At WordCamp US’ 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/., the Community Marketing Team came up with this basic structure for an editorial calendar for Meetup Organizers.

It’s important to note that whatever is currently working for you should continue on. This may help spur ideas for new organizers or those who feel like they need a nudge. In no way was this meant to be mandatory.

How to Use This Editorial Calendar

This editorial calendar is designed to help (You) the volunteer community team create a monthly newsletter directed towards Meetup organizers & WordCamp organizers. The goal of the newsletter is to empower & educate organizers.

We have created a suggested format for the newsletter that will update the organizers with current happenings, helpful tips / resources for their events, and a recurring summary paragraph remind them of all accumulated resources as they grow.

When you are writing the newsletter use the outline below. There is an example email template following this format included in this document.

There is also a series of ideas organized by month to help you create your monthly newsletter. These include things such as community happenings, initiatives, & resources. If there is a more relevant topic feel free to use that instead.

Expectations

January is an example month with completed content of how your newsletter might look after following all of these guidelines.

Monthly Newsletter Format

  1. Hello & Happenings
  2. This month’s tip & resource
  3. Complete resources
    1. Checklist
    2. Swipe Files
    3. Best Practices
  4. Call to Action / Open LoopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop.

Monthly Newsletter Template (AKA Swipe File)

Hello Organizer!

This is what’s happening this month in WordPress. We have had another successful WordCamp in [location]….FILLER HERE

As part of our continuing series to help you be awesome at 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. & WordCamps we have created [AWESOME RESOURCE]

As always we have compiled all of these tips into one amazing resource which includes [RESOURCE 1 LINK], [RESOURCE 1 LINK], [RESOURCE 1 LINK], and even more.

Don’t forget, if you have any other questions or need help with your Meetup, feel free to call [???] ??? [???]. Check your inbox next month for even more great stuff. (Remember, some of our emails go to your spam folder.)

 

Monthly Content Ideas for Happenings & Resources

Remember, these ideas are not set in stone. If something is more currently relevant, feel free to make that the focus topic for the month. You are responsible for finding links from the greater WordPress community that can help organizers cover the topic. Note: January is an example month.

January

Hello Organizer!

This is what’s happening this month in WordPress. We have had another successful WordCamp in the Pitcairn Islands. It was their first camp and they attracted over 100 people with the main focus on growing WordPress in Micronesia.

Happy New Year! As part of our continuing series to help you be awesome at Meetups and WordCamps, this month we’d like to focus on the new possibilities for your Meetup group: how to attract new people and newly energize the ones you already have.

As part of our continuing series to help you be awesome at Meetups & WordCamps we have selected our favorite three suggestions of getting new people to your meetup this month:

  1. Ask three to five current members to present a 5-7 mins on the favorite new thing they learned that has helped them with WordPress during the past year. Make sure the items are varied to hit a variety of perspectives from blogging/content, to SEO, to plugins, to security. Pick your favorites.
  2. Ask each of your current members to invite a friend, even if that friend doesn’t work with WordPress. Ask that person to share what’s the best new thing they learned this year. We are betting that item has great WordPress possibilities.
  3. Remember to Tweet your Meetup using hashtag #WordPress and the words “local help and community support.”

As always we have compiled these tips into one amazing resource which includes: 11 Ways to Get People to Meetings, Six Ways to Make Meetings Fun…or at Least Not Suck, and even more.

Don’t forget if you have any other questions or need help with your Meetup, feel free to contact our Meetup point person this month who is [name]. You can catch her 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/. at [username], Twitter [username], or [email].

Check your inbox next month for even more great stuff. When we are going to tackle WordPress Love and Design.

February

Theme: WordPress Love and Design

Hello Organizer!

This is what’s happening this month in WordPress. We held successful WordCamps in [insert locations]. Meetups and WordCamps are changing people’s lives! Thank you for your contribution to making them happen!

This month we’d like to focus on how you can continue to grow your Meetup group, by sharing the love of WordPress! Tell a story about how you’ve made friends and felt community support as you attended a WordCamp.

Here are three ways you can spread the love of WordPress this month:

  1. Reach out to three to five active members and ask them to share your group on social media and how attending the Meetup has helped them to make friends, gain knowledge, get professional feedback and support or anything else.
  2. Ask each of your current members to invite friends. Explain that we are an inclusive community and that we know we can create amazing things together. WordPress newbies are encouraged to come and learn.
  3. Remember to Tweet your Meetup using hashtag #WordPress and the words #community #techsupport #learn. Make sure all levels are welcomed.

As always we have compiled these tips into one amazing resource which includes: 11 Ways to Get People to Meetings, Six Ways to Make Meetings Fun…or at Least Not Suck, and even more.

Don’t forget if you have any other questions or need help with your Meetup, feel free to contact our Meetup point person this month who is [name]. You can catch her on Slack at [username], Twitter [username], or [email].

Check your inbox next month for even more great stuff. Next month we are going to tackle Updating WordPress and Keeping Code Current.

March

Theme: Earth, Sustainability – Updating WordPress and Keeping Code Current

Hello Organizer!

March is a time to turn inward and express gratitude for the word in which we live. As usual there is much to witness in the WordPress world. WordCamps were held in [insert locations] in February, inspiring more users and leaders in our ever growing community. We are so grateful that YOU have chosen to be a WordPress Meetup organizer and want to assist you in any way possible. Please let us know specific ways we can support and sustain your efforts.

This month we’d like to focus on sustaining membership and enthusiasm in your Meetup group! Take a few minutes to let your members know what is happening with WordPress as a whole and with WordCamps worldwide. Let them know that as they spread the word, they are growing a community that contributes and makes WordPress even better!

Here are three ways you can sustain your members and WordPress this month:

  1. Honor one another’s contributions. Take time to highlight special projects or specialties of your members. Each one has something valuable to contribute to the group and everyone loves a little recognition.
  2. Share a snippet of a talk from a local or far-off camp and discuss the value of learning and working together. We sustain one another as we contribute to the worldwide discussion and share code with one another. Remind your members that WordPress extends far beyond a 40 mile radius and that help is there, across the globe, should they need it.
  3. Remind your members to update their website code and use tools such as 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/, make.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 WordPress.tv to further their own knowledge. Ask tyour members to invite friends in person and on social media to your Meetup using hashtags such as #WordPress alongside #community, #techsupport, #websitehelp and #dev.

As always we have compiled these tips into one amazing resource which includes: 11 Ways to Get People to Meetings, Six Ways to Make Meetings Fun…or at Least Not Suck, and even more.

Don’t forget if you have any other questions or need help with your Meetup, feel free to contact our Meetup point person this month who is [name]. You can catch her on Slack at [username], Twitter [username], or [email].

Check your inbox next month to see how our theme of Spring Is in the Air allows you to Create Change with WordPress.

April

Theme: Spring Is in the Air

May

Theme: 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)

June

Theme: Soft skills

July

Theme Celebrating Summer

August

Theme: Community – International Friendship Day

September

Theme: Back to School

Talk Like a Pirate

World Gratitude Day

October

Theme: National CyberSecurity Month

International Music Day

World Mental Health Day

November

Theme: Gratitude

December

Theme: Holidays

Vacation

 

Alternative Themes:

  1. New things (skills, tech, plugins)
  2. Why Accessibility Matters to a Small Business Site
  3. Design
  4. Support
  5. Localization
  6. Community
  7. Training (ie Speaker Training – see curriculum https://make.wordpress.org/training/handbook/speaker-training/ )
  8. WordPress Security
  9. Soft Skills
  10. Giving back
  11. Backup Solutions and Best Practices
  12. How to ask for Support
  13. Googling as a Resource for Solutions
  14. Converting to httpsHTTPS HTTPS is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure. HTTPS is the secure version of HTTP, the protocol over which data is sent between your browser and the website that you are connected to. The 'S' at the end of HTTPS stands for 'Secure'. It means all communications between your browser and the website are encrypted. This is especially helpful for protecting sensitive data like banking information..
  15. Getting ready for httpHTTP HTTP is an acronym for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, and what actions Web servers and browsers should take in response to various commands./2.
  16. Site Speed for Developing Environments (3G, 2G)
  17. Must needed plugins for nonprofits, small business, blogs, etc.
  18. How to apply conditional logic to your forms
  19. Changing Themes and The Struggle with Shortcodes
  20. Why Child Themes are Important
  21. How to use the CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. in WordPress Themes
  22. Page Builders: The Good, The Bad, The Needs Improvement
  23. Moderated Forums: Why have password-protected on-site forums instead of a blog or Facebook Group?
  24. Project Management Tools for the Overworked Freelancer
  25. Partnering Up: Building Sites and Gaining New Client Work with Meetup Friends
  26. If SEO is more than a 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, how do I start to rank?
  27. How often should I blog?
  28. Content Marketing: Long-form versus Short-form
  29. Design for Accessibility: Color Blind, Nearsightedness, and vision-impaired.
  30. Teaching Tech to Kids
  31. Hackathon  Night — Bring your worst problems, we’ll fix them.
  32. JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. Libraries and WordPress Theme Development
  33. Leveraging the REST APIREST API The REST API is an acronym for the RESTful Application Program Interface (API) that uses HTTP requests to GET, PUT, POST and DELETE data. It is how the front end of an application (think “phone app” or “website”) can communicate with the data store (think “database” or “file system”) https://developer.wordpress.org/rest-api/. in your WordPress Site.
  34. Building Your First Plugin
  35. PH What? An Introduction to the beginner.
  36. What is WordPress Really? An introduction to LAMPLAMP LAMP is an acronym for Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP – a stack of free software programs that can function as the environment for running WordPress..
  37. No Stupid Question Night. Seriously. Ask. Let’s chat.
  38. Mentorship Night. Let’s pair up and keep ourselves accountable to continuous learning.
  39. Empathy in Tech – Why Marketers should learn Dev and Devs should learn Marketing
  40. WordPress as a Platform for Apps

 

Original GDoc. 

#marketing-community

Rocio Valdivia 7:23 pm on November 3, 2016
Tags: community,   

WordPress Community Summit 2017

As you might have read already, the 2017 WordPress Community Summit (CS) will take place a few days before 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 2017 in Paris, France (final dates to be determined).

What is the WordPress Community Summit?
Unlike the main WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. conference, which can have as many as 3000 attendees, the Community Summit has historically been an smaller, discussion-based event. Active contributors to WordPress, the 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. project, gather to discuss and work on issues that the WordPress project faces.

The purpose of the Community Summit is to hold face-to-face discussions about issues or subjects that are difficult to discuss online. The last three summits have used an unconference format, without slides, pre-selected speakers, or planned presentations. Because of the format and the goals of the Summit, it’s necessary to cap registration at a much lower number, and to that end the past three events have been invitation-only.

Challenges in past events
Because the purpose of the Community Summit is to hold face-to-face discussions about issues that divide or challenge us as a cooperative community, it’s necessary to limit the number of attendees to ensure that true discussions can happen. In the past, we made sure that key voices were heard by sending invitations to specific people.

Unfortunately, this can create an air of exclusivity around the Summit, and many people assume that anyone who attends the Summit is a more valuable contributor than those who aren’t invited or don’t attend. This can reinforce an “in-crowd/out-crowd” paradigm that the WordPress project works to avoid.

Proposal: a new approach for 2017
If we have to limit our attendance to have productive, collaborative discussions at the Summit, then choosing the participants becomes a challenge if we don’t know what the teams are going to discuss ahead of time. Therefore, this year I suggest we try something new:

Let’s ask teams to decide on the challenging, controversial, or sensitive issues they want to discuss at the summit before the summit is held. Then, once the teams know what they want to talk over in person, they can nominate and select the people needed to represent all points of view in each of those discussions. This way, the event stays small, hard topics get discussed, but the selection process is more transparent and functional.

Here’s how I think that could work:

1) Each make.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/ project team creates a list of relevant topics/issues which are relevant for the progress of the team and the WordPress open source project as a whole, prioritizing topics or tasks which are sensitive enough to specifically require in-person discussion.

2) Each team rep will post their final discussion topic list on the Community Summit blog: https://make.wordpress.org/summit/. Deadline: December 20th

3) After this, each team will decide on a group of representatives to attend the Community Summit (not determined yet, and depending on the team), with selections based on several factors, including: providing representation of a wide, diverse range of opinions (based on the agreed-upon topics selected by each team), diversity, inclusion, and activity of the contributors.

4) Each team rep will post their list of participants as a comment to a dedicated post which will be used to wrangle the attendee list on https://make.wordpress.org/summit/.

5) Of the above list of participants, each team will select two participants who are willing to help with the organization of the event: posts, communication, travel assistance, finding sponsors, etc. The intention of this approach is to propose a more open and team-focus Community Summit with transparent participation from all active contributors and reps of each team. This way we can hopefully anticipate barriers and cross-team difficulties that might come up, and avoid them.

Safe Space
One of the things that made the first summit a unique experience was that it was named a safe space, protected from photos, tweets, blog posts quoting people, etc. This allowed participants to have very candid conversations without people worrying about how their words might be taken out of context later online, or about looking bad if they got into a heated argument for a change instead of tiptoeing around a topic. It also meant that people put their devices away and were 100% present in the conversations. The goal of the summit was to be very candid and blast through community issues, and being distracted by devices or worrying about someone tweeting what you said wouldn’t have been conducive to that. We’ll have a similar privacy request this year, and will ask anyone signing up to agree to it.

Diversity
One of the things organizers of the first summit tried to do when issuing invitations in 2012 was to create a participant group with diverse points of view. A travel scholarship program helped to bring people who might not have been able to afford the trip. Our community has grown more since then, making it even more important to include diverse voices in a summit of leaders and doers. To that end, we’ll be trying to provide travel assistance this time again. Our hope is that in addition to bringing contributors who are financially constrained, we can bring more people from the groups that tend to be underrepresented at events like these.

Note: It’s not the purpose of this post to discuss any logistics or implementation details of the event, that will be handled later in the year and in coordination with the WCEU logistic team.

Do you have thoughts, concerns, or suggestions about this proposal? Please share them in the comments!

#community, #summit

Jenny Wong 1:28 pm on August 5, 2016
Tags: , community, , , , , , , , , team-thing   

Community Team Slack Channels

Hi all,

I want to propose that we rename #outreach to #community-team and follow CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. and 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. 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 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/. 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?

Screenshot of the result when you type Community into the Slack channel search. It responds with 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.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/ 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

It could be extended to – if people feel like it could be helpful to 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. 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. #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 deputyProgram 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. work in a similar vein to #community-mentors. It would also give a clearer view of what it is that 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. 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.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this.

Jenny

#deputies

Cami Kaos 6:45 pm on September 4, 2015
Tags: community,   

Payments and contracts needed September 14-18?

Andrea, Cami, Jen, and Josepha will be on our yearly support rotation the week of September 14th and will not be carrying out our normal duties. For the most part things will continue to run smoothly but a few items will be impacted. If you will need a payment, contract, or insurance certificate for your 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. anytime between September 12-20th please submit the request no later than Thursday September 10.

The Tuesday and Thursday Office HoursOffice Hours Defined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time. with Josepha and Cami will also be canceled. If you have any questions let us know, sooner is better than later.

#community, #wordcamps