Cultivating More Effective Contributing on Contributor Days

Contributor Days are usually single day events focused on all things related to contributing to WordPress. They often accompany larger WordCamps, but are sometimes planned along smaller ones or even as ad-hoc events with specific focuses. People at all experience levels, backgrounds, specialties, etc. are welcome.

For larger or flagship (US, Europe, Asia) camps, various Make WordPress teams (CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., Community, Documentation, Polyglots, etc.) will have designated table leads to help orchestrate focused discussions or efforts. However, at many events the overwhelming majority of time at 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/. is usually spent in one of two areas:

  • Helping people decide which team’s mission and work speaks to them and fits their skill sets or passions
  • Onboarding people interested in specific teams in order to get started contributing

While these areas are very valuable and there should always be some amount of this at Contributor Days, it’s not necessarily the best use of the very limited amount of face to face time contributors have together in person. Even new contributors tend to get frustrated with the amount of time onboarding takes to reach a state where they can actually start contributing.

I fielded a unique request/feedback today from a new contributor. She indicated it took half the day to get everyone set up, then it was lunchtime, and after lunch people were getting sleepy. Add in that it took folks a while to rotate around through different teams to find what really spoke to them.  She wished we had a 2nd day for contribution time. I wonder if we could do a new contributor morning and then 1.5 days of actual work time for intl camps.

Feedback Courtney Robertson(@courane01) shared in the Making WordPress Slack

While adding a day could be an option for some camps to consider, WordCamps are already quite time intensive, even more so for those that have traveled a great distance to attend (which is the majority of attendees for flagship camps). The ability to extend the commitment of attending 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. by even a half day is also not a privilege that everyone has for a variety of reasons, from financial constraints to social responsibilities. With these complexities in mind, the best ways to improve the effectiveness of Contributor Days will likely need to be focused on the time prior to the events themselves.

What’s Been Tried so Far

Though there are some planning and onboarding resources shared between WordCamps, they mainly fall into two buckets:

  • Logistical planning for organizers
  • Team specific documentation for team/table leads

There have also been some new contributor focused resources that have been created for specific events, but few if any have been reused in following events. Here’s a list of a few:

Specific teams have also created their own team specific resources related to Contributor Day:

After some back and forth between several contributors involved with many of the tools and efforts above in 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/. (@courane01, @desrosj, @oglekler, @st810amaze, @isabel_brison, @milana_cap, @sereedmedia, @harishanker, @webcommsat), the discussion was paused so this post could be published (posts are better at preserving discussions for historical reference).

Some other points, action items, and takeaways from the discussion so far (which you’re encouraged to go read in full):

  • All contributors can benefit from better documentation and onboarding any day of the year, not just Contributor Days.
  • Encouraging contributors to prepare for Contributor Day before arriving at the event would make the day itself much more valuable and productive.
  • Each team will have its own onboarding process and documentation. This should be compiled in a similar location for every team.
  • Collecting all onboarding information in one place will make it easier for Contributor Day organizers to communicate this information to attendees before the event.
  • Better descriptions of team duties and responsibilities with the proper global context would help new contributors determine which team they’d like to contribute to before arriving at the event.
  • Better summaries of the planned activities and focuses for each team at a specific Contributor Day beforehand would make it easier for contributors to determine which team they would like to contribute to before arriving at the event.
  • A uniform way to collect this team specific info would really help WordCamp contributor day / event organizers.
  • By Make Teams having more time to plan, they can also plan collaborations or joint discussions with other teams, eg. marketing team and training team have used contributor events to work jointly on tasks or discussions at an event, a suggestion has come from core to work on specific old tickets which attendees could read about before the event and may be relevant for other teams too
  • Bigger camps have much greater resources than smaller ones. Documenting and sharing the efforts from larger camps could enable more smaller camps to have Contributor Days, which teams from WordCamp Europe have tried to do.
  • Contributors that created tools related to Contributor Day have other responsibilities and often are unable to properly maintain them or make them flexible enough for other camps to use.
  • Sharing information with attendees 1 or 2 weeks prior is likely not enough time (especially camps that require further travel). But sharing 2-3 months in advance is likely too difficult (table leads may not be known, and registration may not have even opened yet).

And finally, some tangentially related items that were mentioned in the discussion:

Thoughts & Feedback

This post is not only meant to document the discussion and several action items that were identified, but also to gather any feedback from the wider community and volunteers with an interest in helping to complete the related initiatives. If you have any additional thoughts on this topic, please weigh in below!


Props @courane01, @desrosj, @oglekler, @st810amaze, @isabel_brison, @milana_cap, @sereedmedia, @harishanker, @webcommsat for participating in the original discussion, and @webcommsat, @annezazu, and @isabel_brison for peer reviewing this post prior to publishing.

#contributor-day, #contributors

Suggest Topics for the 2023 WordPress Community Summit

Summary: This is a request for all Contributor Teams to suggest Community Summit topics by January 16, 2023.


As announced at 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. US 2022, the 2023 WordPress Community Summit will be held August 22-23 in National Harbor, DC, USA. 

The Community Summit brings together WordPress contributors, team leads, and diverse community voices to discuss the challenges and clarify the vision for WordPress in the years ahead. The Community Summit is an “unconference,” without slides, selected speakers, or planned presentations. The Community Summit will provide a valuable opportunity to hold in-person discussion on important topics across contributor teams and community-wide. It meant to be a safe space to exchange ideas and viewpoints.

To this end, the lead organizing team requests input from all Contributor Teams.

What topics would:

  1. Help advance your team’s work or help strengthen the overall WordPress 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; and
  2. Specifically benefit from dedicated, in-person, cross-team discussion at the Community Summit?

Please suggest Community Summit topics via this form on a rolling basis.

Questions? Email communitysummit@wordcamp.org

#2023, #communitysummit, #contributors

How to contribute to the Global Community Team

These are some of the different options for getting involved with the WordPress Global Community TeamGlobal Community Team A group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. 🙂

1) The best way to start is by organizing 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. and/or WordCamps in your city. If you feel like you can represent WordPress, follow the code of conduct for WordPress events, and follow the five good-faith rules for WordPress 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, then you can apply to join the program: 

  1. a) Check if there is a WordPress Meetup group in your city – if there is one, join it, attend the events, and step up by either helping the organizers or becoming an organizer yourself!
  2. b) Check if there is a WordCamp in your area – you can attend, apply to speak, volunteer, sponsor and/or help organize your local 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.!
  3. c) If there is not an existing WordPress Meetup group (or if there is an inactive group) in your town/city and you want to start one, you can apply here – you’ll receive a reply within a couple of weeks.

2) If you already have experience organizing a successful WordCamp and have an availability of 2-3 hours a month, you can apply to become a WordCamp mentor here: – you’ll receive a reply within a couple of weeks.

3) If you have had at least 1 year of experience as a Meetup organizer and/or have been a WordCamp lead organizer, you are familiar with the WordPress Open Source project and philosophy, you have at least 2-3 hours a week available for contributing, and you accept our Code of Conduct, you can apply to become a Community 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.. We are a team of community-minded people around the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each.. You can apply to join the Global Community Team as a deputy here – you’ll receive a reply within a couple of weeks.

Note: if you have any additional questions, join us in the #community-events channel of Make WordPress Slack, we’ll be happy to help you there!

#contributors

Call for volunteers: Contributor Drives Document

Hi Team

we have been contacted by Angela Jin, who is putting together some documentation for small scale contributor drive events for individual Make WordPress teams.

The goal is to create a how-to resource which hopefully will make organising contributor drives an easier process for everyone involved .

This documentation will consist of:

  1. A “Contributor Drive Community Team Overview”, which will provide information about your team and the projects available for contributor drives
  2. A general “Contributor Drive Overview” that introduces what contributor drives are and how to organize one.

Feedback from the Community Team is needed to identify projects within the Community Team that are suitable for contributor drives: we should be also able to explain how each project fits into the overall team goals, what steps contributors would need to take to tackle the project, as well as what resources/tools/skills contributors need to do so.

Angela is working on a document and it would be great if someone within the team could lead this effort.

If someone is interested in working on this, please say so in the comments 🙂

Thanks!

#contributor-day, #contributor-meetup, #contributors

Contributor Survey

Did you contribute to WordPress through any of the contributor teams in 2015 (including the community team, which includes local event organizing)? If so, could you contribute few more minutes to fill in the 2015 contributor survey? It will help us establish some baselines around the contributor experience so that we can see how things change over time.

The survey is anonymous (so you can be extra honest), all questions are optional (so you can skip any that you don’t want to answer), and we’ll post some aggregate results by the end of January. It took testers 5-10 minutes to complete on average (depends how much you have to say), so I bet you could knock it out right after you read this post! 🙂

There are two sections of the survey. The first has questions about team involvement, recognition, and event involvement, and is pretty much what you’d expect from an annual survey (which teams did you contribute to, how happy are you as a contributor, etc).

The second section is about demographics so we can take a stab at assessing how diverse our contributor base is. All questions are optional, but the more information we have the better we can figure out what we need to improve. If there’s some information you’d rather not identify, that’s okay, but please do not provide false information or use the form to make jokes — just skip those questions.

The survey will be open until January 15, 2016. Whether you have 5 minutes now, or 10 over lunch (or whenever), please take the 2015 contributor survey. Thanks!

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., WC orgs, and 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. orgs: I know you all filled in an annual survey specific to your role. This one is less specific in the part about team activity, and more specific in the demographics part, so it would be great if you could fill it in, too.

#annual-survey, #community-management, #contributors, #surveys

Get Involved Table at WCUS (and all 2016 WCs)

We’ve said before that we’d like to have a Get Involved table at every 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.. This is the year!

  • Will you be at WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event.? Are you interested in helping staff this table? Andrea and/or I will be there most of the time, but I’d like to rotate in some replacements, especially anyone who’s interested in having one at their WordCamps in the future, or anyone who actively gives advice to WC organizers (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., formers orgs who are active in #events 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/. or in org forums).
  • I’ve updated the banner that describes the teams since last year, and ordered extras. I’d like to have these shipped between WCs like we do with the camera kits, and would like to get a few volunteers willing to help with keeping track of where the banners are/making sure they get sent to the appropriate next event in the region. Anyone interested?
  • I’d like to get some postcards printed in place of/in addition to the flyers I have made in the past. Any designers want to volunteer to help put those together?

#contributors, #get-involved, #wordcamps