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

Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on February 10, 2021

Summary:

  • Looking for more volunteer and participant signups for the “How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events #WPDiversity: An Interactive, Transformational Watch Party” on February 18th.
  • Shanta is looking for help from our team with promoting the “Great Lakes area: How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events” live workshop on March 4.
  • Our “Creating a Welcoming and Diverse Space” workshop videos are up on Learn. Oneal and Katie are working on items for it.
  • Our team will be holding a work party for people working on items for our group Thurs, Feb 11, 2021 @ 4-5pm Pacific (Friday 12-1am UTC)!
Continue reading

#diversity, #marketing, #wpdiversity

Tuesday Trainings: Encouraging Diversity in Meetups and WordCamps

For this #trainingtuesday, I’m joined by @alliennimmons, @jillbinder, @khleomix, and @mariaojob in a panel discussion on how we can better encourage and support diversity in 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 WordCamps, and in the broader WordPress community. Watch and learn with us, and continue the important conversation on diversity and inclusion in WordPress!

Participants in this panel also referenced a few resources that they hope you will find useful when it comes to thinking about and supporting diversity in your WordPress community.

Transcript available here.

Looking for more great Trainings?

@jillbinder has some great content coming up soon!

Meetups: Would you like to have more diverse representation in the speakers at your online (and when it’s available again, in-person) 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. events? On July 18, we will teach you how to facilitate the workshop that gives your underrepresented community members the motivation, confidence, and tools we need to start: tiny.cc/wpdiversity 

#community-management, #diversity, #tuesdaytrainings

How to run a minority-only event

As I promised in last week’s team chat, here is a draft of some guidelines and resources for running minority-only events. Any suggestions for improvement are welcome!

How to run a minority-only event

The tech industry is notoriously white and male. WordPress is all about democratizing publishing, and one of the major strengths of WordPress is that, just as the WordPress software is easy for everyone to use, the community around WordPress is very friendly and open to everyone. However, newcomers are not always aware that WordPress is a friendly community, and many minorities still have to overcome some big cultural hurdles to feel welcome at tech events. With that in mind, your community might want to have some minority-only events. Here are some guidelines about how to run minority-only events.

What kinds of events are okay?

* study groups (people bring their projects and questions and work together to learn and improve)
* workshops and talks around specific issues relevant to that group of people (imposter syndrome, public speaking, dealing with micro-aggressions)
* pre-event mixers (as a prelude to an all-inclusive event)

There’s a difference between saying “we want to overcome cultural pressures by giving women a safe space to learn where they don’t feel intimidated” vs. “these are casual gatherings that are limited by gender.” You need to have reasons why this particular event is useful to this particular minority group, or why this particular topic is relevant to the group. Some topics are of special interest to minorities, but could also be useful to non-minorities. If that is the case, you should consider holding two versions of the event: one for minorities only, and one that is open to everyone. For example, a workshop about speaking at WordCamps is useful to everyone, but there might be specific issues (such as imposter syndrome) that women/minorities will want to discuss more. At the very least, the curriculum you use in your minority-only event should be made available to everyone, or speakers should be recorded and posted on wordpress.tv.

What groups of people can events target?
Any minority group, or group that is under-represented in technology (ie, non-white straight males):

* women
* people of color
* immigrants
* queers
* transgender people
* people with disabilities

But men!
It might seem hypocritical that events exclusive to women and minorities are acceptable, but events exclusive to men or white people are not acceptable. However, women and minorities face issues that straight white men do not. These issues are particularly exaggerated in the tech industry, which is overwhelmingly dominated by white men. Minority-only events can address the issues that minorities face, and create a safe and comfortable space for people who might not otherwise feel safe and comfortable. A minority-only event gives minorities a chance to experiment and build confidence that they can then take with them to events that are open to everyone. This is also about privilege and power. There are some groups of people who have less privilege and power than others. These events are designed to flatten some of that structure of privilege and power.

How to make this increase diversity
It sounds contradictory that having an event where certain types of people are excluded could increase diversity in your community. However, these events can make it clear to minorities that they are welcome in your community, and that the community organizers are thinking about their needs. They can help minorities build confidence, find mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues., and feel comfortable participating. Make sure you explain at these events that your goal is to welcome their participation in the wider WordPress community, either by attending more 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., contributing to WordPress, or using WordPress more. Use these events as an opportunity to find out what event organizers can do to make minorities feel welcome at all-inclusive events.

How to organize these events if you’re a white male
These events need to be organized and led by a representative of the minority they are designed to help. If you are not a minority, but you want to see these kinds of events happen in your community, you can send out an announcement to your members, or personally invite active minority members of your community. Do not tell them to organize events (that comes across as making minorities do more work just because they are minorities), but invite them to organize events and offer your support.

How to handle it if the wrong type of person shows up
First of all, make sure that your event description clearly states that this event is only open to certain people. If someone who doesn’t fit that description shows up, politely tell them that the event description clearly states that this event is not for them, and invite them to the next event where they are allowed.

How to handle it if you get resistance from your 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. community
Minority-only events can be a very touchy subject, so don’t be surprised if you meet some resistance, or even some downright anger, when organizing these events. First, know that as long as you are following these guidelines, you have the support of the WordPress Community Team, and if you need help handling pushback, we are available to help. Second, make sure that your events really are helping your community’s overall diversity: if not, you might need to reconsider these events. Even if it is clear that your events are strengthening your community, some people (perhaps even the minorities your events are trying to support) will have trouble understanding why these events are beneficial. The best thing to do is to point these people to some resources about the lack of diversity in the tech industry and why this is a problem (see list of resources below), or to provide some evidence to them that these events are directly helping your community. If you are just getting resistance from a few people, don’t invest too much time or energy in trying to change their minds: if they don’t understand issues of power and privilege, you will have a difficult time convincing them.

How to handle definitions/outliers
Assigning people to categories can be shockingly difficult. Someone might show up at your event who doesn’t quite look like they belong, such as a transgendered or mixed-race person. Be aware that this might happen, and be careful how you word your event descriptions. For example, you might limit a women-only event to “women and anyone who identifies as woman in a way that is significant to them.” You are creating a safe space, so let people define themselves instead of trying to impose your definitions on people.

Make sure it’s working
These events are only worthwhile if they actually do help increase diversity in your community. Make sure that you tell attendees that the goal of these events is to encourage/facilitate more participation from minorities. Ask attendees regularly why they’re coming: it might have more to do with date/time/location than with demographics. Also try to keep an eye on how much people who attend these events participate in the community as a whole: if they don’t participate more, perhaps these events aren’t working. Keep in mind that “participation” does not necessarily mean “coming to more meetups.” Participation can also mean contributing to WordPress, using WordPress more, and encouraging others to use WordPress.

Further Reading
If you want to know more about these issues, here are some good resources:

Diversity issues in the tech industry:

* Technology’s Man Problem – http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/technology/technologys-man-problem.html
* We can do better – http://do-better.herokuapp.com/
* Abuse as DDOS – http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/abuse-as-ddos

Privilege and power:

* Straight white male: the easiest difficulty setting there is – http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/
* Male Programmer Privilege Checklist – http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Male_Programmer_Privilege_Checklist

Value of minority-only spaces:

* The Rise of Feminist Hackerspaces and How to Make Your Own – http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-rise-of-feminist-hackerspaces-and-how-to-make-your-own
* Why Women-Only Tech Events are a Good Idea – http://womenofwp.org/2014/03/why-women-only-tech-events-are-a-good-idea/
* Why Do Women Try To Get Ahead by Pulling Men Down? – https://medium.com/thoughts-on-society/why-do-women-try-to-get-ahead-by-pulling-men-down-a1345b36b91b

Resources for people who want to be supportive of women and minorities:

* Resources for allies on Geek Feminism Wiki – http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Resources_for_allies
* So You Want to Be An Ally – http://juliepagano.com/blog/2014/05/10/so-you-want-to-be-an-ally/

#diversity, #meetups-2, #women

Team chat September 11 2014 Topic mentorship diversity…

Team chat, September 11, 2014
Topic: mentorship/diversity

Agenda:

  • GSoC update
  • check-in on mixer how-to that @liljimmi was working on
  • suggest topics in the comments

#diversity, #mentorship

Just got word that our meetup & WC…

Just got word that our 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. & WC organizer from Kathmandu, Nepal —Sakin Shrestha, who’s also a theme reviewer — got his visa approved to come to WCSF/summit/team meetup. Yay!

In this case I had to respond to a lot of (essay) questions from the consular agent in addition to the information I’d already provided in the visa invitation letter. If anyone has any contacts at the state department that I might be able to talk to about how to make this process easier in general (since it’s the same info going to consulates in multiple countries, for WordPress events), hit me up. 🙂

#diversity, #wcsf2014

Diversity Outreach FAQ

We’ve been talking about diversity — more diverse organizing teams, more diverse speaker rosters, more diverse contributor groups — and most everyone wants to help us grow in that area. Where we fall down is people not knowing how to get there. To that end, based on the success of the Philly Tech Week Diversity Mixer, I asked @liljimmi to work on a how-to guide for throwing a diversity mixer, with the thought that local wp 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. could throw similar events. She got together with some of the organizers last weekend and they put together a draft, which she shared with me. The thing that stood out was that it had a lot of how-to on planning a party, but only a couple of lines on how to do the outreach to diverse communities to get people interested. Tracy and I talked about ways to build out that section, and are thinking the best way to answer sensitive questions is to have people ask them.

So! If Andrea were to tell you, “There should be a diverse group of people working together to choose speakers,” or, “I really need you to work on the diversity of your speaker roster this year,” what questions would run through your mind?

Add as many questions as you can think of in the comments, and that will provide a starting point for building an FAQ, and possibly language/email templates that could be used for cold-call outreach. Don’t try to censor yourself here. Say things as bluntly as you would feel them, so we can create an FAQ that addresses real situations. Post all the questions you would have, even if someone else already did, so that we can also see which questions are the most frequently asked. (Ha)

I’ll start:

  • I don’t know anyone who’s [from an underrepresented group]. How do I meet those people?
  • If I go to a Blogging While Black 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. event to try and meet some people, won’t I (as a white person) be accused of invading their space?
  • What’s the best way to contact people without inserting myself where I assume I’m not wanted/welcome?
  • How do I ask someone to get involved in a way that doesn’t tokenize them?
  • Could you tell me what to say when I’m contacting a person [from an underrepresented group] about getting involved so I don’t say something that’s inadvertently insensitive/racist/ableist/sexist/etc?
  • How much of this kind of outreach should be public vs private?
  • If I reach out to someone and they don’t reply, if I try again or even three times, is that being persistent because we all know that email piles up, or am I harassing someone that isn’t interested?
  • If someone in my group starts ranting about quotas and affirmative action, do you have language I can use to shut them up allay their concerns and convince them of the importance of diversity outreach?

#diversity, #faq

Diversity Outreach, Existing Groups

We talked awhile back about reaching out to existing groups working in this area to see where we could partner in an effort to increase diversity in the wp community (and esp in the contributor community). I’ve started putting out feelers/emailing organizations and setting up calls to discuss possibilities like workshops, support, etc. This past week I contacted a handful, but would like to officially take suggestions of groups that you know of that are working to bring more underrepresented groups (re gender, age, dis/ability, race, you name it) into tech, 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., blogging, dev, or any related area. Don’t be afraid to think outside these areas, too — I contacted a girls rock band program, for example, because posting their songwriting efforts and having a revision history, having a musician’s website, and having audio and video playlists could all enhance the existing program.

Post your suggestions in the comments (with links, please, and if you happen to know someone there, mention that and I’ll pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” you for contact info), and I’ll add them to this to-do list to contact to see if they’d be interested in working with us on anything. I’ll also create a page with a status table so we can keep track of them on an ongoing basis. If you’re interested in acting as the liaison with a specific project, mention that as well. Suggestions can be for groups that work locally, nationally, internationally, whatever, but should be non-profits, not private businesses.

I’ll start the list:

Let’s hear some suggestions!

#diversity, #partnerships

Women Speakers at WordCamps

One of the things we’ve worked on in the past year is trying to increase diversity in the project, starting with gender. We’ve reached out to more women about contributing, we participated in the Gnome Outreach Program for Women, and we taught workshops for women both on our own and at events like the Grace Hopper Conference 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. Day. Cool! One of the things we talked about doing but never did was putting something together for 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 on having more women speakers — why it’s important, why it won’t magically happen just because you include the line “women encouraged to apply” in your call for speakers, and how to do the (hard yet underrated) work of increasing diversity on your speaker rolls. I’m sad to say that our lack of attention there shows. I’ve tallied up the speaker numbers from the past two years, and we’ve just barely moved the needle.

A note about these stats: They are not perfect, because some events didn’t post all their speakers, or in a couple of cases any, since they posted things to an external site. Moving forward we will make sure to tell WC organizers to use the speaker listings built in to the WC site so that we will have consistent speaker data. In cases where I didn’t already know the gender of a speaker or couldn’t tell based on a combination of picture/profile/pronouns in bio, I asked the organizer or someone else who was there to let me know the speaker gender.

2012 Percentage of Women Speakers at WordCamps

  • Surveyed 66 WordCamps.
  • Lowest: 0% women
  • Highest: 47% women
  • Mean: 19% women
  • Median: 19.5% women
  • Mode: 3-way tie (4 events each), 0% & 25% & 29% women

2013 Percentage of Women Speakers at WordCamps

  • Surveyed 69 WordCamps.
  • Lowest: 0% women
  • Highest: 50% women
  • Mean: 21% women
  • Median: 21% women
  • Mode: 2-way tie (6 events each), 0% & 25% women

So the overall numbers didn’t improve too much. We should really get to work on that guide this year. Any volunteers?

What’s even more disappointing is that in looking at each event’s speaker lists, I saw a number of WordCamps that went from decent percentages in 2012 to dismal percentages in 2013, and a lot of the ones with dismal numbers had a high percentage of “circuit” speakers — folks that speak at WordCamps all over the place, often giving the same talk. This is a touchy subject, and I don’t want to dive into it right now — we have enough touchy subjects on the docket already — but it’s something to think about.

Note: For the sake of this I went binary based on the people we had on stage. My gut tells me that in 2014 we will have some speakers who identify as trans in a non-binary way, so moving forward will look at gender in a slightly different way.

#speakers, #wordcamps, #diversity

The Community Expectations working group had its kickoff…

The Community Expectations working group had its kickoff chat today (irc log). In attendance were Mika Eptein (@ipstenu), Aaron Jorbin, Siobhan McKeown, Tracy Levesque, George Stephanis, Brooke Dukes, Carrie Dils, Kronda Adair, and me (@jenmylo). Cátia Kitahara is also on the team but couldn’t make the meeting.

The plan:

  • Carrie and Brooke and Aaron are on the front line, reviewing similar policies from other 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. orgs and seeing if there’s good stuff that we can reuse (if licensed appropriately, of course) or be inspired by. They will be dropping the chunks they think would be good to use or reference into a doc by Tuesday, 10/29/13.
  • I will drop a headings outline into the doc, also by Tuesday.
  • On Wednesday, 10/30/13, the “write new content” group will step up and start creating sections as needed. This includes Aaron, Mika, George, with Jen and Siobhan as needed (who’ll also be editing all the pieces together as they’re added). Complete this portion by Tuesday, 11/5/13. The rest of the group will drop in and comment as time allows in this period.
  • Regroup to review what we have so far, and plan how to proceed to finish draft for community review.

A note on creating this working group:
There were some comments on the thread that announced this project that indicated some discomfort at the idea that I wanted this working group to be diverse itself. Without getting into who’s male/female/gay/straight/disabled/etc, I want to make it clear that no one was added to this group based on some sort of diversity quota rather than merit.

As it happens, the process for creating a diverse group is pretty similar to creating a diverse speaker roster 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., so I thought I’d share the process I used.

First, I started with the people who volunteered on the post by the time we got started. This is the same as choosing from speaker applications. You check them out and if they look good you say yes. Really very easy on the organizer, not hard work. As it happened, those people were all people known to me, and have all either written or presented on a topic related to appropriate behavior in our community, diversity, etc. on their own, so that made it easy to say yes to all of them. No one who explicitly said, “I want to help with this,” in the comments by the time we started the group was excluded.

Within these volunteers there was some diversity in sexual orientation, family makeup, religion, politics, length of time in WP community, etc, but it appeared to be all white women* from the U.S., so I wanted to broaden the perspective of the group by including some more people of different backgrounds (with a cap at 10 for logistical purposes). That meant I needed to reach out and make an effort to see if there were any qualified people that could round out the team that maybe hadn’t seen the post or had not felt comfortable volunteering.

This is the step that tends to freak people out. For WC organizers, it’s a lot of work, and if they don’t know a lot of people who are qualified then it turns into a choice-based-on-demographics, which is obviously not good for anyone. I’m lucky enough to be familiar with a lot of talented people in our community from many regions, levels of involvement, areas of expertise, etc. so that wasn’t a problem here. Everyone I reached out to met the same professional WP standards as the original volunteers, as well as having spoken or written somewhere about these issues already (including the 2 white dudes with beards 🙂 ).

In the end, our group of course could be still more diverse, but within the limited number of people we do have there is a pretty broad variety of viewpoints and experiences to draw on in our drafting process, which is the goal. Not to prioritize one demographic group over another, but to be sure that more viewpoints are included in the process and have a voice.

*Remember you can’t tell much from a gravatarGravatar Is an acronym for Globally Recognized Avatar. It is the avatar system managed by WordPress.com, and used within the WordPress software. https://gravatar.com/.. Someone who looks white may be biracial, someone who looks male may be female or vice versa (remember how we all thought Mika was a man for years because of her Frank Sinatra-eque hat gravatar?), and there are all sorts of other diversity components that have nothing to do with what your face looks like, so we have to remember not to make assumptions.

#community-expectations, #community-management, #diversity, #meeting-notes