New Meetup Organizers Hangout

We’re going to have a hangout Wednesday October 15 at 11am Eastern/3pm UTC for new 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 as well as anyone who might be interested in more information about organizing a WordPress meetup in your area. If you’re interested in attending, leave a comment on this post so we can try and make plans for how many folks will be attending.

Hangout link: https://plus.google.com/hangouts/_/gsys7cae6basvmyuftiwwejhgma

#hangouts, #meetups-2, #organizer-mentorship-program

ModSquad hangout next Wednesday!

It has been a while since we have had a WordPress.tv moderator hangout, and I feel like it’s long overdue. With that in mind, instead our regular 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. on Wednesday let’s have an official hangout so we can talk shop and, well, hang out. 🙂

Join us on IRC at #wordpress-freenode on Wednesday September 3rd at 15:00 UTC (8am PDT, 11am EDT, 17:00 CEST)

Convert to your time zone

Hope to see you there!

#hangouts, #wordpress-tv

ModSquad Hangout Recap

Howdy ModSquad! Great hangout chat in IRC yesterday, and awesome to get a chance to talk with you all. If you weren’t able to make the chat, you can find a full log of what we discussed, but here’s a recap of some of the high points:

Foreign Language videos

We are always looking to add mods who are native speakers, but in the absence of that, non-English videos tend to languish. Let’s reverse that trend by doing the best we can to get those out as fast as we can by:

  • Lifting descriptions from 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. site as-is (no Google Translate!) and add a link to slides if we can.
  • If we need a description for the talk, take it from the WordCamp site as-is as well, adding the speaker names to match our standard formatting.
  • Viewing the video for technical issues (lighting, sound, etc)

If we can do those things, then the video is ready to publish. We can always have someone double-check it later, but let’s not hold them hostage like we do now.

Curating content

We had a good discussion around how to better feature the that truly represent the best of what WordCamp is about: Great presentations, educational content, and though provoking discussions. We see these every day, but the way wordpress.tv is set up now, they get lost pretty easily once they fall off the home page.

One idea, which is not quite ready for implementation is curating content for syndication to other outlets (YouTube, G+, Facebook, etc.) as well as publishing here. The other thing we can do is to start making use of blog.wordpress.tv as a place to post “Staff Picks” blog posts, which I’d like to kick off soon. Any volunteers to go first? Let me know in the comments.

Helping WordCamps directly

We discussed how a large number of videos never make it to wordpress.tv. One big pain point is the difficulty in getting good videos (clear picture, sound, etc.) that are publishable. We reject a lot of videos over issues of quality; one way we can help with this is to get better documentation in place for WordCamp organizerswho are not video expert necessarily—to help them to take better quality video.

On the other side, one reason we never see video submissions in the first place is that it is hard for WordCamp organizers to find the necessary time and resources to do post-production. Sadly many videos end up in this graveyard, and as mods we never see them, but one way we can help is by actually doing the post-production centrally (powered by fearless mods) to take this off organizers hands.

The dream scenario here would be to have video uploaded to wordpress.tv the same day as the event, have mods perform simple edits like trim the ends, add titles, etc. Once that is done, we could publish them right away, instead of months later (or not at all) as happens currently.

Get involved!

If you have a passion for docs, a background in video, experience in videoing 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./camps, or can recommend a friend, speak up! We are moving forward on docs and post-processing support, and would love your help.

Phew, that was quite a recap. Again, thanks to everyone that made is (plus anyone who was there in spirit) and I will see you in the queues!

#docs, #hangouts, #i18n, #post-processing, #recap, #wordpress-tv

Monthly ModSquad hangout, the first

Howdy mods, as a reminder we well be having our first ever monthly mod squad hangout in IRC (#wordpress-getinvolved on freenode) on Friday July 11th at 9am PDT.

I see this as a great chance to just hang out and chat, but I also wanted to bring up the following as a mini-agenda:

  • What to do about non-English videos
  • Helping WordCamps to take better video
  • Post-processing support
  • Curating the best videos (for syndication elsewhere?)

if you have anything to add, please add it in the comments, and if you are able to make it, please show up! 🙂

Pinging 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.” pings:
@myroseapple @johnparkinson @philerb @brashrebel, @squarepixel

#hangouts, #wordpress-tv

Hey Mod Squad, wanna hang out?

Howdy y’all, I know that we can sometimes be like ships crossing in the night when we mod videos, and aside from the odd P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. post, and videos moving in and out of the queue, it’s hard to tell that you are not working alone.

With that in mind, I wanted to ask how you feel about having a semi-regular IRC hangout to, you know, hang out. What do you say? Does this sound like a good idea? Let’s get something on the calendar! 🙂

@brashrebel, @squarepixel, @myroseapple, @johnparkinson, @natedriver

#hangouts, #wordpress-tv

Meetup Orientation Hangouts Schedule

We’ll try a few different topics and time slots over the next couple of weeks to see what works best.

For organizers of existing groups who want to join the chapter account (or have questions because they’re not sure):

  • Wednesday, April 23, 2014 at 23:00 UTC (4pm Pacific, 7pm Eastern) Event page

For people who want to start a new group on the chapter account:

  • Tuesday, April 29, 2014 at 17:00 UTC (10am Pacific, 1pm Eastern) Event page

#hangouts, #meetups-2, #orientations

New Team Member Chase Livingston from South Carolina…

New Team Member! Chase Livingston from South Carolina (@chaselivingston) will be starting to help out with 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. administration as well. Trained him on processes like I did with @andymci a couple of weeks back, and will likely have have him focus on reaching out to existing groups in between-roll in periods.

Note: We are smack in the middle of the quarterly roll-in period for existing meetup.com groups, so I’m working through all the outstanding requests to join the chapter program. To that end, I’m going to start a series of meetup organizer hangouts similar to the ones being done around WordCamps. Will start out with a split between existing groups who want to join the chapter account and people who want to start a new group from scratch, since the orientations are so different. Once we get those started, I’m hoping we can standardize a few other topics (esp as tied to the mentorship stuff @andymci is working on), and where applicable, have some that work for both WC and meetup organizers (how to find a venue, budgets and running money through foundation, etc).

We’ll use the WordPress google+ account for these, and I’ll post details on this blog later today with dates and times.

#hangouts, #meetup-com, #meetups-2

WordCamp organizer hangouts FTW!

I’m really enjoying 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. hangouts we’ve been having lately! Today’s WordCamp organizer’s orientation and this budget hangout were really fun, to name a few. If you are able to actually participate on video rather than just watch the stream, I encourage you to do so; we all benefit from more perspectives and questions.

This month, in addition to our two organizer orientations, we have scheduled some additional single-subject hangouts, including two events focused on speaker recruitment and wrangling and two events focused on running the money through the Foundation, all happening next week:

What other subjects would be beneficial for WordCamp organizers to discuss on a round table-style hangout? We have a few ideas (WordCamp organizing team dynamics, WordCamp.org tools and tips, veteran WordCamp organizer horror stories), but would love to incorporate your suggestions.

#hangouts, #wordcamps

I’d like to schedule a WordCamp budget focused…

I’d like to schedule 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. budget-focused hangout for next Wednesday, March 26. I don’t plan to record it unless interest is off the charts. This event is intended for new and experienced organizers who want to discuss building a WordCamp budget and managing/prioritizing expenses; we might even dip into fundraising, though that won’t be the focus.

If you’d like to attend, please fill out this poll to vote for a time: http://poll.fm/4pczl If you’d like to discuss a certain budget-related topic, please leave a comment between now and Wednesday, and we’ll make sure we cover it.

#hangouts, #wordcamps

WordCamp organizer hangouts for February

I’m going to have to reschedule the hangout slated for tomorrow; sorry to do so at the last minute.

The new hangout dates and times are:

February 6, 2014 at 17:00 UTC
Link to scheduled hangout: https://plus.google.com/events/c7dv0bpffcr5d4ui1055l7tchpo

February 18, 2014 at 4pm Pacific (February 19 at 0:00 UTC)
Link to scheduled hangout: https://plus.google.com/b/103997538489675217618/events/c7ddkmqa1ll2lf6vbdhujs9d838

#hangouts, #wordcamps