This is the home of the Make Community team for the WordPress open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project!
Here is where we have policy debates, project announcements, and assist community members in organizing events.
Everyone is welcome to comment on posts and participate in the discussions regardless of skill level or experience.
Get Involved
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Hello, Event Organizers and Community team members!
Historically, the Community team has been responsible for shipping lanyards, buttons, and various stickers to WordPress events and WP meetupMeetupMeetup 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 worldwide.
This was primarily done by processing orders through the Mercantile store. After we could no longer ship these items using the Mercantile store, we introduced some temporary alternatives, but none served as a permanent solution.
After several attempts to find alternatives and continue shipping SWAG for Community team events, we have decided to pause this program officially until our contributors have the bandwidth to conduct more research and identify a sustainable solution.
Next steps
Our first step will be to follow up and close any pending tickets related to SWAG requests.
If you are planning an event or would like to print these locally, please see the Swag Source Files for more details.
Feel free to reach out to support@wordcamp.org if you have any questions.
Future of SWAG shipments
While this likely won’t be prioritized right now as we don’t have many Community team contributors available, it will surely be reconsidered in the future.
If you have ideas or know services that might be able to address this on a global scale, please add your suggestions to the comments section. These will be reviewed at the appropriate time to reconsider options. The Community team will prioritize requests and solutions that require minimal time to manage.
This analysis examines global trends in WordPress MeetupMeetupMeetup 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 from January 2023 to June 2024, focusing on both in-person and online events with at least 50 RSVPs, while excluding canceled events. The goal is to understand WordPress Meetup trends globally and identify commonalities with other tech groups active on Meetup.com.
Note: I focused on events with more than 50 RSVPs to identify the types that generate the highest interest among our worldwide meetup members, but this does not mean that I consider events with fewer than 50 RSVPs unsuccessful. Our 750+ groups range from fewer than 20 to over 5000 members.
TL;DR:
The Learn WordPress Online Workshops, led by full-time sponsored contributors, emerged as a significant trend, with sessions on modern web layouts and JavaScriptJavaScriptJavaScript 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/. being particularly popular. In-person events saw the highest engagement in Ahmedabad and Mumbai, India, while online events drew attention to SEO, accessibilityAccessibilityAccessibility (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), and AI topics. The WordPress Accessibility Meetup, an online-only volunteer-run group which cover accessible navigation and writing, also received substantial interest.
Regionally, Asia, especially India, showed strong engagement in in-person events. This could be tied to a higher population rate compared to other regions. Online learning events attracted more interest than their in-person counterparts, and accessibility remained a high-interest topic across the board.
General Meetup trends for other Tech groups indicate seasonal declines in attendance and a post-COVID shift towards virtual events. Popular topics for online events included AI and APIAPIAn 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. design, while in-person events focused more on gaming, security, and AI development.
Next steps: Looking ahead, I’d love to develop further regional analysis to understand the types of events that are most successful in each area. Community feedback and participation in this endeavor are encouraged. Please leave a comment or reach out to me on SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. (@ peiraisotta) if you want to join me.
For those who enjoy delving into the numbers, please read the extended analysis below.
2023: We had 3890 total events (2223 in-person and 1667 online). Of those, 110 in-person and 189 online events had 50+ RSVPs.
2024 (as of June 26): 1207 in-person and 659 online events, with 52 in-person and 72 online events having over 50 RSVPs.
Average Attendance:
In-person events: 17 RSVPs
Online events: 24.5 RSVPs
Premise: The Location Challenge for Online-Only Meetup Groups
Meetup.com requires you to pick a location before creating a group, even for our online-only groups. The widgetWidgetA WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user. in the WordPress dashboards shows upcoming events based on the selected location. This means that online-only events are not automatically visible to everyone. The WordPress Accessibility Meetup group and other theme-based, online-only meetupsMeetupMeetup 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. would benefit from appearing in everyone’s WP events dashboard widget, not just the arbitrarily designated city. For instance, the WordPress Accessibility Meetup group and the Learn WordPress Online Workshops are registered in San Francisco, US, and the Quedadas Online en Español (WordPress Gatherings in Spanish, with organizers and members both in Europe and LatAm) are registered in Madrid, Spain.
Top Trends
Learn WordPress Online Workshops:
Hosted 374 events with an average of 47.5 RSVPs per event.
Top events included developer-focused sessions like “Building modern web layouts with WordPress blocks” and “JavaScript for modern WordPress development.”
Top Trends Excluding Learn WordPress Online Workshops:
In-person events: 3430 events with an average of 17 RSVPs.
Online events: 1952 events with an average of 20 RSVPs.
Top in-person events: Mostly in Asia, particularly India.
Top online events: Focused on accessibility and AI.
Regional Trends
Excluding the Learn WordPress Online Workshops group, which is registered in the US/Pacific time zone, but including the WordPress Accessibility Meetup group, also registered in the US/Pacific time zone, the following is the regional activity of WordPress Meetup events, both in-person and online, from January 1, 2023, to June 26, 2024.
Region
Total Groups
Total Events
Total RSVPs
Africa
47
256
2954
Asia
138
1030
26060
Australia/Pacific
10
106
1597
Europe/Canary
199
1770
31291
LatAm
44
221
4302
US/Canada
134
1999
31553
Number of Events per Group
Below is the average number of events each group organized between January 1, 2023, and June 26, 2024.
US/Canada: 14.9
Australia/Pacific: 10.6
Europe/Canary: 8.9
Asia: 7.5
Africa: 5.4
LatAm: 5.0
Note: Among our groups, some meet consistently one or more times per month, while nearly half haven’t had any events in the past three months. These disparities impact the averages.
Want to help reactivate the inactive WordPress Meetup groups in your region? Join the Reactivation initiative!
General Meetup Trends
I asked our point of contact at Meetup.com Customer Success about worldwide trends for Meetup events within the ‘Tech’categoryCategoryThe 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. to make the analysis as relevant as possible.
It is important to note that Meetup.com’s popularity as an event and community platform varies by country, and the following feedback refers only to Meetup.com trends. Therefore, it might not represent global trends within tech communities that do not use Meetup.com.
Below is the feedback and information received. In general, Meetup.com observes:
Seasonal decreases in activity due to summer vacations and winter holidays.
General decline in attendance at in-person tech events post-COVID-19.
Shift to virtual events: 40% of RSVPs for tech events are online. For non-tech events, the percentage of online events VS in-person events is 17%, showing a stronger preference to online events for tech events compared to event types.
Below are some potential reasons identified that explain the shift to virtual events:
Remote work culture has changed professional dynamics and networking habits. (People seem less likely to go to the city for an event if they’ve been working from home all day, some have moved away from city centers, others got more used to online networking, etc.)
Content accessibility: Event recordings and online resources reduce the need for real-time attendance.
Changed priorities: Increased focus on personal time and family, which results in decreased meetup attendance and engagement.
Popular General Meetup Topics:
Online: AI, API, Design.
In-person: Gaming, Security, AI, Development.
Key Insights
In-person WP events: engagement appears to be stronger in Asia, especially in India, compared to other regions. It could be useful to understand whether this is primarily related to the high population rate or if there are specific organizational characteristics that other communities could learn from.
Online learning events seem to attract more interest than in-person learning events.
In-person social events seem to be more popular than in-person learning events.
Accessibility seems to be a high interest topic among community members.
Observations
There is a noticeable disparity in activity levels among WordPress Meetup groups, with some groups being very active, while many others organize less than two events per year. This highlights the importance of initiatives like the current Meetup Reactivation effort, which aims to invigorate inactive groups. Such initiatives are crucial for fostering an active and engaged community, ensuring that more groups can benefit from regular events and increased participation. By reactivating these groups, the WordPress community can enhance collaboration, knowledge sharing, and overall engagement across different regions. If you want to get involved, please reach out to @devinmaeztri or @courtneypk, or drop a message in the #community-team channel on Slack.
The above analysis focuses on WordPress Meetup trends worldwide, comparing countries of different sizes, population rates, WordPress Groups, and members. To gain a real understanding of regional trends, it would be interesting and useful to analyze the activity of each region and each country separately.
Feedback and additional insights from the community are welcome to enhance this analysis.
Call for interest
I intend to analyze the regional activity of our Meetup groups to determine which events are most successful in each region, providing organizers with valuable insights into the types of events that attract the most interest in their area. If anyone is interested in joining me, please leave a comment under this post or reach out to me via Slack (@ peiraisotta) before Friday, July 26, 2024.
Following up the WordPress Meetup Reactivation Project in 2022, we aim to revive some MeetupMeetupMeetup 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 big cities that are inactive or help the local WordPress community that are not yet part of our Meetup Chapter Program to join our program.
We have selected 10 groups to be our focus for 2024.
City
Country
Population
Meetup URLURLA specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org
Last WordCampWordCampWordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. in 2019
Removed from the Chapter in 2020 due to inactivity.
We just completed processing the recent application, and a new group has been created, as the previous group can’t be revived.
Please let us know by leaving your comment below if you are:
Organizers of one of the groups or part of the local WordPress community in the city listed above and interested in becoming WordPress Meetup Organizers.
Community organizers from the same country and region of the groups listed above.
Event and Program Supporters from Asia who are available to participate in the project.
We need your support to:
Closely support the inactive Meetup organizers to plan Meetup events.
Organize regular check-ins with the inactive Meetup organizers.
Share experiences and encourage the group if they are interested in organizing a WordCamp or other WordPress events.
Onboard new groups if you are a Community Team Supporter.
The outreach to all the groups can be done anytime soon. However, in the first quarter of 2024, we will focus on:
Hello WordPress MeetupMeetupMeetup 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. members and organizers,
This is a reminder about the annual meetup survey. This year, we propose a unified survey for all Meetup members and organizers.
Please take a moment to respond to the Annual Meetup Survey . This survey is an important opportunity to share your feedback on WordPress meetupsMeetupMeetup 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 2023 and how we can improve the program in the future. Even if you did not attend meetup events in 2023, your input is valuable! The survey takes less than 5 minutes to fill out, and the results will help strengthen WordPress meetups in the years to come.
Hello, meetupMeetupMeetup 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. members and organizers.
If you are a meetup organizer or a meetup member (even if you haven’t attended in the past few years), please take a couple minutes to complete the survey and encourage others to do the same. This year we have one unified survey for Meetup members and organizers.
This survey is an important opportunity to share your feedback on WordPress meetupsMeetupMeetup 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 2023 and how we can improve the program in the future. Even if you did not attend meetup events in 2023, your input is valuable! The survey takes less than 5 minutes to fill out, and the results will help strengthen WordPress meetups in the years to come. It will remain open until January 14, 2024.
Thank you all so much!
Link to the announcement post: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2023/11/17/announcing-the-2023-annual-meetup-survey/
Link to the survey: https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/2023-meetup-annual-survey
Hello WordPress MeetupMeetupMeetup 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. members,
The annual meetup survey is here! This year, we propose a unified survey for all Meetup members and organizers.
Please complete the Annual Meetup Survey – even if you haven’t participated in a meetup recently!
Help spread the word! If you are a Meetup Organizer, please share the Annual Meetup Survey with your group via discussion boards, email, social media, and announce it at your next Meetup event.
Please take a moment to respond to the survey. This survey is an important opportunity to share your feedback on WordPress meetupsMeetupMeetup 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 2023 and how we can improve the program in the future. Even if you did not attend meetup events in 2023, your input is valuable! The survey takes less than 5 minutes to fill out, and the results will help strengthen WordPress meetups in the years to come.
We hope to achieve a 100% response rate among Meetup organizers and members around the world, and get actionable insights about two challenges that the WordPress ecosystem is facing right now:
How can we increase the number of WordPress events?
How can we increase the number of WordPress users worldwide?
What’s Next?
Take the survey, you have until January 14, 2024!
To open the survey in a new tab, please use the following link: https://wordpressdotorg.survey.fm/2023-meetup-annual-survey
Hello WordPress MeetupMeetupMeetup 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. members!
The annual meetup survey is here! If you are a meetup group member, please complete the Annual Meetup Program Survey – even if you haven’t participated in a meetup recently! If you are a meetup organizer, please complete the Annual Meetup Organizer Survey. For the first time in WordPress history, the 2021-2022 Annual Meetup surveys are available in 14 different languages, listed below.
Help spread the word! If you are a Meetup Organizer, please share the Meetup Program Survey with your group via discussion boards, email, social media, and announce it at your next Meetup event.
Please take a moment to respond to the survey. This survey is an important opportunity to share your feedback on WordPress meetupsMeetupMeetup 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 2021 and 2022 (thus far). Even if you did not attend meetup events in 2021-2022, your input is valuable! The survey takes less than 5 minutes to fill out, and the results will help strengthen WordPress meetups in the years to come. Our goal is to achieve a 100% response rate among meetup organizers around the world, and as high a response rate as possible among members.
A similar message to this post was sent to all WordPress Chapter MeetupMeetupMeetup 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. members via meetup.com, but we are also sharing below.
If you are a Meetup Organizer, please feel free to share the survey link via discussion boards, email, social media, or even announce at an in-person event!
Hello WordPress meetup members!
As 2019 has come to a close, we would like to get your feedback on WordPress meetupsMeetupMeetup 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.. Even if you did not attend meetup events this past year, your opinion would be valuable! The survey takes less than 3 minutes to fill out, and the results will be shared by the global community teamGlobal Community TeamA group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. to help all WordPress meetups improve. Don’t delay! The survey closes on 28 February 2020.
This survey contains general questions relevant to the global WordPress Meetup program. Your local meetup organizers may decide to send you another one later, with more focused questions about your local community.
WordPress Global Community Sponsors for 2019
A big thank you to our 2019 global sponsors! Their generous support keeps the meetup program free for the whole community and helps to make sure ticket prices for WordCamps stay affordable.
Jetpack *
WooCommerce *
Bluehost *
Liquid Web
GoDaddy *
HubSpot *
GreenGeeks
DreamHost
* These sponsors support WordPress events worldwide.
Become an Event Organizer
WordPress is an open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project, open to anyone who wants to join. That is true for event organizers, too! Many groups still have one event per month, often a presentation or lecture followed by Q&A or a social hour. These regular events are great, but it means that people who cannot make that time each month are left out, as are people who are interested in different topics.
All meetups on the WordPress chapter account allow any trusted, reliable member of the group to organize an event, so if you’ve been wishing for a particular kind of WordPress event in your town, this is a great time to become a WordPress organizer.
There are some ideas for event formats to inspire you, on the Events Formats page in the Meetup Organizer handbook.
The possibilities are endless, and as long as it relates to WordPress, you can organize within your meetup group! Start a conversation on your group’s discussion board or contact the local organizing team with your ideas!
Contribute to the WordPress Project
One of the things we have heard from people is a desire for their meetup group to be more connected to the overall WordPress open source project. If you don’t stop by the community team’s blog often, please subscribe to email updates! There may be a few new projects you might be interested in.
Here’s to a great 2020, and as always, thanks for using WordPress!
Hello WordPress MeetupMeetupMeetup 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!
Welcome to another meetup organizer newsletter full of news, information, and inspiration for your local meetup.
Newsletter contents:
Diverse Speaker Training Workshops
Organizer Best Practices: How to address panic
New event format from the Perth WordPress Meetup
Reminders
Diverse Speaker Training Workshops
As organizers, have you ever had challenges getting women and people from other underrepresented groups in tech to speak at your meetupsMeetupMeetup 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?
As an organizer of community events, you might run into situations when you need to address panic. This post on the WordPress Community blog, looks at important ways to recognize stressed behaviours and 4 steps to address panic.
There are also listed ways to get in touch with the WordPress Global Community TeamGlobal Community TeamA group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps., who are very likely to have through their combined experience, would be able to help you in the best ways possible.
The Perth (Western Australia) meetup decided to change up the format of their regular meetup, and they have had some great feedback about it.
Based on the feedback they received, they found members who were developers found some talks not technical enough, and for members who were users they were sometimes too technical.
So for every topic they organizer a meetup around they added a second talk. Their format now is
– Technical Talk – Networking – User Talk – Q & A with ‘the panel’
This is also a great example of using feedback from attendees to iterate on meetup formats.
It’s time to start preparing the the July 2019 edition of the meetupMeetupMeetup 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 newsletter.
If there are any topics you’d recommend we include, or any interesting meetup event formats you think are worth highlighting, please comment/leave your ideas/suggestions in the comments on this post.
We’ll gather comments here for one week until the 17th of July 2019 19th of July 2019.
The newsletter typically spotlights:
an interesting event format that organizers might want to try out
news about global community teamGlobal Community TeamA group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. projects
news about the WordPress open sourceOpen SourceOpen Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project