Aditya Kane 2:49 pm on June 21, 2019
Tags: meetups, newsletter ( 14 )

WordPress meetup organizer newsletter: June 2019

Hello WordPress MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers!

Welcome to another meetup organizer newsletter full of news, information, and inspiration for your local meetup.

Newsletter contents:

Organizer Best Practices: Photographing your events!
The 4 Gets in WordPress Community Organizing
WordCampWordCamp A WordCamp is a conference where the WordPress community come together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. https://central.wordcamp.org/about/. US: Call for WordCamp Communities
Diverse Speaker Training Workshops
Reminders

Organizer best practices: Photographing your events

As community organizers and leaders, one of the few things we tend to overlook is using photography to promote our meetup groups.

For example, a group photo of the meetup is often one of the best ways to personalize your WordPress meetup.com group page. It is also a great way to drive interaction on social media channels towards making more people aware of your meetup group.

This post on the community team blog, discusses a list of good practices around photographing an event.

This is part of the on-going Organizer Best Practices series of discussions on the WordPress Community team blog.

The 4 Gets in WordPress Community Organizing

The community organizer handbooks have lots of public information about how to organize events, but they do not outline very clearly what volunteers like you can reasonably expect in return for your work.

In this post about the 4 Gets in WordPress Community Organizing, on the community blog, read about what volunteers can expect to get from their work like impact, growth, protection, and training/support.

Also listed are some of the things that community organizers do not get right away.

WordCamp US: Call for WordCamp Communities

What once was called the Community Bazaar is now Community Spotlight! WordCamp US will post highlights of your WordPress communities in a blog post, and on Twitter, Facebook, & Instagram. Community Spotlight is an online showcase of local WordPress communities in order to inspire other communities. Big or small, near or far, WordPress communities are stronger than ever!

For more information and to sign up, please apply here: https://2019.us.wordcamp.org/community-spotlight/

Diverse Speaker Training Workshops

Have you ever had challenges getting women and people from other groups underrepresented in tech to speak at your meetups and WordCamps? Check out the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training workshop: https://make.wordpress.org/training/speaker-training

Write to us to sign up for this or find out about future training sessions here: http://tiny.cc/wpdiversity

To sign up and get more details, either fill out our form and let us know which date you’d would like to attend a training or email the working group at speaker-training@wordcamp.org

Reminders

There is an ongoing discussion on how we can better reach out community organizers
There is a proposal to improve this newsletter with additional organizer tips and training. You can leave your feedback on this post.
aThe new WordPress Block Editor has some great user documentation that you can share with your meetup’s members.
To organize an “Introduction to 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.” workshop at your meetup, please read this announcement and fill in the form.

That’s it for now — chat with you next time!

Your friends on the Community Team

make.wordpress.org/community

#meetups #newsletter

Aditya Kane 8:31 pm on April 22, 2019
Tags: meetup ( 10 ), meetups, meta ( 3 ), newsletter ( 14 )

WordPress meetup organizer newsletter: April 2019

Welcome to another meetup organizer newsletter full of news, information and inspiration for your local meetup.

Newsletter contents:

Organizer best practices: helping your local meetup
Proposal for Central BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. Directory
Diversity Outreach Speaker Training Workshops
Reminders

Organizer best practices: helping your local meetup

On the Make Community blog, there is a discussion that has been kickstarted about ways to help your local meetup and some best practices around them.

Here are 11 ways to contribute to your local WordPress meetup, which can also serve as a graceful path to community leadership:

spread the word about the meetup (sharing photos on social media, word of mouth, flyers, blog posts, etc)
greet & welcome new attendees
take attendance (if your group keeps a record of who actually attended the event)
deliver opening or closing remarks (easier if the points to cover are written down)
facilitate a round-table discussion
give a presentation
help find a free venue
record & post a presentation to WordPress.tv
organize refreshments
suggest or recruit speakers
organize an event series

Proposal for Central Block Directory

With blocks becoming the new way to manage content in WordPress, more and more types of blocks are being developed to cater for different use cases and content types. In an effort to make it easier for content creators to find these block types, there is a proposal for a new type of 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 and a directory to handle it.

The proposal outlines a new type of WordPress plugin that provides blocks and nothing else, named Single Block Plugins. The primary benefit would be to provide content creators with individual pieces of functionality and new types of blocks without the need to search for and install new plugins.

The Single Block Plugins would be hosted in a separate Block Directory section of the Plugin Directory and they would initially be 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/.-based. Each plugin will register a single block, and they will be searchable and installable from within the editor itself. This puts blocks at the publishers’ fingertips — you no longer have to leave the editor to find them.

Want to get involved in shaping this new type of plugin? Join in the conversation on the proposal post, follow the Meta team blog, and join the #meta channel in the Making WordPress Slack group.

Diversity Outreach Speaker Training Workshops

Have you ever had trouble getting women and people from other groups underrepresented in tech to speak at your meetups and WordCamps? Check out the Diversity Outreach Speaker Training workshop: https://make.wordpress.org/training/speaker-training

Write to us to sign up for this or find out about future training sessions here: http://tiny.cc/wpwomenspeakTo sign up and get more details, either fill out our form and comment with which date you’d would like to attend a training email the working group at speaker-training@wordcamp.org

Reminders

Read about the 2018 Meetup Survey Statistics
Support Team put Block editor user documentation is now available: Check out Block Editor and Core Block Types
There is a proposal to improve this newsletter with additional organizer tips and training. You can leave your feedback on this post.

That’s it for now — chat to you next time!

Your friends on the Community Team
make.wordpress.org/community

#newsletter #meetup

#meetups-2

Andrea Middleton 5:42 pm on April 11, 2019
Tags: leadership, meetups, organizer best practices ( 3 )

Organizer best practices: paths to leadership, or 11 ways to help your local meetup

As you all probably know, the global community team recommends a flat organizational structure for local WordPress community groups. Because 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. projects depend on a large, diverse group of contributors to collaborate and iterate quickly, we encourage that community organizers “always be recruiting” (and welcoming, and training) new leaders.

When there are lots of people with leadership experience in a community, local organizers can take more breaks and avoid burnout. As new leaders join the community, they bring new ideas, perspectives, and methods. Because organizers tend to organize for people like themselves, recruiting a diverse group of leaders is especially important — so that the community can take into account a broader spectrum of backgrounds, needs, interests, and lived experience.

OK sure but how?

Most people are on board with the *idea* of a large, diverse leadership team but struggle with recruiting. And that’s not really a surprise! Not all organizations are as open to new leaders as ours, so even constant repetition that “we’re always looking for more organizers” at every meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. event might not result in people stepping forward.

One way to make the recruitment process more gentle and perhaps less intimidating is to offer a gradual path to leadership. Many groups have found success with inviting people to help out with smaller, accessible tasks at first. Small contributions can lead to more complex jobs as the volunteer’s confidence and understanding of the group continues to grow.

Here are 11 ways to contribute to your local WordPress meetup, which can also serve as a graceful path to community leadership:

spread the word about the meetup (sharing photos on social media, word of mouth, flyers, blog posts, etc)
greet & welcome new attendees
take attendance (if your group keeps a record of who actually attended the event)
deliver opening or closing remarks (easier if the points to cover are written down)
facilitate a round-table discussion
give a presentation
help find a free venue
record & post a presentation to WordPress.tv
organize refreshments
suggest or recruit speakers
organize an event series

Add to the list

Community organizers, speak out! What can meetup members do to help your group thrive, which aren’t listed above? What does the path to leadership look like in your home community?

Once we collect as many examples as possible, we can create a new Meetup Organizer Handbook page to share these suggestions with current and new Meetup organizers. Please share your ideas and experiences in a comment on this post!

#leadership, #meetups-2, #organizer-best-practices

Jonathan Bossenger 9:00 am on February 6, 2019
Tags: meetups

Meetup organizer newsletter suggestions for February 2019

It’s that time again, we’re starting to draft the February 2019 edition of the meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. 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?

I will leave the comments open for one week until the 13th of February 2018.

The newsletter typically spotlights:

an interesting event format that organizers might want to try out
news about global community team projects
news about the 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

Thanks! #meetups #newsletter

meetups organized
attendees around the world
let us help them out

#meetups-2

Hugh Lashbrooke 9:17 am on September 6, 2018
Tags: afk ( 13 ), meetups, payments ( 5 ), WordCamps ( 207 )

Payment Intermission: 1-7 October 2018

The Automattic sponsored staff members of the Global Community Team, who routinely handle WPCS banking, will be at a company offsite meeting from 1-5 October 2018. During this time we’ll stop WordCampWordCamp A WordCamp is a conference where the WordPress community come together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. https://central.wordcamp.org/about/. and MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. vendor payments, reimbursements, and sponsor payment attribution.

If you’ll need to pay for goods or services at the start of October, please submit all requests no later than Friday, 28 September 2018 at 16:00 UTC.

Payment requests submitted after that time will not likely be processed until Tuesday, 9 October 2018. Sponsor invoices paid during 1-7 October 2018 won’t be marked paid until 8 October 2018.

If you have an urgent payment request that must be handled that week, but did not submit your request prior to 28 September, please reach out to @kcristiano or @adityakane 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/..

Deputies, mentors, and community members will still be available by email at support@wordcamp.org or on Slack in the #community-events channel as usual.

Normal vendor payment and sponsorship attributions scheduled will resume Tuesday, 9 October 2018, though it may take us a day or two to get fully caught up.

#payments #afk #wordcamps #meetups

WordPress.org

Getting Involved

Communication

Tag Archives: meetups

Organizer best practices: paths to leadership, or 11 ways to help your local meetup

OK sure but how?

Add to the list

Meetup organizer newsletter suggestions for February 2019

Payment Intermission: 1-7 October 2018