Tag Archives: slack

Sjoerd Blom 12:23 pm on April 6, 2023
Tags: , , slack,   

Personalised Coupon Codes for WordCamps

When you organise 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. you get to a point where you need to issue coupons for speakers, organisers, volunteers and sponsors. Usually, coupons are “shared” with others from that group: volunteers will share a coupon code, speakers will share a different coupon code, and so on.

Using a shared coupon code also means that we need to verify every coupon that was used: is the buyer entitled to use the coupon code? Not every WordCamp team does this, but the WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. team does this.

For WCEU 2023 below is an overview of coupon codes that are needed:

  • Photographers: 24
  • Volunteers: 190
  • Speakers: 70
  • Organisers: 99
  • Sponsors: 208

Total of 591 coupon codes

As you can imagine this number causes quite a huge workload on the team that is responsible for the tickets, especially when they come across a name that is not on the list: then these names need to be flagged and also verified. Maybe this name was initially missed on the list? Or maybe this name is replacing someone else?

Smaller WordCamps may have around 125 coupon codes, but they don’t have a dedicated team just for the attendee services, but probably one person responsible for the tickets and verifying the coupon codes.

Using a personalised and unique code for everyone entitled to a coupon code is the best solution. Coupon codes are matched against a name and if there’s a mismatch: you know who to approach.
Also: the personal coupon code can’t be shared endlessly with other people who are not involved in the WordCamp.
And, not less important: it saves us from cancelling tickets that have been booked by people who shouldn’t use the tickets and also from hurting people’s feelings as they might feel offended when we contact them to inform them.

There are WordCamps that have created workarounds for personalised coupons, all were done through some side coding solutions, not as a real solution. So there is definitely a need for personalised coupon codes.

In the past couple of weeks, Vagelis Papaioannou developed a 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 that generates personalised coupon codes. You can find his repository on GitHub. It’s an add-on to the CampTix plugin. This plugin would really help WordCamp organisers create personalised coupons and save them a lot of time and unnecessary work.

Note: this post is a summary of a post in Slack.

#camptix, #meta-wordcamp, #slack, #wordcamps

Timi Wahalahti 4:18 pm on March 12, 2021
Tags: , , , slack   

Request for feedback: Review for the dedicated deputy communication channel

After the discussion on my proposal about a dedicated communication place for deputies, we agreed to experiment with a private #community-deputies channel 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/.. In the discussion, we also agreed to do a public review after three and six months to see how the channel has worked and decide its continuation. The channel was created in December, so it’s time for the first review.

The purpose of the channel is to be a safe place for all 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. to discuss sensitive and private aspects of our work, get peer-support when needed and ask second opinions for event applications. It’s not meant for discussions that could take place in public forums like this blog, #community-team or #community-events channel.

Guidelines for the channel are:

  • As we all are busy and have an abundance of unread notifications, please avoid irrelevant chatter.
  • Help to create a safe and welcoming space for all deputies. Be empathetic and help answer questions when you can!
  • If you feel that the discussion should take place in a public forum, say it and help to move the discussion to the #community-team channel or Community Team blog.
  • Any decision making that will affect the broader community will be made in public. Help others be aware of when they might be making a decision that should happen after public discussion.

As this year has continued being really strange, I think we really can’t use many numeric metrics while reviewing the channel. That’s why I’d like us to have an open, free form, discussion. Here are some questions to help start that discussion:

  1. Has there been discussion about topics that should have been taken place in public forums instead?
  2. Have you got help with some issue in the channel, which you’d normally handled by yourself or asked help from another 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. in a private message?
  3. Has the channel helped you feel more connected to the team?
  4. In general, what is your feeling about the discussion that has taken place on the channel?
  5. Should we continue to keep using a private deputy channel?

Active deputies, please share your thoughts and raise new important questions to the discussion. This is also an open invitation for all community members to ask questions about the channel, which could help us with the review.

Discussion is open until 2021-03-29. If the result of the review looks like there’s no justification for private working space for deputies, the channel will be shut off at the beginning of April. In case the experiment continues, we will do another public review in three months.

Thanks to @angelasjin, @andreamiddleton and @kcristiano who helped with this post.

#slack
Timi Wahalahti 6:01 pm on November 2, 2020
Tags: , , slack   

Proposal follow-up: Dedicated communication place for deputies – forming the guidelines

Months ago, I posted a proposal on creating a new dedicated 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/. channel for 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.. After a long and really good discussion, the deputies reached a consensus and would like to give the channel a try, after a set of guidelines have been formed. If you don’t have an idea what I’m talking about, and the idea of a private channel sounds bad to you, I suggest reading the original proposal and discussion that followed that.

It’s now (finally) time to form those guidelines and embark on this experiment together!

These guidelines aspire to be encouraging and not discouraging. These are more to give an idea on the purpose of the channel, rather than creating an uncertain feeling around whether something can be raised to the discussion in the channel. My hope is to keep these as short and clear as possible.

To provide extra clarity on who will be in the channel, and how it will be used:

  • All deputies with “Active” status in this sheet will be invited to the channel.
  • The main purpose of the channel is to provide a safe space, and to improve peer support for all deputies, especially those new to the role. In this channel, deputies who are uncertain or hesitant can raise issues or ask questions with a smaller group first before doing so publicly. The channel can also be a place to discuss applications that need a second opinion, or for discussions about financial issues that require confidentiality. If some discussion that takes place could be public, it will be moved to a public forum (#community-team channel or this team blog).
  • No decisions that affect Community Team, event organisers or the greater WordPress project will be made in the private channel.
  • We’ll do a public review on the Community Team’s blog on how the channel has worked after three and six months

My proposal for the 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. channel guidelines are:

  • As we all are busy and have an abundance of unread notifications, please avoid irrelevant chatter.
  • Help to create a safe and welcoming space for all deputies. Be empathetic and help answer questions when you can!
  • If you feel that the discussion should take place in a public forum, say it and help to move the discussion to the #community-team channel or Community Team blog.
  • Any decision making that will affect the broader community will be made in public. Help others be aware when they might be making a decision that should happen after public discussion.

Feel free to share your ideas, thoughts, additions and changes to these proposed guidelines before 2020-11-19. After that, I’ll move forward and ask Slack admins to create the new channel for us.

Thank you @angelasjin, @harishanker, @andreamiddleton and @courtneypk for helping with this post!

#community-deputies, #slack
Vedanshu Jain 11:25 am on December 24, 2018
Tags: , , , , , , slack   

Slack notifications for WordCamp and Meetup application updates


In the WordPress project, multiple teams (#meta, #core, #polyglots, etc.) make use of 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/. notifications to surface new, interesting changes in their team’s respective channel. This includes notifications on new commits, tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. issue updates, new translation strings availability, etc.

(Screenshot of a commit notification)
(Screenshot of a commit notification)


These notifications serve at least two purposes:

1. People interested in following these teams have a very convenient way to look at recent and ongoing activities.

2. It provides a way to acknowledge contributors.

In the WordPress community channels, we don’t currently use this tool, but there may be some cases where having these notifications would add lot of value for us.

These include:

  1. Someone sends a new application 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.
  2. Someone sends a new application for a WordPress chapter 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.
  3. A new WordCamp is set to Scheduled status
  4. A new WordPress meetup group is now active in the chapter
  5. A WordCamp application is declined
  6. A Meetup application is declined

For reference, you can see status of some active WordCamp applications here.

These notifications could include whether the event is a WordPress or a Meetup, city and country of the event, description of the update, and WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ usernames of people who were involved in vetting the event application.

I have written some initial code for this, and it could look like:

(screenshot for when a new WordCamp application is submitted)
(screenshot for when a new WordCamp application is submitted)


(screenshot for when WordCamp is scheduled)
(screenshot when a WordCamp application is scheduled)


(screenshot for when a WordCamp application is declined)
(screenshot when a WordCamp application is declined)


A few more things to note and discuss here:

  1. We can perhaps send these notifications to #community-events,  #community-team, or both of these channels.
  2. The props section will include usernames of everyone who added notes to the application listing and/or changed the listing’s status.
  3. We would also want to send notifications when an application is declined, and not just when it is received or scheduled, in order to credit the 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. who nevertheless did the  work to vet and respond to it. It could normalize the process of declining the application, because it is not uncommon for subsequent applications to be approved.

What do you think? Should we have these notifications? If we have them, then should they be more granular, or less granular? What changes in language or overall appearance would you suggest? Leave your thoughts in a comment on this post!

#community, #slack

Andrew Nacin 8:35 pm on December 17, 2014
Tags: , slack   

Community team on Slack

Hello! Now that we’ve been using 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/. for nearly two months, I’m reviewing where we can improve. Some other teams have made specific feature requests, and I’m happy to hear those in the #slackhelp channel. (If there’s anything that can be done to make Slack better for you, I’m all ears.)

Now, for this team in particular, there have been a few requests as it pertains to channels. Like most teams, you joined Slack to find an already created #community channel waiting for you. It turns out, #community isn’t a great name, as many think it is either a watercooler of sorts or for general discussion topics. Others think it pertains to local communities (half right). The “community” team is really a super-team composed of a number of wide-ranging initiatives.

There are a lot of users in the channel, and a decent amount of noise, especially if you only care about only one particular initiative or project. There’s lot of cross-talk. Meetings can run into each other or need to be carefully scheduled around each other.

Slack suggests you create channels only as you realize you need them, and we adopted this model. Before 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. San Francisco was over, a #training channel was created. Here’s my current proposal, based on the projects page and a review of all requests I’ve received:

  • #events — Rename the #community channel to #events. WordCamps, 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 other events. Includes sponsorships talk. Can have subdivisions for WordCamps and/or meetups at a later point.
  • #outreach — This would cover a number of projects that are mostly dormant or nascent. As things ramp up, this could divide further into channels for academic outreach, #diversity, #mentorship / #gsoc, etc.
  • #training — The training team; this channel already exists.
  • #wptv — WordPress.tv video moderation.

Of course, there will be stuff that takes place that spans multiple teams. I don’t think it’ll be difficult how to make that work, though. As an example: as most stuff focuses on events, community-team-wide housekeeping and updates could be covered during regular #events meetings. I think this is a very good trade-off.

#meta, #slack

Jen 6:32 pm on November 6, 2014
Tags: slack   

Reminder we’re using slack instead of irc for…

Reminder: we’re using slack instead of irc for team chats now, so if you want to attend today’s meeting in half an hour, get your slack username setup going now if you haven’t already. https://make.wordpress.org/chat/

#slack