Welcome to the official blog of the community/outreach 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!
This team oversees official events, mentorship programs, diversity initiatives, contributor outreach, and other ways of growing our community.
If you love WordPress and want to help us do these things, join in!
Getting Involved
We use this blog for policy debates, project announcements, and status reports. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to comment on posts and join the discussion.
You can learn about our current activities on the Team Projects page. These projects are suitable for everyone from newcomers to WordPress community elders.
You can use our contact form to volunteer for one of our projects.
We also have regular Community Team meetings on the first and third Thursdays of every month at 11:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC in #community-team on Slack (same agenda).
Events 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.
The Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) normally trains WordPress meetupMeetupAll 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 how to hold their own Diverse Speaker workshop in order to increase how many speaker applications they get from people from marginalized and underrepresented groups.
During the pandemic, the team is delivering the workshop to the global WordPress community online ourselves.
August’s events consisted of a three-part workshop, one hour each day, three days in a row, and two open practise sessions.
Number who attended: 6 From number of cities: 6 From number of countries: 3 (Canada, United Kingdom, United States)
Number who attended all 3 workshops: 5 Number who attended 2 workshops: 1 Number who attended the open practise sessions: 0
Increase in public speaking confidence after taking the workshops: 38%
Testimonials
“Before taking the workshops, I didn’t have the confidence for public speaking. Thanks to these sessions, I can relax, gather my thoughts, and proceed with my presentation. I would recommend this workshop to people of color in the WordPress ecosystem. You belong here; its a no-judgment zone where you can find your authentic voice.” – TC, Learner Advocate, @codebrother1
Thank you
A lot of people contribute to making these workshops successful. Thank you to each and every one!
September and October 2020 workshops
Love this? Come attend a workshop series!
In September, we are featuring intermediate public speaking topics and a training for meetup organizers in APAC/EMEA.
In October, we are running the regular series for people who are thinking about getting started speaking at WordPress events and a training for meetup organizers in AMER/EMEA.
Our bi-monthly Community Team chat is happening this Thursday, 03 September 2020. Meeting times are detailed below. We use the same agenda for both meetings in order to include all time zones.
P2P2P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. posts needing review/feedback
Changes in WordCamp and Meetup Application tracker – Timi Wahalahti – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/20/changes-in-wordcamp-and-meetup-application-tracker/
Collecting and Reporting Stats for Learn WordPress Discussion Groups – Ryan Marks – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/21/collecting-and-reporting-stats-for-learn-wordpress-discussion-groups/
Achieving greater clarity when promoting Learn workshop discussion groups – Cami Kaos – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/21/achieving-greater-clarity-when-promoting-learn-workshop-discussion-groups/
WordCamps in 2019 – Timi Wahalahti – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/22/wordcamps-in-2019/
Learn WordPress Working Group: Call for Volunteers – Hugh Lashbrooke – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/24/learn-wordpress-working-group-call-for-volunteers/
Tuesday Trainings: taking a pause – Cami Kaos -https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/25/tuesday-trainings-taking-a-pause/
Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on August 26, 2020 – JIll Binder- https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/26/recap-of-the-diverse-speaker-training-group-wpdiversity-on-august-26-2020/
Meetup Group Inventory Work – Harmonyromo – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/28/meetup-group-inventory-work/
Call for participants: Diverse Speaker Workshops September 2020 – JIllbinder – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/09/01/call-for-participants-diverse-speaker-workshops-september-2020/
Announcement: Learn WordPress Orientations – Angela Jin – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/09/01/announcement-learn-wordpress-orientations/
Highlighted P2 posts
Learn WordPress is live. Yaay. Published by Hugh – https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/08/12/learn-wordpress-is-live/
Please add any additional items to this agenda by commenting on this post as needed.
The Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) is holding workshops to support diverse voices to share knowledge and stories at online WordPress Meetups and WordCamps.
Now that we have held a number of beginner workshops, some are ready to go deeper into intermediate topics. You do not need to have attended our previous workshops in order to attend these sessions. Having done public speaking at least once before is preferable, but is not required in order to attend these sessions.
Workshop 1 of 3: Improving your pitch
Tuesday, September 15, 2020 from 5-6pm UTC (10-11am PT)
Fine-tune your title and pitch to improve your chance at getting selected to speak.
Helpful but not required: a pre-written pitch that you want to improve
No prerequisite to attend this workshop.
Workshop 2 of 3: Intermediate Online Stage Presence
Wednesday, September 16, 2020 from 5-6pm UTC (10-11am PT)
Learn what you need to look and sound your best on camera
What do you want to improve in your public speaking? We will be taking questions.
No prerequisite to attend this workshop.
Workshop 3 of 3: Answering Questions Online
Thursday, September 17, 2020 from 5-6pm UTC (10-11am PT)
With global audiences potentially now attending local events, the Question and Answer (Q&A) periods at online WordPress events may be off-topic or more challenging for presenters. We will discuss strategies and share script ideas you can use for these and other tricky questions.
No prerequisite to attend this workshop.
You are welcome to attend 1, 2, or all 3 workshops.
Please note! These events are intended to train speakers who are members of a marginalized or underrepresented group in terms of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, age, etc.
Training: WordPress Meetups: Hold Your Own Diverse Speaker Workshop
Thursday, September 24, 2020, 7:30-9:30am UTC (APAC/EMEA) Saturday, October 24, 2020, 5:00-7:00pm UTC (AMER/EMEA)
Have you ever had trouble getting speakers from marginalized and underrepresented groups to speak at your WordPress meetupMeetupAll 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. and 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.?
The Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) has a workshop for your community members that has been proven to increase how many speaker applications you receive from speakers from marginalized and underrepresented groups.
We will teach you how to use the workshop material for your own group.
Anyone from all WordPress chapter meetups around the world are welcome to attend.
P.S. If you would like to attend these sessions because you want to learn how to be a good ally, please note that this is a closed workshop for members of marginalized or underrepresented groups only. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion material is not covered in these workshops. If there is enough interest, we could hold a different workshop for you in the future.
It’s time for another edition of our meetupMeetupAll 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. organizer newsletter, packed full of updates from the WordPress world and our community!
Newsletter contents:
Check out the brand new Learn WordPress Platform
WordPress 5.5 is now available
Online Event Updates
Tuesday Trainings
Check out the brand new Learn WordPress platform
Learn WordPress is a brand new cross-team initiative led by the WordPress Community team, with support from the training team, the TV team, and the meta team. This platform is a learning repository on learn.wordpress.org where WordPress learning content will be made available. The first iteration has launched with a few workshops, and more will be added each week. The four initial workshops are:
In addition to these workshops, we will also be hosting supplementary discussion groups based on the content of the workshops – facilitated by discussion group leaders. Anyone can be a discussion group leader, including workshop presenters themselves! The first of these discussion groups have been scheduled,and you can join an upcoming discussion on the dedicated meetup group. More will be added as new workshops are published. Each workshop page will link to the meetup group.
Want to contribute to the Learn WordPress program? Here’s how:
You can apply to be a discussion group leader so that you can organize discussions directly through the learn.wordpress.org platform. (Note: If you are a meetup organizer, you can organize workshop-based discussions exclusively for your local meetup group without having to apply for a discussion group leader position. More details below.)
Help out with updating and contributing new lesson plans by following this guide.
How Meetup groups can benefit from the Learn WordPress platform
Meetup organizers can use the Learn WordPress content for their meetup events – simply ask your meetup group to watch one of the workshops in the weeks leading up to your scheduled event, and then host a discussion group for that content as your event. If you do this, you do not have to apply to be a discussion group leader using the form above – you can just go ahead and do it as an existing organizer.
WordPress 5.5 “Eckstine” (named in honor of Billy Eckstine) came out on August 11th 2020. The release is a major update with a host of features like automatic updates for plugins and themes, enabling updates over uploaded ZIP files, a blockBlockBlock 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, XML sitemaps, block patterns, inline image-editing, and lazy-loading images, to name a few. WordPress 5.5 is now available in 47 languages too! You can update to the latest version directly from your WordPress dashboard or download it directly from WordPress.orgWordPress.orgThe 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/.
As organizers, you can now help spread the word about WordPress 5.5 through your local meetup groups! Contributors from the WordPress marketing team are working on slides that could be used by Meetups to promote the new release. We request meetup organizers to fill in this survey from the team so that they can support the marketing needs of meetup groups in general. The survey will also help the marketing team to come up with resources for organizers so as to help them promote WordPress 5.5.
This month, Luke Carbis and Jonathan Wold organized one of the first “virtual” WordPress meetups! The event was held in a 3D virtual world (powered by a hosted instance of Mozilla Hubs – an open-source platform for creating virtual spaces), via the WordPress Brisbane Meetup. The large virtual hall, designed specifically for the event, was big enough for the 12 or so participants to break out into smaller groups, holding multiple conversations at once. The 3D audio helped participants feel immersed in the space, hearing people to the left and right, closer or further away. Most people joined from their computer, and some even joined from their VR headsets, including the presenter Jonathan who talked about the future of WordPress and the Open Web. Attendees could see Jonathan’s head movements and hand gestures as he delivered the session. Luke and Jonathan plan to organize monthly virtual events of a similar nature, and have already started planning their next virtual event.
The picture shows a virtual “stage” where the session was held.
Would you like to highlight recent online events from your local meetup group in our monthly newsletter? We will publish a “call for content” post for the next edition of the newsletter in the first week of August on the Make/Community Blog. Please comment on the blog post when it is up or send us an email to support@wordcamp.org to share about events in your local meetup group.
Upcoming Online Events
WordPress Meetup groups worldwide are currently organizing online events instead of in-person events due to COVID-19. The team recommends meetup organizers to avoid in-person meetups for the rest of 2020, to ensure the safety and well being of our community members. However, since meetup events are online, you can now attend meetups and WordCamps across the world from the comfort of your own home! You can find out about all upcoming online events here: https://make.wordpress.org/community/events/online/
If you are holding a meetup online and would like to have a global audience, please use the tag #OnlineWPMeetup so that the Marketing team can find you and bring you some communications and marketing support. We’d also like to remind organizers of our Online events handbook page that offers a wealth of information on organizing online events.
Here’s a list of upcoming online WordCamps. Don’t forget to grab your free tickets for these events!
The Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) is holding workshops in July to support diverse voices to share knowledge and stories at online WordPress meetups and WordCamps. They have the following events scheduled for August – October 2020:
August 18-20, 2020: Beginner Speaking Topics
September 8-10, 2020: Intermediate Speaking Workshops
September 24, 2020: Hold your own Speaker workshop (Asia timezone)
October 6-9, 2020: Beginner Speaking Topics
October 24, 2020: Hold your own Speaker workshop (America timezone)
Follow the #WPDiversity hashtag on social media if you would like to keep track of diversity workshops.
Tuesday Trainings
Through Tuesday Trainings (#tuesdaytrainings) we publish a different topic on the WordPress Community Blog to train organizers and interested community members in a variety of skills, while also adding additional training documentation to our handbooks. Every Tuesday, a different topic will be highlighted on the WordPress Community Blog. You can find links to the latest Tuesday training posts below:
If you have any questions, Community Team deputies are available to help. Please send an email to support@wordcamp.org or join the #community-eventsSlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel. Thanks for everything you do to grow the WordPress community, let’s keep sharing knowledge and inspiring each other with our contributions!
Summary: We talked about how our July Diverse Speaker workshops went and the plans for beginner & intermediate workshops August through November. I shared a document for feedback for volunteer sign-ups for workshop assistants. Our workshops are going to be part of the new Learn WordPress initiative, for self-guided learning and live group discussions. We followed up on team members’ current tasks.
The Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) normally trains WordPress meetupMeetupAll 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 how to hold their own Diverse Speaker workshop in order to increase how many speaker applications they get from people from marginalized and underrepresented groups.
During the pandemic, the team is delivering the workshop to the global WordPress community online ourselves.
July’s events consisted of a three-part workshop, one hour each day, three days in a row.
Number who attended: 20 From number of cities: 18 From number of countries: 12 (Australia, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Panama, Serbia, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States)
Number who attended all 3 sessions: 3 Number who attended 2 sessions: 6
Increase in public speaking confidence after taking a workshop: 10%
Testimonials
“Before I took this workshop, I was unable to determine the best topic for my talk. Thanks to this session, I am able to tailor my talk to a 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. audience. I would recommend this workshop to anyone who is for/looking to achieve a successful talk at WordCamp.” – Waddell “Dell” Fields, Web Developer, Author, Speaker, Trainer and Personal Coach
“LOVED the #WPDiversity Workshop! It really inspired me to bring this type of content to the WordPress Mexico community and bring more diverse groups into speaking at our Meetups and WordCamps. ¡Muchas gracias!” – Maryl Gonzalez – Co-Founder / Lead UXUXUX is an acronym for User Experience - the way the user uses the UI. Think ‘what they are doing’ and less about how they do it./UIUIUI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. Designer | Scrum/Agile PM – The App Chefs
August workshops and beyond
Love this? Come attend a workshop series!
Next one is August 18-20, with practise sessions on August 25 & 27: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/24/call-for-participants-diverse-speaker-workshops-july-august/
In September and November, we are going to be featuring intermediate public speaking topics for people of marginalized and underrepresented groups. October will be our usual beginner topics. Keep an eye out for these announcements at https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/wpdiversityworkshops/.
Many members of our community are stressed due to the challenges brought about by the pandemic. In these difficult times, local meetups can offer a great way to bring members of our community together and to help each other. Since in-person events are not happening these days, more and more WordPress Meetups are going online. In many ways, online meetups are easier to organize than in-person meetups, as they are relatively easy to organize. While many meetupMeetupAll 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. groups across the world have embraced the online meetup format, others are still struggling to hold online events. This post offers tips, tricks, and resources for WordPress meetup organizers worldwide to revitalize their meetup groups during the pandemic with the help of online events.
Reactivating a meetup group
Many meetup groups have not been able to organize meetups this year, due to the pandemic. A great way to reactivate an inactive group is by merely scheduling a check-in call as a meetup event. It need not even be an actual session – it can just be an informal discussion over a call. If you are an organizer of a group that has not had meetups in a while, try scheduling an online meetup as a casual call. You’d be surprised to see the number of attendees for such an event! Please note: Any meetup event with three or more attendees is considered a meetup, so you need not have tens of attendees to organize a successful meetup event. Our handbook page offers guidance on how to schedule and host an online meetup in Meetup.com. Once the group has a scheduled event, we’ve seen that it really improves the morale of both the organizing team and the group members, and that it really gets things going!
Playing around with Meetup Formats
In our first-ever Tuesday Trainings post, we discussed different online event formats that organizers can try out. The online meetup format offers a lot of possibilities for Meetup organizers. Apart from the suggestions listed in that post, here are a few types of events that you can try with your group:
Organize routine catch-up/check-in calls with the meetup group While these calls (with no agenda other than to check-in) can be a great way to reactivate the group, it can also help to provide the kind of social camaraderie that we’ve been missing out on due to COVID-19. Such calls can offer an excellent opportunity to unwind and discuss everything non-work related, and might work well if you schedule them as recurring events (e.g., every third Friday of the month). For example, The WordPress Pune Meetup group has a recurring social call every Friday, that regularly gets a lot of attendees.
Games and fun activities You can consider setting some time aside after every meetup to organize some fun activities. It could be anything from collaborating together on an online game, or having a quiz. You could take it a step further to organize an occasional dedicated meetup event (or events) to have these games. While it’s good to have casual games and fun activities for your meetup, please note that the focus your meetup group should still be on WordPress. 🙂
Recurring event series Many meetup groups organize recurring event series for their meetup groups. It could be related to specific topics (e.g. Narnia WordPress BlockBlockBlock 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. development event series) or interest groups (Narnia Bloggers Meetup series). As an example, The WordPress NYC Meetup Group has a regular Women of WordPress NYC event series, which holds monthly meetups, providing resources and support for women members.
We recently published a blog post to call for ideas on reimagining online events. Even though the blog post talks about online 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., you can find many ideas for meetup events in that post.
Finding a topic and a speaker
Many organizers struggle with finding speakers and topics for their online meetups. Posting surveys for your Meetup group to find topics that your members would like will help a lot with event planning. You can put up a survey to get suggestions from members, OR you could list topics, and ask members to vote. Similarly, setting up a poll in your meetup group to get potential speakers is also a good idea to get a list of people that would like to speak at your meetup group. You could ask newer speakers to start with Lightning talks of 10 minutes or super lightning talks (flash talks) of five minutes. It’s also a great way to engage members in your local community and to promote local talent.
Online meetups eliminate geographical restrictions, so you can now get anyone from any part of the world to speak at your meetup! If your Meetup group members want to listen to a session or a workshop on a particular topic, you could reach out to other WordCamp speakers or experts on that topic and invite them to speak at your local meetup. In case you face difficulty finding a speaker for one of your events, you could simply select a talk from WordPress.tv and organize a watch party!
With all that said, you don’t need an expert speaker to speak on a specific topic. Sometimes, experimenting with different event formats such as a panel discussion or merely an informal discussion based on a particular topic, or setting up a co-working session is a great way to engage with your meetup group members.
Keeping Meetups going
Reactivating a group by organizing online meetup group is only a part of the journey. Organizers would need put in a little more effort to keep the momentum going. The following tips will be helpful:
Onboard more co-organizers: Having more members in your organizing team is a great way to help your meetups stay active. Sometimes, existing members of the organizing team may feel fatigued. Newer organizers can step in, when members of the existing organizing team feel tired, so as to keep meetups going.
Work with other meetup groups to organize joint events: If there are other meetup groups in your area, you could work with them to jointly organize events. By joining forces with other groups in your area, you tap into a wider audience, thus expanding your community.
Bring your community to social media: Feel free to extend your community beyond your Meetup.com page. You can achieve this by aving a presence for your group in other social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and SlackSlackSlack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. Some meetup groups even have corresponding groups in messaging apps such as WhatsApp and Telegram. If you are comfortable creating and maintaining such groups, you can build connections within your community, and facilitate asynchronous discussions even!
Community initiatives: As they stay, communities that work together stay together. Doing recurring activities as a community – such as contributor days and hackathons could be very helpful in engaging members of your community.
The WordPress Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) has several workshops to help you in your journey to public speaking at online WordPress events, or for WordPress event organizers to support more diverse speakers at your events:
Tuesday, July 28 & Tuesday, August 18: Who am I to be speaking? & Finding a topic that people would love to hear
Wednesday, July 29 & Wednesday, August 19: Creating a great pitch Wednesday
Thursday, July 30: (new!) What if someone asks me a difficult question?
Thursday, August 20: Workshop: Online Stage Presence
Tuesday, August 25, and Thursday, August 26: Open practice sessions.
The Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) is holding workshops this summer to support diverse voices to share knowledge and stories at online WordPress meetups and WordCamps.
This is a reminder about the July workshops next week and an announcement about the workshops in August.
Workshop: Who am I to be speaking? & Finding a topic that people would love to hear
Tuesday, July 28 @ 5-6pm UTC Tuesday, August 18 @ 5-6pm UTC
Do you identify as part of a marginalized or underrepresented group in WordPress? Are you intrigued at the thought of speaking at a WordPress event online but are thinking things like, “What would I talk about?” “I’m not an expert, who would want to hear from me?”
In this workshop, we will dispel some myths about being a speaker and answer your questions about speaking. Together we will work on overcoming the thought, “But I’m not an expert in anything”.
Via hands-on exercises and small group discussions, we will help you come up with topics and show you how to choose one. Everyone has something they can talk about – let’s find yours.
Workshop: Creating a great pitch
Wednesday, July 29 @ 5-6pm UTC Wednesday, August 19 @ 5-6pm UTC
Do you identify as part of a marginalized or underrepresented group in WordPress? Do you want to submit a talk to a WordPress meetupMeetupAll 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. or 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. but aren’t sure how? Or you know how and want to work on writing a pitch that has a better chance of being accepted?
Together we will write a meetup description or WordCamp pitch for your talk. This also doubles as helping you start to write your talk!
Prerequisite: Please come with an idea for a talk. If you don’t have one, then please make sure you attend the workshop on Tuesday!
Workshop: What if someone asks me a difficult question? (new!)
Thursday, July 30 @ 5-6pm UTC
This addition to our series is by request!
Do you identify as part of a marginalized or underrepresented group in WordPress? Do you feel nervous about being asked tricky questions at your WordPress talk?
With events moving online, there has been a wider audience. As a result, some of the questions during the Question and Answer (Q&A) period at online meetups and WordCamps have been harder for presenters to answer or even off-topic.
We will discuss strategies for answering and give you scripts you can use for these and other tricky questions. We may also practise, if there is time.
Workshop: Online Stage Presence
Thursday, August 20 @ 5-6pm UTC
Do you identify as part of a marginalized or underrepresented group in WordPress? We would like to help you with public speaking online.
Speaking online is not the same as speaking on stage! Some important items cross over, and there are also differences. We will give you tips for public speaking and being on camera. We will be making the improvements together in the call.
Open Practise Sessions
Tuesday, August 25 @ 5-6pm UTC Thursday, August 27 @ 5-6pm UTC
This is open practise time for you! There will be no prepared lessons.
Examples of what you can use this time for:
Practise parts of your presentation in a supportive space
Get feedback on your topic, pitch, or any other part of your presentation
Ask your questions about public speaking, applying to speak, etc.
Attending previous workshops are recommended but not required to attend these practise sessions.
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You are encouraged to attend all 3 workshops in a week and one practise session, but you are also welcome to attend only the events you wish.
P.S. Others who like to attend these sessions because you want to learn how to be a good ally, please note that this is a closed workshop for members of marginalized or underrepresented groups only. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion material is not covered in these workshops. If there is enough interest, we could hold a different workshop for you in the future.
The Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) has received a lot of questions lately about how to feature more Black voices on WordPress stages right now.
Here are a few things to keep in mind:
Don’t pressure people to step up. It’s an incredibly challenging time right now, and people may not be available or have the emotional and/or physical capacity to do anything extra right now.
Recognize those who are feeling especially motivated to start sharing their voice more right now. Now and always, yes, you should be featuring people who want to.
Welcome people who are interested in learning or participating, but who aren’t quite ready for getting on stage just yet. It’s great to think about the future!
Make sure that whenever the person is ready to start speaking, now or later, everyone who helps them in their speaker journey will be welcoming and encouraging, particularly your meetupMeetupAll 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. and 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. speaker wranglers.
Make sure that Black speakers receive all of the same perks as your speakers of well-represented groups. This mistake is accidental, but it happens.
Start including Black people in your leadership, particularly in your speaker selection committee. (Keep in mind point #1 about asking based on contributions or potential and not on being Black!) This will help ensure everyone gets a fair shake and people don’t feel tokenized when invited to apply.
It’s ok to add to your invitation something like, “We are aware that our speakers/leadership do not yet reflect the diversity we aspire to, but we are learning that prioritizing diversity is important to make a supportive and welcoming space for all.”
