Reflecting on the NextGen Events Pilot Project and Looking Ahead

Background

In May 2023, the WordPress Community Team embarked on an ambitious journey with the “Next Generation WordPress Events” pilot project. Our goal was to explore innovative event formats beyond the traditional 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. or 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., bringing fresh experiences to our community and attracting new audiences to attend WordPress events. Throughout the latter half of 2023, we experimented with a variety of creative events, each uniquely contributing to the WordPress community. Check out the full list of pilot events.

Today, @adityakane, @devinmaeztri, @no249a002, @francescodicandia, @unintended8, @lanche86, @samsuresh, @yoga1103 and I are excited to share our learnings, reflections, and a vision for the future of innovative WordPress events.

Broadening the Horizon of WordPress Events

Based on our experiences with the pilot program, we recommend concluding the NextGen pilot project, and permanently adopting an expanded scope of WordPress Events. This means expanding the WordPress Events program beyond just 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 do_actions, to embrace a broad range of creative event formats. The sky’s the limit, and we encourage the community to keep experimenting with new ideas.

It’s important to clarify that “NextGen” is the name of the pilot project, not a new categoryCategory The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. of events. This project was a playground for experimentation and innovation in the WordPress Events program. Moving forward, we propose simply referring to these events as “WordPress Events.” This term encompasses WordCamps, meetups, do_actions, and an infinite number of other event types that are supported by WordPress Community SupportWordPress Community Support WordPress Community Support PBC is a subsidiary of WordPress Foundation. It is created specifically to be the financial and legal support for WordCamps, WordPress Meetup groups, and any additional “official” events organized within the WordPress Community Events program. and the Community Team.

The Ideal WordPress Event

We’ve learned that the ideal WordPress event should be:

  • Replicable: Easy for other communities to adopt and for the same community to organize again.
  • Desirable: Each event should serve a purpose within the WordPress ecosystem and generate excitement.
  • Sustainable: Events should be financially viable and not overly complex to organize, to prevent burnout among our valued community organizers.
  • Scalable: Ideally, events are able to grow and scale as a community grows. 

We wholeheartedly encourage creativity and experimentation in WordPress Events. Innovation is the lifeblood that keeps our community vibrant and helps grow the WordPress project, its user base, and WordPress communities worldwide!

A highlight from the NextGen Pilot project:

The Rome Community Day event format inspired the Swiss community to organize a Switzerland Community Day, demonstrating that this event format is truly desirable, replicable and sustainable! The Rome event organizer mentored the Switzerland organizing team, a testament to the project’s collaborative spirit.

Tools

To sustainably expand the WordPress events program, we need some new tools, workflows, and documentation that will assist Community Team Event Supporters, Program Supporters, and Program Managers in vetting, onboarding, and mentoring events that don’t fit neatly in the established categories of WordCamp, meetup, or do_actiondo_action do_action hackathons are community-organised events that are focussed on using WordPress to give deserving charitable organisations their own online presence. Learn more on doaction.org.. Our new WordPress Events page (events.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/) is a crucial step in this direction, offering a central URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org and unified platform for all types of WordPress events. Additionally, we have a brand new WordPress event organizer application form, which streamlines the application review process (during the NextGen pilot project, event organizer applications were submitted through a Crowdsignal survey; this was unwieldy for the Community Team to review and process).

What this means for…

WordPress Event Organizers 

We invite you to think outside the box and consider organizing an innovative WordPress Event in your community! Let’s continue to experiment and grow together. Remember, some of the most impactful WordPress events are simple, low-cost, and easy to organize.

Apply now to bring a unique WordPress event to life in your community!

Global Sponsors

Sponsoring the WordPress community’s innovative events provides companies with a unique opportunity to reach new, diverse, and tech-savvy audiences. Global Sponsors already support WordPress Community Events worldwide; innovative event formats offer an opportunity to experiment with new sponsorship benefits and ways to connect with attendees. Do you have ideas that we could test at an innovative WordPress event in 2024? Let the Community Team know by commenting on this post!

Community Team Supporters

In the coming weeks, the Community Team will invite Community Team Supporters to participate in a Zoom session on innovative WordPress Events. This session will provide an opportunity to ask questions and share feedback so that Community Team Supporters are well-equipped to mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. innovative WordPress Events and amplify this exciting new development in WordPress Events. Stay tuned for more details!


Share your thoughts, ideas, and questions in the comments below. Your input is the catalyst for continued innovation and growth in our community. Let’s continue building the next chapter of innovative WordPress Events, making them more inclusive, engaging, and impactful than ever!

Props to the fantastic pilot event and future WordPress event organizers; Community Team NextGen Event Supporters, who reviewed event applications and mentored pilot events; and the entire Global Community TeamGlobal Community Team A group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. for their incredible effort to make the NextGen Pilot Project a reality by engaging in discussions, sharing ideas, and spreading the word!

The following people participated in writing this post: @juliarosia @devinmaeztri @peiraisotta @_dorsvenabili.

#community-events, #next-gen-events

Proposal: [Experiment] Adopt Standardised Team-wide Project Management Tools – already utilised by other Make Teams for a Quarter.

This proposal is focused towards improving our project management and goal and progress tracking by using the same transparent tools that other Make Teams already utilise.

Background and Skeleton

Currently we have many spreadsheets, trelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing. boards, 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/. groups and many other disparate ways of working on our various ongoing projects outside of helpscout.

From my personal experience having returned as a Community 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. and now as Community Team RepTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts., I believe that the first action – before further planning and goals discussions – is to standardise and fully utilize the power of the tools already available to us. We can benefit by learning from other teams that already consistently use these tools.

…and possibly this demo of a Make Community Team →

Benefits of adopting GithubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/:

GitHub is a powerful and widely-used platform for project management and issue tracking already in full use by @WordPress.

Adopting GitHub for these purposes within the Community Team would bring a number of benefits, including:

  1. Improved collaboration and communication: GitHub provides a central location for team members to access and work on project tasks and issues, as well as a built-in system for commenting, tracking progress, and assigning tasks. This makes it easy for team members to stay informed about the progress of a project and to contribute to it, even when working remotely.
  2. Increased transparency and accountability: With GitHub, team members can easily see the progress of tasks and issues, as well as who is responsible for them. This increased transparency helps to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that tasks and issues are not falling through the cracks.
  3. Better organization and prioritization: GitHub provides a number of tools for organizing and prioritizing tasks and issues, such as labels, milestones, and project boards. These tools make it easy for team members to understand what needs to be done and when, and to focus their efforts on the most important tasks.
  4. Standardisation: By adopting GitHub for project management and issue tracking, the Community Team will standardize our way of working, making it easier for new team members to get up to speed and enabling more effective cross-team collaboration. This standardization also makes it easier for Community Team members to track progress, identify issues and make data-driven decisions.

Overall, adopting GitHub for project management and issue tracking would bring improved collaboration, increased transparency, better organization, and standardization, ultimately leading to a more efficient and effective team.

Next Steps, the Experiment:

I propose we adopt these tooling methods similar to other make teams, and experiment with its usage for a month, having monthly meetings reviewing its success or not, and gathering data for more data-driven decision making

If after the first Quarter the consensus is that this does not suit our team, we will revert back to initial project and tracking practices and explore more.

Update: Other teams using github already were kind enough to share some of the resources they use and workflows which would be extremely beneficial should we move forward with this adoption standard.


Proposal Adoption Feedback Form

Please comment on this proposal!

What excites you about potential Community Team adoption of GitHub?

What concerns do you have?



Thanks to @mysweetcate @juliarosia @megabyterose @peiraisotta for their help editing, offering invaluable advice, and their support for this proposal by @leogopal

#community-management, #community-team, #github, #proposal, #team-goals, #team-projects

Discussion: Companies who run competitive ads against WordPress and apply to sponsor WordCamps

Recently, 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. organizing team raised a question to Community 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. about a potential sponsor’s product, a WordPress derivative, being promoted in competition with WordPress and putting WordPress in an unflattering light. This question naturally prompted some discussion around where our expectations could be clarified to address WordPress derivatives and how they are promoted by sponsors, speakers, and organizers.

A WordPress derivative can be defined as any software that is built on top of WordPress – this primarily consists of plugins, themes and distributions.

Existing Expectations

The Community Team asks that everyone associated with a WordCamp in an official capacity — organizer, speaker, sponsor, or volunteer — uphold the principles of 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, including the GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples.. This helps protect users/attendees, who might not realize that by using a non-GPL 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 or theme, they are giving away the rights that WordPress provides them.

Additionally it is important to ensure that this community remains safe, inclusive and welcoming. To ensure that these values are reflected in WordPress events, the WordPress Community team has long stood by the following expectations for individuals and companies who want to be a part of the WordPress events program as found in the WordCamp Organizer Handbook:

  • No discrimination on the basis of economic or social status, race, color, ethnic origin, national origin, creed, religion, political belief, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, age, or disability.
  • No incitement to violence or promotion of hate
  • No spammers
  • No jerks
  • Respect the WordPress trademark.
  • Embrace the WordPress license; If distributing WordPress-derivative works (themes, plugins, WP distros), any person or business officially associated with WordCamp should give their users the same freedoms that WordPress itself provides: 100% GPL or compatible, the same guidelines we follow on 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/. ***Note: this is one step above simple compliance, which requires PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. code to be GPL / compatible but allows proprietary licenses for 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/., CSSCSS CSS is an acronym for cascading style sheets. This is what controls the design or look and feel of a site., and images. 100% GPL or compatible is required for promotion at WordCamps when WordPress-derivative works are involved, the same guidelines we follow on WordPress.org.***
  • Don’t promote companies or people that violate the trademark or distribute WordPress derivative works which aren’t 100% GPL compatible.

This brings us to our two questions!

In the comments, please share your thoughts on the following questions to help make decisions on how to move forward on this topic.

Should the WordCamp and 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. programs accept sponsors, speakers and organizers who engage in competitive marketing against WordPress?

How should competitive advertising be defined in the WordPress space?

This discussion will remain open and ongoing until April 29, 2021. At that time we will close comments and summarize the discussion for final review. 

Thank you to @sippis @angelasjin @andreamiddleton and @hlashbrooke for their contributions to this post

Announcement: Review of WordCamp sites without a tracker item – removal of some old WordCamp sites

Already some time ago, @iandunn handed me the list of 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. sites missing their counterpart in the WordCamp tracker.

Some of these sites are for WordCamps that did never take place at the end. Some sites are for WordCamps that have taken place well before the WordCamp tracker was introduced or do lack their counterpart for some other reason

I’ve gone thru the list of 60 sites and checked their status. Based on that, my proposal is that we:

  1. Create the counterpart post in the WordCamp tracker to backfill the history, with simple details like location, lead organiser (if available) and dates

OR

  1. Remove the WordCamp site, as the event never happened or the page links to a domain that does not work/isn’t controlled by WPCSWPCS The collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the WordPress Coding Standards. May also be an acronym referring to the Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook. or WPFWordPress Foundation The WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software. Find more on wordpressfoundation.org..

Some of these sites go back to the early years of WordCamps, to 2008. More eyes on this list and determining the right action for the site would be highly appreciated, in case there is some historical information that isn’t available from the site.

The list of sites and proposed actions is here.

Please leave a comment on this post if you think that the proposed action in some of the sites is wrong. The discussion will be open until 2021-04-23 after which we’ll start to remove the sites and creating counterparts in the tracker. If you’d like to help with creating these counterparts, let me know in the comments!

#wordcamp-sites, #wordcamp-org, #wordcamps

Request for Feedback: Community Team Stats Dashboard

A few days ago, @iandunn asked for feedback on the idea of Stats Dashboard from all the make teams. During today’s Asia/EMEA version of the Community Team Meeting, participants understood that the question is actually quite big as our team has so many areas, numbers and metrics that could be monitored in the dashboard.

Instead of figuring out the ideas metrics for our team in the comments of the original post and making the comments threads long over there, let’s have the initial discussion here in our own blog.

First thing is to get some kind of idea whether operational, analytical, strategic or some combination of those dashboard types would be best for our needs. Here’s a good outline of what different types of dashboards do (usually) mean.

The second discussion is about what metrics we would like to have in the dashboard? There’s already reports in the WordCamp Central, our support tool Help Scout has some reporting possibilities, meetup.com APIAPI An 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. is used to track organisers and events in our chapter 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. but those details are not in the public Central reports. It’s highly possible that I’m forgetting some reports and usage of data we are already doing. But more interestingly, are there some other things we don’t measure in any way currently that could be beneficial to us?

Please share your feedback especially on the questions:

  1. What metrics should be in the Community Team dashboard?
  2. Are there some metrics that would be helpful to have in the dashboard, but shouldn’t be public for some reason?
#stats

Proposal to improve the organizing experience for online WordCamps

Over the past year WordPress event organizers around the globe have learned so much about the process of organizing 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 online because we had to do that to keep going. Now that we’ve had a year to come together in this new way several of us have seen common obstacles. Timi and I met earlier this week to discuss those obstacles and how we might make organizing online WordCamps a better experience for all.

Getting through the obstacles 

Though there are a variety of obstacles that stand in the way of ideal online event organization there seem to be three things that are prominent for many 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. organizers.

Tools

We are spoiled for choice when it comes to online streaming tools. Because of this, organizers are using the tools that appeal most to them and their organizing team. This is great for personal choice, but makes it difficult to document the technical process to make the recording, broadcasting, and communicating part of the conference less time intensive so organizers can focus on what matters: content.

Documentation

The Community Team has spent years creating a handbook, training, and documentation for organizing our in-person events, but after a year of the WordPress community organizing exclusively online events, we haven’t created a lot of methodology or documentation to guide organizers through the specifics of all it takes to organize an online event. This knowledge gap, combined with not recommending specific tools has made this process harder to build extensive documentation for. 

Money

Organizing an online event is a lot of work. Technical work that many of us don’t have the experience to carry out. In the beginning of the pandemic, we solved the technical hurdle by hiring live streaming professionals to do the technical work for our events while organizers were able to focus on content. Since we’re not charging for registration with online events, it left sponsorship as our singular funding source. It’s not financially responsible, or in the long term possible, for WordCamps to continue paying for professional streaming producers and still maintain the values and expectations of the program.

The proposal

What we’re proposing is that we (community organizers, 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., and members of the community team) select a small number of tools for both pre-recording speaker sessions and live presentation of speaker sessions, as well as select any ancillary editing and communication tools so we can document more completely the event process. While doing so we’d increase the knowledge base of our organizers and volunteers, decrease our dependence on paid production, and reduce the amount of fundraising needed to sustain this program while it continues in its online-only state. At this time we are not proposing the specific tools to be used. We would like to hear from the organizers of all of our online events throughout 2020 to see which tools were most successful for them, while keeping in mind accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (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 cost. 

What’s missing?

I’m a big fan of acknowledging that I don’t know what I don’t know. Is there more that should go into this proposal? If there are additional considerations, please share those in the comments.

How can you help?

If you were part of an organizing team for an online WordCamp, please share with us what worked, and just as importantly, what didn’t work for you in the comments below. If you have online event organizing experience outside of WordCamps we’d love for you to share that as well, but please let us know what type of event your recommendations are based on when you share them.

Who is making this proposal?

This is a joint proposal from @sippis and @camikaos with additional support from @courtneypk and @kcristiano.

Proposal: Event Schema for WordCamp.org

We have taken some great steps in improving the SEO of 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. sites by rearranging the URL structure. I think the next step should be outputting Event Schema, to allow WordCamp sites to get rich event snippets. Wordcamp.org should output event schema on event homepages as well as on the individual WordCamp centralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each. event page.

What is “event schema”?

Event schema is metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. data, in JSONJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML.+LD format, that tells Google, and other search engines and platforms, about our events. It gives them the most important event details in computer readable format, so they can use that when they highlight an event.

Schema examples

Below are the examples for event schema that should be shown on the WordCamp.org event homepage. When adding this Event schema to WordCamp Central (here, for example) we should add a url attribute at the top level, pointing to the WordCamp homepage URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org.

Note that this event schema can be left on the page after the event is done. The event schema can also stay on the previous homepage, so a 2019 version of a WordCamp could still have the 2019 schema.

Schema for online events

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Event",
  "organizer": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "WordCamp Finland 2020 organizing team",
    "url": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/about/organizers/"
  },  
  "name": "WordCamp Finland 2020",
  "description": "Join the Finnish, Nordic and European WordPress Community for a full day of learning, sharing and fun!",
  "image": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/files/2020/09/wpfi2020-logo-black.png",
  "startDate": "2020-11-12T12:00+02:00",
  "endDate": "2020-11-12T17:00+02:00",
  "eventStatus": "https://schema.org/EventScheduled",
  "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OnlineEventAttendanceMode",
  "location": {
    "@type": "VirtualLocation",
    "url": "https://example.com/"
  },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "name": "Free ticket",
    "price": "0",
    "priceCurrency": "EUR",
    "validFrom": "2020-10-27",
    "url": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/tickets/",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
  }
}

Schema for offline events

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Event",
  "organizer": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "WordCamp Alaska 2020 organizing team",
    "url": "https://alaska.wordcamp.org/2020/about/organizers/"
  },  
  "name": "WordCamp Alaska 2020",
  "description": "Join the Alaskan WordPress Community for a full day of learning, sharing and fun!",
  "image": "https://alaska.wordcamp.org/2020/files/2020/09/wp-alaska-2020-logo-black.png",
  "startDate": "2020-11-12T12:00+02:00",
  "endDate": "2020-11-12T17:00+02:00",
  "eventStatus": "https://schema.org/EventScheduled",
  "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OfflineEventAttendanceMode",
  "location": {     
    "@type": "Place",
    "name": "Our WordCamp venue",
    "address": {
      "@type": "PostalAddress",
      "streetAddress": "Address line 1",
      "addressLocality": "City",
      "addressRegion": "AK",
      "postalCode": "12345",
      "addressCountry": "US"
    }
  },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "name": "Regular ticket",
    "price": "25",
    "priceCurrency": "EUR",
    "validFrom": "2020-10-27",
    "url": "https://alaska.wordcamp.org/2020/tickets/",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
  }
}

Schema for cancelled events

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Event",
  "name": "WordCamp Finland 2020",
  "description": "Join the Finnish, Nordic and European WordPress Community for a full day of learning, sharing and fun!",
  "image": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/files/2020/09/wpfi2020-logo-black.png",
  "startDate": "2020-11-12T12:00+02:00",
  "endDate": "2020-11-12T17:00+02:00",
  "eventStatus": "https://schema.org/EventCancelled",
  "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OnlineEventAttendanceMode",
  "location": {
    "@type": "VirtualLocation",
    "url": "https://example.com/"
  },
  "organizer": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "WordCamp Finland 2020 organizing team",
    "url": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/about/organizers/"
  },  
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "name": "Free ticket",
    "price": "0",
    "priceCurrency": "EUR",
    "validFrom": "2020-10-27",
    "url": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/tickets/",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
  }
}

UIUI UI 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. controls

A lot of this data comes from existing fields / settings in the system. I think these are the ones that we might need to be able to change manually:

Decisions still left to make

  • Should the organization bit refer to the organizing team or to the WordCamp foundation or something else?

Thanks to @francina, @sippis and @jonoaldersonwp for providing early feedback on this idea.

Resolved Posts plugin activated & widgets added; Learn Roadmap Proposal

Over the last two weeks, I’ve been working with the MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. team on the preferred way to collect and track non-technical roadmap or wishlist items for the the Learn WordPress initiative. I had initially proposed adding these as issues in the Learn GitHub repository. Concern was raised that we shouldn’t ask non-technical users to make a GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ account or learn how to use GitHub to be able to comment or contribute ideas. We talked though several options before arriving on the solution I’m sharing with you today.

The Resolved Posts 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 has been installed on this site. The plugin adds a button at the bottom of each published post (when viewing on the front of the site) which toggles through three states: no value, to do (unresolved), and done (resolved). Unresolved posts have a red stripe on the left down the length of the post. Once resolved, the stripe will be green.

The 5 oldest unresolved posts will appear in a new Unresolved widgetWidget A 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 sidebarSidebar A sidebar in WordPress is referred to a widget-ready area used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content. It is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or any where in the theme. of this site. I’ve gone through all of the posts on this site and cleared the unresolved flag from posts that were informational or very old. I’ve commented on the four remaining posts that were unresolved asking for feedback to see if they should remain unresolved.

For the Learn WordPress roadmap items, each items should be created as a post on this site and include the #learn-roadmap tag. After publishing the post, mark it as a To Do. When viewing the #learn-roadmap tag page, a widget can be seen in the sidebar showing unresolved #learn-roadmap posts. This widget will also appear when viewing any post with this the #learn-roadmap tag. Going forward, I suggest we adopt the following:

  • if consensus to proceed with the idea is reached, an issue should be opened on the GitHub repository and a top comment be added with a link to the issue
  • once the GitHub issue is complete, the roadmap post can be marked resolved.

Please comment below if there is a better way to transition from roadmap post to GitHub issue for the developers to work on. I’ll leave this open for input until October 2, 2020.

Proposal: Asking confirmation when registering for a free ticket

In a discussion on WordCamp.org Github repository @coreymckrill brought up an idea about asking a confirmation when an attendee registers for free 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. ticket.

The discussion started from mitigating the special accommodation request notice flood, especially with larger events, but soon shifted to the direction where it was realised that it might not be so inclusive to ask confirmation only from attendees ticking the special accommodation request box.

Because free tickets don’t have money transaction that verifies the purchase and registration, our online WordCamp registrations are more open for different kind of abuses. For example, a bot registering with unwanted link as their website that will appear on attendees page, or someone doing a blackhat SEO tricks.

Adding a step of confirmation would prevent the abuse to some extent and as well work as a reminder for the attendee that they are really enrolling for an event that some team has organised with lots of love towards it.

Only after the attendee would have clicked the link directing to page that does the confirmation, their information would be shown on public attendees list.

How about ticket quantities? When attendee registers, ticket would be reserved and removed from the available pool. If confirmation page isn’t visited within 12 hours after registration, the reservation will expire, reserved ticket returns to available pool and attendee is marked with “Cancelled” or “Timeout” status.

Any thoughts? Concerns? Please share those and your opinion about wheter we should ask confirmation when registering for a free ticket or not before 2020-08-20.

#online-events, #confirmation, #registration, #tickets

Proposal: QR code for WordCamp badges

Bigger WordCamps spend a lot of time in registration of the attendees upon arrival or for workshops and handing out swag like T-shirts based on lists that exist (mainly on paper). A QR code on e.g. a cellphone or tablet could speed up things.I saw somebody already opened a tracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. ticket (https://meta.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/4162), but there was nor further follow up, so please find below my proposal after having led registration and swag at WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. 2019:

Phase1: Add the QR code in the email when buying a ticket and on the WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. site when attendee logs in with the personal credentials.

Phase2: Attach as pkpass (or other) to the email and allow downloading that file from the site.

Continue reading

#badges