Previous posts about the event series GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ Developer hours. 

• Proposal: Gutenberg Developer Hours series of events.
• Developer Hours now scheduled, first event Feb 8th, 2022
• Events: Feb 8th, 2022, Feb 22, 2022, Mar 8, 2022 + March 22, 2022

TL;DR 

The first Gutenberg Developer Hours was a great success! Huge thank you to Tammie, Fabian, and Nick!  86.7% of survey takers rated it as Excellent. All 15 responders would place their recommendation into the likely half with 80% rating it a 10 (very likely)

These answers to open questions stood out: 

What did you like: 

• Interesting topics, knowledgeable participants
• Conversation. The different points of view.
• Best practices, expert advice, very relevant to work we’re doing

What didn’t you like: 

• Too Short
• Probably a challenge to have different experience levels at once, but that was well handled.
• If any of these Meetups should have been recorded of the dozen or more I’ve attended, it was this one. The live transcript is very valuable, and its absence a noteworthy lack of planning.
• When there are many topics, it becomes a bit too diluted, and it felt like maybe not everything was said before continuing to the next question.

How did you hear about the event? 

• 53% MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. 
• 33% Gutenberg Times
• 13% Make Blogblog (versus network, site)
• 6% Twitter
• 6% WPVIP

Below are topic suggestions for more Social Learning spaces.  

Based on your feedback, the producers have already enabled live captions for future events. They will record the sessions, too, so you can revisit them or catch up if you have to miss one. FOMO is real. 

Here are the details.  

Of 38 participants, 15 filled out the survey

What did you like about the event?

• Direct and honest interaction with those in the know
• Best practices, expert advice, very relevant to work we’re doing
• The knowledge of the panel members. So much info!
• Knowledge of the panel and their easy-to-understand explanations
• My question was answered after I joined, I was quite late in joining and I was worried my question might already have been covered, but you waited till I joined and I’m very thankful you did. And of course it was great to get my question answered by several of the people in the meeting, and I also got a very useful link from Fabian which was great.
• The panelists were the most knowledgeable group thus far on the Social Learning Meetups. Fabian and Nick were excellent.
• The way the three panelists answered the questions.
• Experts opinions
• I got lots of links and advice on gutenberg
• Interesting topics, knowledgeable participants
• Conversation. The different points of view.
• Discussion on BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience.-based themes.
• Knowledgeable answers to questions. Good links. Good chat comments.
• Learning new things about block themes.
• All doubts were cleared

What did you dislike about the event?

• It would be nice to have more questions & participation
• I loved the event
• too short! Not clear where the copied code is pasted when Nick said to “copy and paste.”
• Not recorded so that we can go back and review information presented
• I was late in joining so I didn’t get the full experience, but I think it might be good if future events can be recorded in case anyone misses it, or in case people who did view it live wish to watch some of it again.
• If any of these Meetups should have been recorded of the dozen or more I’ve attended, it was this one. The live transcript is very valuable and its absence a noteworthy lack of planning.
• Not really a dislike, for the first installment it was a great event. I think I’d prefer to have the Developer Hours be focused on a specific topic, so either block development, block theme development, or specific new functions, for example template locking.
• Recording not available but it’s been discussed and hopefully from next Meetup
• too short
• When there are many topics, it becomes a bit too diluted and it felt like maybe not everything was said before continuing to the next question.
• Nothing to report here.
• Timing (just kidding :D)
• Nothing I disliked. Probably a challenge to have different experience levels at once, but that was well handled.
• Nothing in particular. Not a Zoom fan.
• Nothing 🙂

How did you hear about this event?

• Email from Meetup
• from Brett Harris at VIP
• email from Meetup (I go to other WP social meetups)
• meetup notice of upcoming events
• Gutenberg Times newsletter
• I’ve been a member of the Meetup group since it started.
• Twitter / Make Blog
• Searching Gutenberg meet-ups
• WordPress meetup
• 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/ and from Birgit
• Gutenberg times, podcasts, meetup
• From wp.org
• Gutenberg Times
• Your newsletter.
• Through meetup.com

What topics should we cover in future Gutenberg Developer Hours?

• I halfway answered this in the “what did you dislike” question, continuing from there: 
  • For these, maybe some demo time would be nice, so one of the panelists can explain things via screen sharing and then attendees can ask questions around that topic. 
  • So like best practices, how to work with theme.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., what part of the theme.json has which effect in the editor, block development (static vs dynamic blocks). 
  • In general I’d like to see some deeper going content, however I believe that squeezing this into one hour will be quite challenging.
• Creating custom Gutenberg blocks
• More gutenberg
• I think it may help if the topics were limited to maybe 3?
• Developer centric topics and case studies of unique site
• FSE related topics
• Multiple Answers:
  • How to monitor tracking issues. 
  • How to find up-to-date information on 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 development (much is very old, every course and book seems out of date). 
  • How to get the most out of reading the Gutenberg code. Ryan Welcher seems to be almost the only regularly updated source of current developer-level info, so this is an underserved area. 
  • Gutenberg best practices. 
  • Font loading in block themes. 
  • Building child themes for block themes. 
  • FSE theme best practices — color naming and style conventions. 
  • Code walkthroughs of block themes.
• As of 5.9, when to use or develop plugins.
• May be show some demo live sites using Gutenberg

Huge Thank you to the panel contributors

• Chandrika Sista @cguntur
• Daisy Olsen @daisyo
• Fabian Kägy @fabiankaegy
• Grzegorz Ziolkowski @gziolo
• George Mamadashvili @mamaduka
• Joni Halabi @thatdevgirl
• Nick Diego @ndiego
• Tammie Lister @karmatosed

The second event took place February 22, 2022. A recording is now available on YouTube and a follow-up post will be available next week. This time we didn’t close the event and 100 people registered of which 47 attended, 40% repeat participants.

The next Gutenberg Developer Hours will take place on March 8th, 2022 at 11 am ET / 16:00 UTC

Thank you, also to @marybaum for her review of this post.

#developer-hours, #online-events