All registered participants should have received an email from me on October 15 with links to fill in a form with your travel info, and a short survey to help set the summit agenda. If you haven’t already filled those in, please try to do it tonight or first thing tomorrow. Thanks!
Yearly Archives: 2012
Desperately Seeking Sponsors
I’ve always wanted to give this title* to a post announcing sponsorship opportunities. 🙂
In all seriousness, though we’re keeping things as low-cost as possible, putting on an event like the community summit for 100+ people requires money. Since we’re planning to subsidize travel for a number of volunteers and students from around the world who couldn’t otherwise attend, that bumps up the budget by a fair bit. If your company is doing well and you’re making a living at least in part thanks to WordPress, I hope you’ll consider becoming a sponsor for the event.
Sponsorships range from $500 – $10k+, whatever you can afford to contribute. This event sponsorship is really about supporting the project and the community; there aren’t graduated levels of exposure associated with each price level other than the label that will show up 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.. Links to your site, logos in the program, and thanks at event will be given to all sponsors, regardless of dollar amount. Since this event is by invitation and has a set number of attendees, the different sponsorship levels are really about the desire and financial ability of your company to contribute to the summit, not about a marketing bang for your buck. When we’ve raised enough money to cover our costs, we’ll stop taking sponsorships. I’ll try to post a budget overview next week so it’s transparent how the money is being spent.
Check out the call for sponsors for more information and to sign on as a sponsor. Thanks!
*A riff on the movie title Desperately Seeking Susan.
Travel Scholarship Application
The scholarship program is intended to make it possible for WordPress community members to attend the summit conference; specifically, community members who have been invited but might not be able to attend for financial reasons. Scholarships may cover all or part of the conference registration fee, travel, and/or lodging. We can also assist in acquiring international visas.
Our scholarship selection team will be looking for applicants passionate about WordPress who would not be able to attend the event without financial assistance. Please indicate in the application the level of financial assistance you need, keeping in mind that we strive to accomodate the maximum number of scholarship applicants that our budget will allow. In other words, please only apply if you really can’t afford the trip, and ask for the amount you really need; don’t apply because you’d rather spend your money on video games and beer. 🙂
Application Deadline is August 30, 2012
Scholarship Evaluation Criteria
1. Only voluntary, non-profit work makes applicants eligible for a scholarship. Working on the WordPress project (coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., documentation, events, etc) as part of a paid job does NOT count. If you are paid to work on WordPress, we can provide a letter to help convince your company to send you to the summit.
2. Scholarships are both rewards and incentives. Applications will be ranked based on what they have done for WordPress in the past and based on how much their attendance at the summit will benefit them and the WordPress project.
Prior to submitting your scholarship application:
1. Please evaluate if you will really be able to attend the summit. If you decide you can’t attend after receiving a scholarship award (travel/hotel), you will not be eligible for a WordPress event scholarship in the future. We understand that situations may come up last minute, so please be considerate of other scholarship applicants and consider family and job obligations before applying.
2. It is your responsibility to research the visa requirements for your country. Please research obtaining a visa for your country prior to submitting your application, and let us know the anticipated wait time before you’ll hear back about a visa. The WordPress Foundation can provide an Invitation Letter if necessary, whether you are applying for a travel scholarship or not. If you receive a scholarship but are unable to attend the summit due to not obtaining a visa, you will not be eligible for a WordPress event scholarship in the future.
3. You must have a current passport *in your possession* with an expiration date no earlier than 3 months after the conference to apply.
Apply for a travel scholarship to the WordPress Community Summit
If you have a question regarding scholarships, please leave a comment on this post or contact Jane directly.
P.S. This post and form largely inspired and/or cribbed from Drupal’s DrupalCon scholarship program. Props, Drupal!
Confirming Things
Hey folks! Today was the day I requested RSVPs to be in by. Almost all came in, so I’m moving forward with the budget and such without the last few stragglers’ responses so that we don’t lose momentum. I had planned to post info on sponsoring the event today, but since there were so many last-minute RSVPs I’m amending the budget now and will plan to post sponsorship info within the next two days. In the meantime, I’ll be posting an application for travel scholarships (cribbed in large part from the one Drupal uses for DrupalCon), which will help round out the final budgeting before posting sponsorship levels. There will also be a form for requests for Letters of Invitation for visa applications.
Otto is working on switching this site over from the P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org theme to a modified version of 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. theme so we’ll get all that built-in stuff like the attendees page and schedule and ticketing. Hopefully that will be done tomorrow or soon thereafter. [Update: We got it switched over while I was writing this post!]
Will also be enabling some bbPressbbPress Free, open source software built on top of WordPress for easily creating forums on sites. https://bbpress.org forums here so people can start discussing travel dates and shared housing before booking anything. I have lined up a 20% discount with two vacation rental companies, so that should help. In addition to letting people talk amongst themselves in the forums, we’ll also provide a matching service for anyone looking for roommates or a couch so that everyone can take advantage of lower housing costs that wants to. That’ll all be getting posted this week, too.
Lastly, anyone who RSVPed Yes or Maybe will be getting an email from me with more details about dates and planning, as well as information about the area (since it sounds like a lot of people are planning to come for a longer period of time than just 2 nights), and the codes to use if you choose to book housing through the cottage rental places I mentioned.
If you are going to be attending, please sign up for email subscriptions to this blog (in 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. on the right), as I will soon switch from emailing all the participants to just posting here with updates. Thanks!
RSVPs So Far
136 Invited, 105 RSVPs via the form. 77 Yes, 25 Maybe, 3 No. There are also a few others who emailed me, commented on Twitter, or pinged on skype instead of using the form. Officially, invitees have another week to RSVP with the form, but it would be great to get them in sooner if possible. If you’re not sure yet, RSVPing as a Maybe is a valid response, and we’ll follow up with you.
These are the people who haven’t RSVPed (or pinged me) yet that I’m mildly wondering if I sent the invite to an outdated email address:
Adii Pienaar, Alex Rabe, Chris Pearson, Chris Wallace, Clay Griffiths, Diana (Katayama) Cury, Drew Strojny, Elliot Condon, Japheth Thomson, Jason Schuller, Johan “Spocke” Sörlin, Justin Tadlock, Kevinjohn Gallagher, Kuraishi, Milan Dinic, Miyoshi Takayuki, Nitzan Miron, Vid Luther, Will P Davis
If you know any of the people on this mini-list, if you wanted to make sure they got the email invite, that would be a help. If you discover anyone from this list didn’t get their email, please let me know the best way to reach them so we can rectify that. Thanks!
Can I Bring My Wife/Husband/Children/Colleagues with Me?
I’ve gotten this question from a bunch of people in the past two days. This isn’t a +1 event; because we had to exercise such painful editing on the invite list, I’m sure you’ll understand that bringing your spouse, business partner, or employees to the conference would not only be a problem for us numbers-wise, but would add insult to injury to the people who applied to be here but didn’t make the final list.
That said, if you’re not applying for a travel scholarship and are not planning to join one of the group cottage rentals, you can of course travel to Savannah/Tybee with anyone you like. Here is the guiding principle you should plan to observe if you’re thinking about combining business with pleasure:
Scheduled conference time, including any planned meals and/or social events, will be open only to those on the invite list. If you travel with others, they must be on their own and entertaining themselves during these times, not hanging out in the conference locations. This is a firm rule, to keep the focus on the people invited to participate.
And really, truly, your wife/husband/child/colleague is awesome, we know, and they get along with everyone. But it would just be completely unfair to include them in this event when we’ve had to exclude so many who actually applied to come and were almost on the invite list. Please respect this boundary.
If we wind up with multiple “WordPress Widows,” maybe they could all go into Savannah for the day together or something. There are lots of tour companies, scenic stuff, places to drive to, shopping, etc. Or if the weather is nice, they could go kayaking or something. It is very easy to occupy someone for a day in this location. 🙂
I’ll still answer the individual emails that have asked about this, but thought I’d post this here so that if others are wondering the same thing, everything will be clear.
The WordPress Community Summit is a by invitation…
The WordPress Community Summit is a by-invitation conference being held at the end of October 2012. We’re still in the planning stages, and this site will grow in the coming weeks to include information for attendees as well as event sponsorships, agenda, possible livestreaming, etc. In the meantime, here’s an FAQ based on the tweets and emails coming my way in the past day.
How Did You Decide Who to Invite?
The contributor group team reps from coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., support (forums/docs), ui, theme review, 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. review, polyglots, and events formed the summit invite selection committee. A total of 18 people reviewed the list of potential invitees based on the nominations (both self and other) that we received from the original call for nominations. Some of the reviewers were familiar with many of the names submitted for consideration already, while others knew hardly any and had to go look people up online.
In voting on each name, we kept several things in mind:
- Active contributions to the 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/ project
- Influence/reach in the broader WordPress ecosystem (not necessarily within WordPress.org)
- Area of expertise (wanted a good spread between core, themes, plugins, consultants)
- Company (wanted to get multiple theme companies to the table vs having 5-10 people from 1)
- Location (tried to get a decent international contingent so we wouldn’t be so US-focused)
- Opposing Points of View (wanted to get people who typically take aim on Twitter talking to each other instead)
The selection committee members voted Yes, Maybe, No, or I don’t know this person (generally reserved for an unknown without enough of an online presence to form an opinion about their involvement). Anyone with more than 50% yesses and 0 “no” votes went on the invite list. Anyone who received “no” votes but still got more than 50% yesses/maybes was the subject of a discussion. Anyone who got less than 50% yes or maybe votes was reviewed, but not as much since by the time we finished the first two rounds we were having size issues already. Then we had to start cutting names, which sucked, because they were people we’d wanted to have there, but we were pretty far over our intended size already, even with the assumed 20% non-accept rate. So those people moved over to a Maybe list, and if we wind up with any room on the list later on we will reach out. Then we had Matt take a look to see if he thought we’d made any egregious omissions before sending invites (he didn’t think so).
What Did the Invites Say?
When it comes to WordPress, you’re kind of a big deal! We think so, anyway, and we’d like to invite you to participate in the community summit being planned for October 2012 by the WordPress.org contributor group team reps.
Who’ll Be There?
• Representatives from all the WordPress.org contributor groups: core development, forums/docs, theme review, plugin review, events, polyglots, 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), mobile apps, and any new contributor groups formed between now and then
• WordPress lead developers
• Co-founder and project leader Matt Mullenweg
• Other big deals from the community of WordPress makers: themers, plugin devs, consultants and agencies, hosting companies, translators, 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. and meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers, etc.
• The event will be kept small to ensure that everyone can meet everyone else
What’s the Purpose of this Event?
• Build bridges between the people making WordPress (via the contributor groups) and the people doing the best and most influential work built on top of it
• Open channels of communication between project leaders, volunteers, and professionals in the community
• Learn more about each others’ goals, challenges, and ways we can help each other
• Share best practices
• Have a few drinks and get to know each other better 🙂
What’s the Format?
• Combination of flash talks, peer discussions, workshops, q&a, town hall, social time
• Agenda to be determined in part by the interests of the participants
• Since we’re trying to keep it small, hopefully we can livestream some portions to benefit your colleagues back home and the broader community
What Are the Logistics?
• Date: Monday, October 29, 2012
• Location: Tybee Island, GA
• Ticket Price: $100
• RSVP: By August 20 to reserve your spot
• Sponsorship Opportunities: Will be announced August 20
• Housing: Hotels, condos, and rental cottages are in walking distance and will have lodging discount codes
• The scheduled conference is one day long, but staying a day or two longer for hack days will be an option
• Some travel scholarships will be available
If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” me on Skype.
You can RSVP yes, no, or maybe at [rsvp-poll-link]. We would love for you to be a part of the group, so hopefully you’ll RSVP yes and we’ll be in touch with more details soon!
Thanks for all you do for the WordPress community,
Jane
So Who Was Invited?
Had planned to focus more on who was participating after getting the RSVPs, but since there seems to be a lot of interest in knowing who was invited, here’s the list:
Aaron Brazell
Aaron Campbell (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.)
Aaron Jorbin
Adii Pienaar
Aleksandr Stankevic
Alex Concha
Alex King
Alex Mills
Alex Rabe – NextGen Gallery
Amy Hendrix
Andrea Middleton (team rep)
Andrea Rennick (team rep)
Andrey Savchenko (rarst on wpse)
Andrew Nacin (team rep)
Andrew Norcross
Andrew Ozz
Andy Peatling
Andy Skelton
Andy Stratton
Barry Abrahamson
Ben Balter
Ben Metcalfe
Bill Erickson
Boone Gorges
Brad Williams
Brandon Dove
Brian Gardner
Brian Layman
Bryan Petty
Carl Hancock
Cátia Kitahara
Chip Bennett (team rep)
Chris Coyier
Chris Olbekson
Chris Pearson
Chris Wallace
Christine Rondeau
Clay Griffiths
Collis Ta’eed
Cory Miller
Cristi Burca (team rep)
Dan Milward
Daryl Koopersmith (team rep)
Dave Martin
Diana (Katayama) Cury
Dion Hulse
Dominik Schilling
Dougal Campbell
Dre Armeda
Drew Strojny
Elliot Condon
Emil Uzelac (team rep)
Eric Mann
Frederick Townes
George Stephanis
Helen Hou-Sandi (team rep)
Ian Stewart
Isaac Keyet
Jake Goldman
James Farmer
Jan Dembowski
Jane Wells (team rep)
Japheth Thomson
Jared Atchison
Jason Schuller
Jeff Starr
Johan “Spocke” Sörlin
John Hawkins
John James Jacoby
Jon Cave
Jonathan Davis
Joost de Valk
Jorge Bernal
Josh Strebel
Justin Tadlock
Kailey Lampert
Kevinjohn Gallagher
Konstantin Kovshenin
Konstantin Obenland
Kuraishi (tenpura)
Kurt Payne
Lance Willett
Lisa Sabin-Wilson
Mark Jaquith (team rep)
Marko Heijnen
Marty Thornley
Matt Martz
Matt Mullenweg
Matt Thomas
Max Cutler
Mel Pedley (team rep)
Michael “Mitcho” Erlewine
Michael Pretty
Michael Torbert
Mika Epstein (team rep)
Mike Adams
Mike Schroder (team rep)
Milan Dinic
Miyoshi Takayuki
Nathan Rice
Nikolay Bachiyski
Nitzan Miron
Noel Tock
Orman Clark
Otto Wood (team rep)
Ozh Richard
Paul Gibbs
Pete Mall
Peter Chester
Peter Westwood
Pippin Williamson
Ptah Dunbar
Rachel Baker
Remkus De Vries
Ron Rennick
Ryan Duff
Ryan Imel
Ryan McCue
Sara Cannon
Scott Gonzalez
Scott Reilly (team rep)
Scott Taylor
Sergey Biryukov
Simon Wheatley
Siobhan McKeown
Stephanie Leary
Syed Balkhi
Thad Allender
Thomas Scholz (toscho on wpse)
Tom Auger
Tony Perez
Vid Luther
Vladimir Prelovac
Will P Davis
Xavier Borderie
Zé Fontainhas (team rep)
I Want to Know More!
That’s awesome, and we want to be as transparent as possible. We also need to get a bunch of stuff done, so the main focus right now is getting RSVPs, putting together a budget, and then raising sponsorship money to pay for the thing. So we’ll turn this into a site with lots of information, but please be patient while we attend to the more time-sensitive details first. Thanks!