Nahuai Badiola 3:28 pm on September 15, 2023

Call for WordPress Sustainability Team Representatives

The official WordPress Sustainability Team was born during the WCEU Athens Contributor Day and is looking for team representatives.

What is a 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.?

Within the WordPress project, each contributor team should have a minimum of two team representatives, but three or four are recommended. Often abbreviated to “team reps,” these people represent the team across the project, share key updates across all contributor teams, and generally help to support the team as a whole. You can read more about the team rep definition and expectations on the Team Reps page. Currently, the Sustainability team has no formal representatives.

Expectations for team reps can vary from team to team. In general, Sustainability team reps help to:

prepare for and run the sustainability team’s weekly chats
providing as-required updates to other contributor groups
generally representing the sustainability team across the project, or in the occasional chat
maintain a high-level perspective and awareness on current team projects

Team reps should expect to dedicate, at least, 1 to 2 hours per week to these activities. Any active sustainability contributor can be a team rep, and we can have more than two team reps.

Opening nominations

Any active Sustainability person can be a team rep, and anyone can nominate a team rep. Self-nominations are also accepted. Everyone is welcome to give some thought as to who is a good fit for this role and nominate them in the comments of this post.

Nominations for Sustainability team reps will be open until September 29th, 2023 11.00 UTC.

After the nominations close, if there are enough nominees, we need to make a selection. The nominees will be published at make.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//sustainability and during the Sustainability meeting on October 6th. We’re still deciding about the most suitable voting system here. Please, check the post and give your opinion. Voting will start on October 6th, 2023 and will remain open until October 13th, 2023 11.00 UTC. Keep in mind that whoever is nominated as a team rep will need to accept the role to become a candidate to be voted. So if someone nominates you, and you aren’t available or interested, don’t worry – just let us know!

Those selected as team reps will take over these responsibilities starting 15th of October 2023 and would be in this position until December 2024.

If you have any questions about the team rep role, want to learn more, or any other doubts, please share them here in the comments.

Nora Ferreirós 12:24 pm on September 13, 2023

Sustainability Team in the WordPress Community Summit 2023

A few weeks ago, a new edition of the WordPress Community Summit took place, after some years (last one was held in 2017 in Paris). And two of the four Sustainability Team temporary Reps were lucky enough to be chosen to attend: Nahuai Badiola (@nahuai) and myself, Nora Ferreirós (@noradriana). This post is intended to be a summary of our experience there.

What is the WordPress Community Summit?

The WordPress Community Summit is an event that brings together contributors from across the WordPress project with the aim of discussing about how to move it forward. It’s a chance to share and listen to the concerns and thoughts the community has, in a closer and more dynamic way. No decisions are made there: the goal is to spark the conversation and then continue it on Make WordPress Blog. All the sessions and topics that were discussed can be checked in the schedule.

It took place in National Harbor, close to Washington DC, just before 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. US, and people from (almost) all around the world came to participate. Nahuai and I could make it thanks to the Community Summit travel fund.

Sustainability in the Community Summit

As (rookie) representatives of a new team, our objective was listening what other contributors had to say about the role of sustainability in the WordPress project and team management, and share the learnings of our experience so far.

All the things said during the sessions were anonymously registered by the notetakers (thank you for your great work!). The notes are public and they will be linked and explained further down in this post, but we wanted to bring a summary of our impressions first.

Good feelings about Sustainability Team. We received a lot of positive comments and high interest in our team. The contributors we had the chance to talk with (or to listen to) agreed with the need of take care of the WordPress project’s sustainability.
What Sustainability Team exactly does? This is probably the question people asked us the most. Contributors agree that a Sustainability Team is needed, but there’s many things that can be understood as sustainability in tech, depending of the point of view. So, confusion is still there, but we are actively working on clarifying our role and scope, and to finally provide an answer to this question.
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB). We had a whole session to learn more about all the work that lies ahead on this topic from people that really knows about it. During some of our meetings, there have been conversations about whether or not DEIB should be carried by our team or needs a separated one. As this is something that has to be decided jointly, we will share our own thoughts on this when the moment arrives. But we invite everyone in the team to check this session’s notes in order to reflect about it.
Improving team management. A lot was said about how to manage WordPress teams in general, and how the Sustainability Team has been managed so far. In summary, we learned that it’s not easy or clear for anybody (there are no guidelines about it yet), and there’s quite a lot of room for improvement also for us.

Notes taken during the sessions and some other

As it has been already said, there are public notes that anyone can check and comment. The following list includes the sessions where sustainability, as a team or as a topic, was mentioned (as far as we know). We invite you to check them and share your opinion.

There’s also a lot of valuable information in other sessions about team collaboration and being 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. that can be really useful for those elected in the vote. We can talk about them when the time comes..

WordPress Briefing

Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune) shared her takeaways from this Community Summit in the last WordPress Briefing episode. You can listen it fully if you are curious about all the event, or you can go directly to 00:06:16 for checking what she has said about sustainability.

If you know any additional content anyone in the community has created about this topic, please drop it in a comment.

A final note

Not all the sustainability areas were mentioned during the sessions but, as we see it, this doesn’t means that they are not important or shouldn’t took into account. We felt the Community Summit as an opportunity to reflect, learn and connect with contributors from other teams, not as a place where decisions where made. The team role should be shaped by its members and everyone who wants to contribute.

Sustainability in WCUS

We have to give a big thank you to @coachbirgit, who lead the Sustainability table at the WCUS Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.. As soon as she have them, she’ll share with the team the notes of the session. I’ll do my best to update this post with them.

Some people shared with us the intention of talking about sustainability during WordCamp US. We didn’t have time to watch all the talks so we can’t give you a list of the ones in which sustainability was present. But we invite anybody who attended (in-person or by streaming) to facilitate any interesting information they gathered from the event.

Conclusion

This Community Summit was definitely a positive experience for us. There’s so much to say and so much to learn about sustainability in WordPress. But the main conclusion is that, although there is much room for improvement, this team has the support of the WordPress Community.

So, thank you to everyone that makes this team possible and let’s make WordPress more sustainable together.

Nora Ferreirós 9:24 am on September 6, 2023

How the WordPress Sustainability Team was born during WordCamp Europe 2023

Just before WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Europe 2023, the sustainability initiative posted a Team Proposal following the spirit of the initial point of view and including all input received since the channel was created.

Becoming an official WordPress Team means that our decisions will eventually become reality, so it’s important to define the team’s field of action and its scope. The Team Proposal was really helpful for this matter. The comments left made two things clear:

The WordPress community agreed that a WordPress Sustainability Team was needed.
Sustainability is broader than the environmental challenges we face.

During the past year, although we were aware that social and financial areas are essential parts of being a sustainable project, the sustainability Slack channel activity was basically only focused on environmental issues.

During WordCamp Europe 2023 we got the confirmation that many people agreed on these two points and finally, the Sustainability team was born.

WordCamp Europe 2023

Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.

The Sustainability Table run at WordCamp Europe 2023 Contributor Day was intended to be an opportunity to discuss the Team Proposal in a more agile and productive way. That’s what happened: sponsors, WordCamp 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, members from other WordPress Teams, and many other contributors came to discuss the role of a potential Sustainability Team.

Josepha Haden Chomphosy, Executive Director of the WordPress project, came to visit the table to talk with those present. She first listened to our vision about how an official Sustainability Team could help WordPress and then she shared her point of view. The conversation we had with Josepha in Athens was about the need to have a WordPress Team with a broader view, since sustainability is more than a focus on environmental issues: the WordPress Sustainability Team needs to focus on the economical and financial longevity of the WordPress Project as well.

Having a good talk with Josepha resulted in a strong confirmation from the people present at the contributor table that the team needs and deserves a broader approach to cover sustainability entirely.

Conference days

During the days that followed, topics touching the area of sustainability were covered during talks and panels about gender and LGTBIQ+ diversity, generational handover, and the Five for the Future project.

Valuable actionable ideas were covered and discussed during the Workshop Let’s make WordPress & its community sustainable today.

Sustainability, from different perspectives, was a topic in the Future of WCEU panel, and mentioned during the Q&A session with Matt Mullenweg, Josepha Haden Chomphosy, and Matías Ventura.

We had the opportunity to see that Sustainability was definitely a concern for the WordPress community present at WCEU 2023.

The WordPress Sustainability Team: definition and goals

So, taking everything into account, from the feedback received on the Team Proposal publication to the moment the team was finally created at WCEU 2023, the Sustainability Team is defined as follows:

The role of the WordPress Sustainability Team is to ensure the continuity of WordPress as a project, and further it in ways that are necessarily aligned with respect for people and the planet. In order to achieve this, we will work cohesively on the following matters, in no particular order:

The social longevity of the WordPress Project: Finding ways to bring more people into the community, providing opportunities, paying attention to diversity, and taking care of those already in the community.
The ecological sustainability of the WordPress Project: Guiding the WordPress Project towards growth that respects environmental sustainability parameters.
The economic longevity of the WordPress Project: Managing the necessary financial support to meet the requirements to make WordPress a lasting project and to ensure no one who wants to contribute fails to do so because of their financial situation.

Sustainability also covers the working areas of other WordPress Teams as well as existing projects, like the Five for the Future, the WordPress Community Team or the Performance Team. The WordPress Sustainability Team will therefore partner closely with those. Only together can we achieve our goals.

Conclusion

So, this is how the Sustainability Initiative turned into the Sustainability Team.

Now, and most importantly, the team has the great task of defining the proper actions and to collaborate with other teams to ensure a socially, environmentally, and financially sustainable WordPress project.

Everyone is invited to be part of it.

A final note: who are “we”

During the year the Sustainability Team was an initiative, @littlebigthing, @nahuai, @noradriana and @yellowlime, and also @hanopcan in the first few months, were the people who did their best to carry this idea forward. We, those mentioned above, coordinated and dedicated some of our time to demonstrate that sustainability is a topic that arouses interest and should have a place in the WordPress Community. Now that the initiative has finally become an official team, it’s time to decide together who should represent it from now on. With that in mind, we have scheduled the Team Reps nomination and voting process for the current month. Stay tuned!

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Reviewed by: @littlebigthing, @nahuai, @yellowlime and @tferry

yellowlime 12:47 pm on June 8, 2023

Welcome!

The official WordPress Sustainability team has seen daylight during the WCEU Athens Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. on the 8th of June 2023.

The main objective of the team is to embed sustainable practices into the WordPress community and its processes. We focus on ensuring longevity; socially, economically, and environmentally.

We organize weekly 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/. meetings at 11.00 UTC and invite you to join the #sustainabilty channel.

We kindly invite you to read our previous posts on make.wordpress.org before becoming an official team: