WP Sustainability Team Roadmap 2024

The WordPress Sustainability Team has defined a roadmap for their activities during the final months of 2024. It touches on the 3 topics the team is prioritizing: environmental, social and financial sustainability.

A. Environmental: 

  1. Develop guidelines (as a handbook) for making WordPress websites more sustainable.
  2. Start the development of the WordPress Sustainability 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 that reports on your website’s sustainability and encourages you to make it more sustainable.
  3. Applying feedback received on the Sustainable Events Handbook and creating awareness on the handbook’s existence.

B. Social:

  1. Launch demonstrations of CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., Training, and Community team contributor dashboards by WCUS.
    • Evaluate, then expand to additional teams if interest suits.
  1. Identify who is available and interested in mentoring for the next new contributor mentorship cohort and identify areas they can onboard, including ways new contributors can see an impact during the cohort.
  2. Determine if/how we can work with the Contributor Working Group on contributing to and extending Five for the Future (5ftF); revisit and formulate next steps.
  3. Support the development of the Global Contributor Handbook.
  4. Share findings of the contributor dashboards with 5ftF organizations and how they can use the data in decision-making.

C. Economic:

  1. Lead by example. We want to get funding for our contributions (for points A1 and A2).
  2. Find out how we can partner with organizations outside the WP ecosystem that deal with the same challenges within the world of open-source. As discussed here and here.
  3. Determine if we can leverage 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/ Sponsors and Open Collective to sustain the WordPress project and community; IF yes, work through the implementation steps
  4. Determine if we can leverage and extend the FundOSS fundraising format to raise funds for teams and priority projects; If yes, work through the implementation steps.

Your support on achieving our roadmap goals is very welcome. You can do so by:

The Sustainability Team at WCEU 2024

It has already been a week since 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 2024 took place. We are now ready to review what has been achieved there regarding sustainability. During the event, we’ve seen many contributions/contributors, talks and had many inspiring chats. We have the feeling that sustainability has become a more relevant topic for the community in general.

WCEU 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/.

This was our first WordCamp Europe with an official team table. The organizers provided us with two tables (!) based on the number of responses to the registration form. They were pretty crowded throughout the day. We worked with contributors mainly on two projects:

  • the WP Sustainability 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
  • the Sustainable Events Handbook.

The team reps were able to manage having the official badges as well.

WP Sustainability Plugin

The contributors worked on developing a feature overview to guide the next steps in defining the plugin’s requirements. One of the key points of discussion was trying to find a way to calculate the page size without calling 3rd-party services.

They also worked on expanding one of the points outlined in the feature overview: a handbook to educate on how to make websites more sustainable.

Anyone interested can check the documents and continue the work done by the contributors in the WCEU with suggestions that will help the project move forward.

Sustainable Events Handbook

With the handbook for making WordPress events more sustainable recently published, contributors were able to work on the following related points:

  • Spreading the word. The Marketing team helped us to send an amplification request which will help us to make the whole community aware of the existence of the handbook. And, hopefully, to get more feedback.
  • Collecting and giving feedback. The initial handbook’s GitHub issue was finally closed, and a new one was created to facilitate contributors leaving their comments and improvement suggestions.

Sustainability Team’s badges

The magic of in-person collaboration enabled us to finally reach the objective of having our own Team’s badges. We have now both Sustainability Contributor and Sustainability Team badges. Team Reps already have them in their profiles, but we are still figuring out how to assign them. When we achieve this, the badges will be assigned to contributors following the criteria the team had approved some time ago. We’ll keep you up-to-date through the team’s meetings.

sustainability contributor
sustainability team

In general, it has been a very productive and motivating WCEU Contributor Day for the Sustainability Team. Thank you very much to all the contributors joining.

Thank You to Contributors

A big thanks to all the contributors who were there or present on 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/.. Here are the people who contributed:

Please leave a comment if we missed you, we will add you to the list!

WCEU talks and sessions

The word ‘sustainability’ has been present all along the event, even in the opening session. Joost de Valk and Juliette Reinders Folmer kickstarted the first day with a keynote about the sustainability of the community. They made us all reflect on the future of 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. and how funding and generational change are crucial for the continuity of technology as we understand it today. Two further sessions continued to develop the topic of the social and economic sustainability of WordPress.

Firstly, we had a case study on how this generational change is happening in Uganda’s WordPress Community. Abraham Waita explained how the integration of WordPress into high school curricula is engaging the younger generation and empowering them to build the future of the community.

Secondly, a WordCamp Connect session opened the discussion to “Democratising Opportunities”. Carole Olinger (@caroleo), Karim Marucchi (@pirazo), and Courtney Robertson (@courane01) exchanged views and experiences about contributing and funding and included in the conversation two very interesting and not-so-brought topics: the mental health of the contributors and the point of view of the companies that fund them.

In addition to the economic and social sustainability of WordPress, there was also space to address the environmental aspect. During the WordCamp Connect session on the first Conference Day, Nahuai Badiola (@nbadiola) and Simon Kraft (@krafit) led a conversation about how to set sustainable standards for WordPress. Many attendees discussed the possibilities and difficulties of reducing emissions from WordPress sites.

Last but not least, Bjarne Oldrup (@oldrup) explained in his session, on the second Conference Day, how it is possible to have a website creation business that is economically, ecologically, and socially sustainable. This is a talk full of practical and real examples and cases of how to manage a business with a total focus on sustainability.

While we wait for the recordings to be uploaded, you can view the sessions’ slides:

This is all in terms of scheduled content. We are very happy to say that the conversations extended beyond the sessions, including chats in hallways, meetings, informal gatherings, and breaks. We couldn’t capture all of it in one post, but that’s what makes in-person contributions special. We look forward to seeing you all again soon and hope to meet the contributors who couldn’t attend this time. In the meantime, we will see you all at the meetings.

This post has been reviewed by: @littlebigthing and @yellowlime

Join the WordPress Sustainability Team during WCEU’s Contributor Day

The WordPress Sustainability Team will be present during Contributor Day at 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 on Thursday 13th of June 2024.

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/. is about you the contributor, regardless of occupation and skills! Whether you’re a developer, designer, writer, or enthusiast, your unique talents are valued and appreciated as we work together to shape the future of WordPress. Contributor Day is a true celebration of the WordPress community spirit as it kicks off WordCamp Europe this year. 

We are looking forward to celebrate the first birthday of the WordPress Sustainability Team. The team was born during WCEU’s Contributor Day in Athens in 2023. During the day, we invite you to discuss with us and to work on the following topics:

  1. Team Organization and 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.
  2. Sustainable Events: How can we make events more sustainable?
  3. Technical Environmental Impact: What is needed to lower the energy consumption of WordPress as a CMS. We will discuss our plans and roadmap for our own WordPress Sustainability 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.

No previous knowledge or technical skills are required to join us during Contributor Day. Besides some interest in sustainability of course. 😉

💡 Good to know: the Sustainability Team works on the environmental, social and economical sustainability of the WordPress ecosystem.

Please note that pre-registration for WCEU’s Contributor Day was required. The limited number of spaces have all been claimed. If you cannot make it join Contributor Day in person, please join us at Slack. We attempt to connect with you during the day.

For more information about Contributor Day and its time schedule, please visit the official WCEU website.

We look forward seeing you in Torino (during Contributor Day)!

Project Health Hangouts and Working Group Kickoff

An image featuring a diverse group of people sitting on the same side of a table facing the viewer. The group includes individuals of various ages, skin tones, and genders. Visible are a blind person with a guide dog, a pregnant person, someone with a cast on their arm, a person wearing a hijab, and a woman wearing a tichel. The backdrop is a simple flat world map with four clocks showing different times.

Continuing the efforts to ensure the sustainability and health of the WordPress project, forming a dedicated working group is now underway. Building on recent discussions from Recognizing Contributions and Acknowledging Challenges and Project Health Dashboards, this group will focus on developing and refining approaches to project health.

This marks the kick-off of the Project Health Working Group, one of the Sustainability team’s key focus areas. The goal is to foster a collaborative environment, gather valuable insights, and develop tools to maintain and improve the project’s health.

We’ll begin by demonstrating the first tool in our trials: Bitergia.

🗣️ These hangouts will allow us to discuss:

  • Team Health: How do we assess the health of various teams in the project and ensure proper calls to contribute?
  • Individual Contributors: Addressing the needs of organization-sponsored, those seeking sponsorship, self-sponsored, and hobbyists.
  • Organizational Stakeholders: Providing data for organizations to consider how they sponsor and staff contributors.
  • WordPress Project Stakeholders: Prioritizing the work of various teams within the project.

📆 RSVP to Project Health Hangout

Below are the various meeting times and days scheduled. All sessions will be a casual conversation and demonstrations. It is important to offer multiple times to ensure global representation. When you’ve chosen which times you’d like to attend, RSVP using the buttons below.

All sessions will be recorded and summarized to ensure everyone can benefit from the discussions, even if they can’t attend live.

Join us in these sessions to share your insights and help shape the future of our project’s health. Share any questions you have or want to discuss in the comments below.

Replays

#project-health

Sustainability Team self-approval system (formal decision)

As we often get stuck waiting for approval, the Sustainability Team decided to establish a system whereby each contributor can manage a deadline for accepting its own changes. It works as follows:

  1. Make a change or a proposal. It may be minor contributions like 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/ Pull Request or the structure of a documents, for example. Check more examples below.
  2. Announce it in the team meeting. It is important to make it easy for everyone to be aware and have the opportunity of leave their opinion. So that purpose, we could:
    • ask for a topic to be included in the next meeting (if not related to an existing one) so that you can announce your contribution, explain it and ask for feedback, and
    • use Github or 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/. (ask the Team Reps in this case) to have a place (if there is not already one) for contributors to give feedback in an accessible and lasting way.
  3. Establish a deadline. Ideally, it’d be two weeks from the moment you share your contribution at the team meeting. During this time, contributors will have time to leave their comments and discuss about your contribution.
  4. Move forward. You can go ahead with your contribution in two ways:
    • Flow with the feedback. Depending on the type of proposal you have made, the discussion can lead the thing to a different solution or even to refuse your suggestion, to name a few possible scenarios. Forget or reschedule depending on the case.
    • Self-approve your changes. If no one shares their thoughts, everybody agrees with your proposal or the feedback does not represent a significant change to its nature, you can assume that nobody has any problem with it. So you can approve the thing yourself when the deadline is up, and move on.

When to apply this system

👍 This system is intended for minor contributions or those that have been discussed previously and everyone agrees, but no one has offered to make them a reality. Just some examples:

  • Changing a title or the wording in a document, like the Handbook or any team documentation.
  • Creating a structure for a document that the team already agrees to create.
  • Create new Github issues.
  • Add or update content in the Github repository of an existing project.

👎 The system is not valid for major changes that significantly affect the team and its operation. This changes must have the explicit approval of a significant portion of the contributors.

There is no strict definition of the cases in which not to use this system for now, because we are still trying to test what works best for the proper functioning of the team and because we appeal to individual common sense in favor of the community as a whole. If in doubt, bring up the subject at a meeting or directly ask the Team Reps.

System evolution

As the team is still developing itself, the overview above may not be complete yet and can be subject to change depending on how the needs and dynamics of the team and its contributors change. Changes will be communicated at make.wordpress.org/sustainability/. Feel free to leave comments for improvement below.


This post is a formal decision based on the initial suggestion and support, the proposal for a formal decision and the comments below that proposal.

WordPress Sustainability Team Badges (formal decision)

The WordPress Sustainability Team offers two different team badges:

  1. WordPress Sustainability Team Badge
  2. WordPress Sustainability Contributor Badge

The two Team Badges are common use also applied by other WordPress teams like the Documentation and Hosting teams.

The proposed criteria for obtaining the badges are:

  • In order to obtain a WordPress Sustainability Team Badge you are actively involved as a leading team member by:
    • Having the role of WordPress Sustainability 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.(representative)
    • Having a leading role in creating documentation
    • Having a leading role in developing code for the team
    • Leading a Sustainability table during a WordPress 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/.
    • Having a leading role for the WordPress Sustainability 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/
  • In order to obtain a WordPress Sustainability Contributor Badge you are actively involved as a performing contributor by:
    • Regularly participating in a meeting
    • Regularly participating in projects
    • Adding some documentation (but not leading it),
    • Contributing to code for the team (but not leading it)
    • Commenting on the Sustainability Github
    • Mentorship Coordinator
    • Team Meeting Coordinator

As the team is still developing itself, the overview above may not be complete yet and can be subject to change. Changes will be communicated at make.wordpress.org/sustainability/. Feel free to leave comments for improvement below.

Badges can be obtained by contacting one of the WP Sustainability Team Reps: Nora Ferreirós, Nahuai Badiola, Csaba or Thijs Buijs. Badges are not distributed automatically yet.

This post is a formal decision based on the lively discussion at Github, the proposal for a formal decision and the comments below that proposal.

Voting for Sustainability Team Reps 2023

All nominations for Sustainability Team Reps are in, and all nominees have confirmed their availability for the role. Now it is up to the community (you) to vote on your team’s representative.

Voting

The voting will occur on poll.fm, the platform we agreed to use for this purpose. As mentioned during the last meeting, ideally four 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. will be elected if there’s enough people with, at least, two votes received.

Please remember that you can publicly bring up your concerns and objections towards a nominee in the #sustainability Slack channel

Next Steps

Polls are open from now on and will be closed during the meeting on 13-10-2023 11:00 UTC. Once the polls are closed, the results will be publicly announced, and we’ll check in with the winners to see if they accept the voting and want to become a Sustainability Team Reps 2023 starting on October 15th (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.

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.

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!

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