Become an Online Workshop Facilitator or Tutorial Presenter Today!

The Training Team offers many ways for contributors to create content for https://learn.wordpress.org/. This month, I’ve been processing applications people submit to become Online Workshop Facilitators and Tutorial Presenters. I realized some people may not be aware of these contribution opportunities, and wanted to take a moment to reintroduce them to the team.


What are Online Workshops and Tutorials?

Online Workshops are interactive learning opportunities, often hosted via Zoom. They are safe spaces where people can come as they are, develop new ideas, explore issues, ask questions, network over shared interests, exchange theories, collaborate on work, and thrive in uncertainty. Online Workshop Facilitators are volunteers who host these workshops and encourage attendees to join in on the topic being looked at in the session.

Tutorials are short standalone videos that walk viewers through a process, or teach a WordPress-related concept. Tutorial Presenters are the driving force behind the creation of Tutorials on Learn WordPress, and are the voices people hear when they watch these recordings.

This sounds interesting! How can I join?

The Training Team is always looking for new contributors to facilitate Online Workshops, and present Tutorials! You can apply to become each of these roles below:

Having knowledge or experience about the topic you’ll present on is useful. But you don’t need to be an expert to apply to these roles! Let us know in the application form how familiar you are with your presentation topic, and what sort of assistance we can offer you to help you be successful. If you have any questions about joining, feel free to reach out in the #training 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/. channel, and we’d be happy to answer those questions for you.

What is reviewed in the application process?

The Training Team offers many opportunities for people to contribute without the need to apply. The Online Workshop Facilitator and Tutorial Presenter roles are unique in that there is a vetting process. One reason is because the team is looking for people who follow the WordPress Community code of conduct, and honor the WordPress guidelines around licensing and trademark usage. You can read more details about the vetting processes below:


Thanks for reading. We look forward to seeing you join our team of Facilitators and Presenters!

#contributors, #online-workshops, #tutorials

Documenting the Successful Launch of Japanese Online Workshops

On August 17th and 24th, @piyopiyofox and I co-hosted the Training Team’s first Japanese Online Workshops. These were also the team’s first non-English Online Workshops! The workshops received positive feedback, and we’re already seeing people sign up to the third and fourth workshops happening in September!

This post documents the process we took to plan, publicize, and execute the first non-English Online Workshops. We hope this will give others some ideas as to how they can host Online Workshops in their locales, too!


Preparation

Destiny and I had both previously been vetted as Online Workshop facilitators. Anyone interested in hosting Online Workshops can submit an application here: Applying to facilitate (handbook page). We had also conducted Online Workshops in English, so we were familiar with the general processes behind Planning an Online Workshop.

The process of scheduling the workshop was mostly the same as scheduling English workshops (Scheduling an Online Workshop). A few things we did differently were:

  • Created the 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. event in Japanese: ブロックエディターでホームページを作ろう!(English: Let’s make a homepage with the 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. Editor.)
  • Included information in English that the event would be hosted in Japanese.
    • We added this information to the event thumbnail on Meetup.com, and in the event description itself.
  • We published the event a few weeks in advance so that we had enough time to publicize the event to the Japanese community.

Publicity

People can find out about upcoming Online Workshops in a few different ways:

None of these would get the word to the Japanese community about the workshops, though. So, we took some time to spread the word through other means.

We were particularly excited to see the organic publicity the tweets generated!

Results

We were interested in finding out when the best time to host workshops would be for the Japanese community, so we hosted the workshop twice spaced out over two weeks; both on a Wednesday, but one at 2 PM and another at 5 PM JST. We had a total of 14 people attend the two sessions, with a slightly higher number at the session hosted in the evening over that hosted early afternoon.

The feedback submitted in the Zoom chat was greatly positive with many mentioning they learned something new from the session! We also noticed some attendees tweeted that they had a positive experience in the session.

At the end of the second session, we took time to announce the next Japanese Online Workshops we’ve scheduled for September. This seems to be a success, as one participant mentioned in the session that they would be back, and we see a couple have already signed up to attend! These next sessions are being planned and tracked on the Training Team’s GitHub repository.

Post-session Processes

In English sessions, we generally turn Live Captions on in Zoom, and use these to generate subtitles for the video recording we submit to WordPress.tv. Unfortunately, Zoom does not yet have live caption capabilities in Japanese. While we weren’t able to turn live captions on during the session, we were able to generate good quality subtitles through Sonix.ai after the session concluded. You can now find a recording of the workshop on WordPress.tv: ブロックエディターでホームページを作ろう!

Conclusion

As a team, we are excited about growing the non-English resources we provide on Learn. The experience documented above shows it is possible to host Online Workshops in other languages, too! 

The biggest hurdle we had to cross was publicizing the event to the Japanese community. If you have any ideas as to how we could do this better, we’d love to know!

The Training Team Faculty members are ready to help launch Online Workshops in other locales also. If you are interested in hosting an Online Workshop, come apply to become a facilitator! Faculty members are ready to help you facilitate in your locale, too.

#localization, #online-workshops, #social-learning