Tag Archives: outreach

Pascal Casier 9:36 am on October 26, 2019
Tags: outreach,   

Reach out to WordCamps

When a 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. is over, organisers need a well deserved break. However a few tasks still remain: close the budget, follow up on invoices and … get the videos onto WordPress.tv!

One of our roles as WordPress TV moderator is make sure no valuable videos related to WordPress get lost, and so offering our help to get them online.

Can you help us with this reach out and inform organisers of what they can do (add the intro, upload to WordPress.tv or even just a bulk upload of the videos to our AWS S3)? Then let us know in a comment here and we’ll get together to get this process started.

Interested in how it would practically go? Have a check here.

#outreach, #reach-out

John Parkinson 2:51 pm on November 9, 2015
Tags: , outreach   

As part of the Outreach Program I contact…

As part of the Outreach Program, I contact the WordCamps a week or so after their event and ask for comments, suggestions, criticism or anything that may help the team in our efforts to obtain good quality video from WordCamps.

The linked document below comes from Patrick Jackson, one of the organizers of 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. Seattle. It is well worth the read. Some good tips and some very good Questions.

Click to access DejYMH1Tlo.pdf

#camera-kits, #outreach

John Parkinson 6:46 pm on September 3, 2015
Tags: outreach, , , WPTV Connect   

I was asked to post some of the…

I was asked to post some of the comments I received after I started reaching out to WordCamps concerning the camera kits they will get a few days before their event. Sorry for the length of this post but I wanted to include the majority of responses. Contact was made using the contact page 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. website, direct email or 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/..

I started off each contact with the following:

“Good morning ####, I am a volunteer with WordPress TV. We recently started an outreach program to contact upcoming WordCamps to see if they needed any documentation or advice for the camera kits that will be shipped a few days prior to your event. If we can be of service, please reach out to me or leave a message on the #wptv channel and someone will reply.”

Listed below are some of the response:

####
Great, thanks for letting me know! I’ll pass this on to our AV guy and see what he says.

johnparkinson [12:30 PM]
Thanks ####! If you want to pass this link along: https://plan.wordcamp.org/video/

[12:31 PM]

Will to, thanks!

[2:21 PM]

Hey John, I think we’re good, we are using the same outside contractor as last year.

johnparkinson [2:21 PM]
Thanks Mikel, I thought WCNYC used an outside agency but wanted to offer just incase.

[2:22 PM]

sure glad to know you’ve got our back… 🙂

Hi ####, I am a volunteer with WordPress TV. We recently started to reach out to upcoming WordCamp to see if they needed any help with the camera kits that will be shipped a few days before the event. We have documents and videos available, if needed.

[4:00 PM]

Thanks John! I think we’re okay with the usage (I scored a volunteer who’s great with a/v) :simple_smile:

The main concern is that the camera kits show up with all parts intact. We had one show up last year missing a component and had to forgo filming one of the tracks.

[4:00 PM]

Should I coordinate with you for how many kits we need, where to ship, etc?

johnparkinson [4:03 PM]
For camera kits you need to contact @roseapplemedia. He has been taking care of the camera kits for a few months for US & Canada WordCamps (I think). He is top notch and will help any way he can.

[4:33 PM]

Sweet. Thank you!

johnparkinson [4:55 PM]
Also, if you need video info, there are some docs on plan.wordcamp.org

[5:00 PM]

Awesome – thank you!

[4:24 PM]

Thanks for reaching out! I think we’re good for now on video operations. I’ll 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.” you with any questions :simple_smile:

johnparkinson [5:00 PM]
Thanks ####! You can ping me or the #wptv channel and someone will get back with you.

Hi John,

Thanks for reaching out to us.

I do have some questions about videos for WordCamp, can we arrange a call?

Regards…#####

Hi John,
Thank You so much for reaching out! I will reach out to ###### who has volunteered to record again for us this year and have him contact you with any questions. We really appreciate the info. Thanks again!

#outreach, #reach-out, #wptv-connect

jerrysarcastic 1:30 am on August 20, 2015
Tags: outreach, video planning   

Video Outreach – Helping WordCamps to Help Us (and vice versa!)

In last week’s team chat, I mentioned that up-to-date documentation is an important way to increase the quality and quantity of 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. submissions. Let’s face it, video is hard, live events are hard, and most WordCamp organizers are not an expert in either. This is an area we are well suited to help.

However, lack of documentation is only part of the problem. The larger issue is that most WordCamp organizers never see our docs in time, if at all. Add to this that some things like lighting, sound, and setup can be venue-specific, so it’s difficult to write one doc that will help in all situations. Heck, most organizers are not even aware there is a ModSquad out there to help them before, during, and after the event.

On the other side, as a team we lose out on valuable feedback regarding what is working and what is not. What pain points do Camp organizers have around video planning in general? Where can our docs be better? Is there anything we aren’t thinking of that is a problem for WordCamps?

Reaching out to WordCamps

To resolve those issues, and help take some of the strain off of WordCamp organizers, we are going to be experimenting with an outreach program to contact WordCamps in the early stages. Our very own @johnparkinson is going to wrangle this, with the goal of reaching out organizers, letting them know we are here to help, pointing them to places where they can get more info about video, and basically make sure that they don’t think they have to “go it alone” when filming their Camp.

Many thanks John!

What does good outreach look like?

As I mentioned, this is something we are going to experiment with, and in our team chat we talked about some of the details of what we might want to try. Here is what we discussed, plus a few extras I though of while drafting this:

  • Contact the Camp-in-planning 1-2 months before the event
  • Identify who is coordinating video planning, and introduce them to our team and what we can help with
  • Make sure they are have arranged for video gear (from Foundation is possible) and connect them to existing documentation
  • Find out about their venue, and try to help with where to set up camera, connect to sound, and identify any possible lighting issues.
  • Help them to include video in their 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/. (if applicable) and opening/closing remarks
  • Post-event – Help with uploading video for processing/publishing and gather constructive feedback about the process.

Any other thoughts? Things we are leaving out or want to try? If you have helped plan a WordCamp, wrangle video planning, or in any way been involved in video for a WordCamp, your thoughts are especially appreciated!

#outreach, #video-planning