Proposal: Merge /Community and /Events

As mentioned in the update I posted earlier, the community outreach group has wound up mostly being connecting with contributors from other groups, with a giant amount of overlap with the Events group. Since meetups and WordCamps are our biggest outreach avenue, that’s where a lot of the /community type stuff happens. @andreamiddleton and I have been talking for a couple of weeks about the possibility of merging our groups and if that would be a good idea or not. We think it would be, so this post is to see what you guys think.

Here’s why we think it would be a good idea:

  • As mentioned, Meetups and WordCamps are our biggest outreach activity, and those (along with the wp10 celebrations) have already crossed both groups quite a bit.
  • Making that overlap official would make it a little easier to share resources and time.
  • Both teams lost their backup rep. On the /community side @sabreuse agreed to take over for @andrea_r, but there’s no replacement yet in /events for @jorbin.
  • The community team touches tons of other groups, but doesn’t always have much to report, since it’s theoretically being reported through the group where the action happens (gsoc = coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress., for example).
  • Some of the projects that started as events-team-specific have morphed into community outreach (like having people submit tutorial videos to wordpress.tv that aren’t coming from events) and vice-versa (diversity outreach turning into locally-organized events that would benefit from the events structure). It just keeps getting clearer that ‘growing the community’ is the shared goal, and event planning is one of several ways to get there.
  • One less group update, one or two people less to worry about in a hangout or at a summit meeting. 🙂

Here’s the proposal:

  • Merge the /community and /events groups into one contributor group.
  • Keep the blogs separate for now, but merge them once we have a theme that will better accommodate sections to keep the threads organized.
  • Ditch me as 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. so I can focus on coordinating between teams, and keep Andrea Middleton and Amy Hendrix as team reps. (Both Andrea and Amy are on board with this idea.)

Vote in the comments: Yes, No, or a comment if you have questions or concerns that you would like answered before you say yes or no.

Thanks!

cc @chipbennett, @emiluzelac, @coffee2code, @mordauk, @ipstenu, @crondeau, @nacin, @dh-shredder, @vanillalounge, @defries, @isaackeyet, @aerych, @andreamiddleton, @siobhan, @drewapicture

#community, #events, #vote