Angela Jin 9:35 am on March 12, 2020

Latest updates on changes to WordCamps

COVID-19 has impacted many WordCamps globally. To help you keep track of the latest changes to WordCamps, we will be updating this list periodically.

Note that “Cancelled” means that the WordCamp will not happen in 2020, but there may be plans for a 2021 event. “Postponed” indicates that the organizing team is working towards making an event happen later this year.

Last updated March 23, 2020 at 17:30 UTC

WordCamp Asia, February 21 – Cancelled
WordCamp Cebu, February 29, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp Lancaster, March 14, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp Albuquerque, March 20, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, March 20, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp Geneva, March 20, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Kolkata, March 22, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Washington DC, March 27, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp Antwerp, March 28, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp San Antonio, March 28, 2020 – Moved to livestream
WordCamp Jacksonville, March 28, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp Santa Clarita, April 3, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Turin (Torino), April 17, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Paris, April 17, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Atlanta, April 18, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp Bilbao, April 24, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Bucharest, April 25, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Kansas City, April 28, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Soltau, April 30, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp Chicago, May 2, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp San Diego, May 2, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp Houston, May 9, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Buffalo, May 9, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Madrid, May 9, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Athens, May 16, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Plovdiv, May 16, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp Kathmandu, May 20, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Irun, May 23, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp Calgary, May 29, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Kent, May 30, 2020 – Moved to livestream
WordCamp Montclair, May 30, 2020 – Postponed
WordCamp Europe, June 4-6, 2020 – Cancelled
WordCamp Raleigh, June 6, 2020 – Cancelled

Are you a WordCamp organizer and unsure of how to proceed? Here are a few helpful links.

New recommendations for event organizers in light of COVID-19
Handbook page for Postponing or Canceling a WordCamp

Andrea Middleton 11:59 am on March 11, 2020

New recommendations for event organizers in light of COVID-19

I’m sure that WordPress community organizers all over the world are keeping a watchful eye on the news related to COVID-19. Many organizers have received questions and recommendations from their communities about whether to continue meeting in person, in the absence of direct instructions from the public health authorities in their towns or countries.

We are a team of people dedicated to bringing people together, and our community events are a labor (much labor!) of love. WordPress community organizers have carved out time from their busy schedules, sacrificed time with family/friends or that would have been dedicated to other causes, and taken on very challenging work (we make it look easy, but it’s not!) in order to plan community events. Naturally, we approach the topic of postponing or cancelling our events with deep reluctance and sadness.

That said, one of our fundamental priorities must be to preserve the health and well-being of our attendees and communities. Making decisions that support the effort to “flatten the curve” — slowing the rate of infection so that health care systems are not overwhelmed — is both responsible and prudent.

In cities or countries where the public health officials have restricted public gatherings, I trust that organizers will follow the advice of authorities. For organizers with events planned in cities or states that have not yet made public health recommendations, the decision is much more difficult. We have not trained organizers to assess risks like these, because our program has never had to adapt to a global epidemic of this scale. To support organizers in this difficult decision, here is the recommendation:

If you are planning an event scheduled between now and June 1, and there is any evidence of community transmission of COVID-19 in your area, we strongly recommend that you postpone the event until later in the year or 2021 and/or adapt to an online event.

Please review this handbook page for recommendations on postponement vs cancellation of a WordCamp, and procedures for both. This recommendation stands for both meetup events and WordCamps.

If your community has not yet seen evidence of community transmission of COVID-19, please take extra precautions with attendee health:

Discuss event details with local health officials and prepare to implement an emergency contingency plan based on their specific guidance.
Share and provide COVID-19 updates on your WordCamp site, and promote preventive health messages to your attendees and volunteers, such as:
- Stay home when you are sick, except to get medical care.
- Cover your coughs and sneezes with a tissue or sleeve, then put the tissue a the garbage bin.
- Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, especially after going to the bathroom; before eating; and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.
- Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth with unwashed hands. Clean frequently touched surfaces and objects daily.
- Recommend that attendees minimize close contact (e.g., recommending no handshaking or hugging)
Encourage participants who are experiencing any symptoms consistent with COVID-19 to refrain from attending the conference.
Make sure that every attendee has registered via purchasing the ticket or marking their attendance in meetup.com so that if someone gets sick, it will be easier for public health authorities to identify those at risk of infection.
Create refund policies or remote participation capability (such as arranging to live stream the event, if possible) that permit participants the flexibility to stay home when they are sick, need to care for sick household members, or are at high risk for complications from COVID-19.

It’s possible we will extend this recommendation past June, depending on what happens in April and May. Please expect updates on a monthly basis, if not more frequently.

Support and training for online event planning is in the works. Next week I hope we can publish a handbook page with advice for temporarily adapting monthly meetup events so they can be held online, and the infrastructure and documentation to support organizers interested in holding WordCamps online are targeted for publication by the end of March.

I recognize that this is a terribly difficult time for many, and community deputies are available to help. Please email support@wordcamp.org with any questions or concerns, or share your concerns in a comment on this post.

Ahmed Chaion 12:31 pm on March 11, 2020

Much needed information and guidelines for the WP Community. Indeed expecting updates more frequently. Much love to all of you from Bangladesh. My prayers and best wishes are with everyone involved!

Andrea Middleton 1:16 pm on March 11, 2020

It’s come to my attention that some people don’t know the term “community transmission.” With that term, I mean that infections in your area are not imported from another virus-hit area.

As described here this source**:

Put simply, for example, community transition in Ireland would mean a person who gets Covid-19 despite having not been to the affected outbreak areas, e.g. northern Italy, China, Japan, South Korea.

[EDIT:] A variation on this term is “local transmission.” The WHO has a report dated March 7 indicating what countries have reported local transmission. Please check for the latest reports from reliable health organizations such as WHO. [end EDIT]

That said, if you are in doubt whether to encourage people to meet in person, the global community team supports you in making decisions that are motivated by caution. I strongly encourage organizers in areas affected by this outbreak to look into online gatherings for the next few months, and check back here frequently for more resources and recommendations in the weeks to come.

**this article seems to have a typo, using “community transition” instead of “transmission“. Based on my reading however, the information in the article matches that of other creditable sources.

Ryan Marks 2:10 pm on March 11, 2020

Should a link to this be sent out to Meetup chapter organizers? There may be some who are not monitoring this site.

Jon Brown 4:14 pm on March 11, 2020

Probably should, since one I just talked to minutes ago was unaware of this post.

P.S. @andreamiddleton great work on this post.

Andrea Middleton 5:05 pm on March 11, 2020

Good idea, @rmarks — I’ll add that to the list of tasks we can invite help on, from deputies, with a goal to send out an email via meetup.com in the next 6-8 hours.

Jon Brown 8:05 pm on March 12, 2020

Just got that meetup email! Thanks.

Mathieu Viet 2:21 pm on March 11, 2020

Thanks a lot @andreamiddleton for sharing all these advice. It’s a really complex time to get together even if the local authorities guidelines put the WordCamp out of scope because these guidelines can be updated at any time. In France for example gathering more than 1000 people is not allowed, but we have no idea if this will be extended to less people gatherings or any of them.

Moreover we can’t avoid people to be very worried whatever the local authorities guidelines are. Some people just prefer not to buy tickets at all or ask for reimbursement. I’d suggest to add 2 advices to your list :

Allow reimbursements by default on Camptix,
Make sure people giving food to attendees are wearing gloves.

The 2 WordCamps I’m mentoring (Paris & Antwerp) decided to postpone. It’s a really tough decision and it brings a lot of complexity about how to communicate the right way to attendees, speakers, volunteers, sponsors & vendors. I’d like to thank the organization teams for the great work they have done dealing with this crisis and I wish them a lot of courage to deal with all the tasks postponing involves. You’re great, organizers 💪👍

Andrea Middleton 2:42 pm on March 11, 2020

Thanks for supporting the Paris and Antwerp teams during this difficult time, @imath! I agree that communication around cancellations or postponement are really difficult to manage right. I believe some deputies are working on some email templates that WordCamp organizers can use — please check the #community-team slack channel if you’re interested in collaborating on the templates or translating the templates. 🙂

Mathieu Viet 3:17 pm on March 11, 2020

Fantastic, you can count on me for the translations 👌

Jon Brown 4:08 pm on March 11, 2020

Note. A major problem with mask and glove wearing is that folks aren’t trained to use them properly.

In the case of non-trained food servers/prep folks it’s just as easy to contaminate their gloves as it is their hands, by putting the gloves on with unwashed hands, or touching contaminated surface after putting them on.

More important would be food servers wearing masks, just in case they expel respiratory droplets (coughing and breathing), and that any open food also be protected from attendees doing the same via food sneeze guards. These are all pretty standard in the US in a commercial setting.

Perhaps the best added advice is simply “make sure your food vendors are professional and taking strong precautions for preparing and serving food”.

Andrea Middleton 5:32 pm on March 11, 2020

Updated information from the WHO, including that they now classify this as a pandemic and sharing current data on what countries have reported cases of local transmission.

Andrea Middleton 9:43 pm on March 11, 2020

I updated the above comment with the link to the correct report, number 51. Originally, I had linked to report 50, which was not the report that classified the situation as a pandemic.

Mario Wolf 10:33 am on March 12, 2020

Thank you Andrea for this much needed statement. We started in march to hold our local Meetup in Düsseldorf exclusively online. This will affect all upcoming events in our local community until further notice.

gissane 10:36 am on March 12, 2020

Thanks for this Andrea, it’s appreciated. It’s looking like we’ll need to cancel our first Meetup. I’ll look at hosting a Zoom call (or similar) instead. Has anyone else had any joy with this?

Mario Wolf 11:12 am on March 12, 2020

Yes, we just switched to online via Zoom, worked like a charm. If you need further advise. We have some pointers on what to look out for if going to an Online Conference. What rules apply and so on…

cparkinson 1:31 pm on March 12, 2020

Hi Mario – I’d love to hear your recommendations for hosting meetups via Zoom. Do you have a blog post or something you can link to?

kristinlaura 9:06 pm on March 13, 2020

Earlier this week, the facility we used informed us we could not meet there for the time being, so we had our first virtual Meetup last night. We used Zoom and it went pretty well. The hardest part was getting the message out that we had switched from physical to online. I recommend having someone act as the meeting facilitator to keep attendees on subject and ensure people don’t get cut off or talked over. It’s not as engaging as meeting in person, but it’s better than not meeting at all. An added benefit is screen sharing.

cparkinson 1:30 pm on March 12, 2020

Thank you for posting these guidelines. I was very worried about how to proceed with my local meetup, and I appreciate the clear guidance and being able to link to this reference. We’ll be trying to set up an online gathering.

Birgit Pauli-Haack 8:45 pm on March 12, 2020

We just published a handbook page with tools and tips and tricks for meetup organizers for virtual events.

Angela Jin 2:44 pm on March 24, 2020

Community Events in the time of COVID-19

Community events are an important part of the WordPress project. Due to COVID-19 concerns, many organizers have had to cancel or postpone their WordCamp or Meetup. At this time, the Community Team is working hard to help organizers host virtual events so that the community can continue to connect with and inspire each other.

In order to facilitate successful community events during this global emergency, we would like to quickly revisit and adapt some of our existing community guidelines. We propose the following changes for virtual community events during this time:

Approve regional/country WordCamps, Meetups, do_action events. We strongly believe that there is much value in local, in person events, and intend to maintain this guideline when we can all meet in person again safely. During this time, however, we propose to more readily approve country/regional events as long as the major meetup groups are involved in the organizing process.
Skip the budget review portion of the WordCamp planning process. As virtual WordCamps won’t cost organizers any money, we won’t need budget reviews! WordCamp Central will be providing Crowdcast accounts to WordCamps, and since virtual WordCamps will be offering free tickets, there is no income either. One outstanding question here is how we can involve sponsors, as there is no financial component.
Allow for shorter planning periods for community events. A virtual event tends to be faster to organize. We would like organizers to propose the date of their event, allowing for enough time between orientation and the event to find speakers, volunteers, and market the event.

These are changes that we would like to implement in response to the global emergency only. We hope to go back to in person gatherings with original guidelines for planning community events as soon as we can, as our in-person program has proven to empower more community leaders across a large number of local communities, and to reach more people within those areas.

Please let us know your thoughts on this proposal by this Friday, March 27th. We know this is a short period of time, but in the interest of enabling the WordPress community to start organizing events again, we’d like to move this forward quickly.

Timi Wahalahti 2:52 pm on March 24, 2020

As we like to continue in-person events as soon as it is safe again (which might vary based on the region of course), I think there needs to be a limit on how far into the future you can plan an online event. At the moment, I would say that online events scheduled to happen after the end of July should not be accepted.

Tom J Nowell 3:08 pm on March 24, 2020

Approve regional/country WordCamps, Meetups, do_action events. We strongly believe that there is much value in local, in person events, and intend to maintain this guideline when we can all meet in person again safely. During this time, however, we propose to more readily approve country/regional events as long as the major meetup groups are involved in the organizing process.

Just to clarify, is central still approving in person events during the global pandemic? Or is Central only approving virtual events? There seems to be some ambiguity here

Rocio Valdivia 3:12 pm on March 24, 2020

Hi @tjnowell!
There are approved in-person events for 2021 and Q4, but we’ve let them know that if it’s needed with these circumstances, the event would have to be cancelled, postponed or changed into an online event.

Tom J Nowell 3:12 pm on March 24, 2020

That makes sense, thanks for the clarification!

Rocio Valdivia 3:09 pm on March 24, 2020

+1 to this proposal and to adapt the program to the new circumstances during this period of time 🙂

About how to get involved sponsors: I think it’s very important to keep sponsors involved and part of these online events as it will help the whole WP ecosystem.

As there will be no much expenses (or any at all in most cases), what if we set just two tiers of sponsorship:

Lower tier: logo on the site and a verbal thank you in opening/closing remarks
Upper tier: all that, plus logo on interstitials and links to the online sponsor booth from the stream

Timi Wahalahti 3:22 pm on March 24, 2020

About how to get involved sponsors: I think it’s very important to keep sponsors involved and part of these online events as it will help the whole WP ecosystem.

The two-level system sounds good. Can you open the idea about online sponsor booths a little bit? is it a separate video/chat call that interested can join?

Rocio Valdivia 3:30 pm on March 24, 2020

Well, the idea is that the sponsor could have a specif “page” where they have their info, links for online swag, discounts, etc.

And the WordCamp can share that link to the attendees 🙂

jillbinder 10:49 pm on March 23, 2020

Special meeting for Diverse Speaker Training group (#wpdiversity) on Wednesday, March 25

It is a difficult time, and as such, I’d like to have a different meeting with the group.

Due to the crisis, some group members are likely feeling tapped out and some are itching to do extra. Also, our working group may need to change how we do things during this time.

Agenda for Wednesday @ 5pm UTC:

How are you doing? How are you feeling? Let’s talk, let’s vent.
Our team may need to pivot. Let’s brainstorm how we could serve the community now given the changed landscape.

Just a reminder that attending does not mean committing to doing anything! Even more so at this time when I fully understand that emotions are running high and for many, bandwidth can be low. Team members, please come regardless if you can so I know where you’re at and so that we can support each other. You’re also welcome to not talk but just listen.

This special meeting will be by Zoom rather than the usual Slack. You can get the link from the reminder that @miriamgoldman will be sending out on the #community-team channel just before.

This meeting is intended for current members of the team only, but if you aren’t in our group yet, message @jillbinder on Slack to figure out together if it’s appropriate for you to attend this meeting or wait until our next one. We meet on the second and fourth Wednesdays of the month at 5-6pm UTC.

Diverse Speaker Training group (#wpdiversity) meeting
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
5-6pm UTC
Get the Zoom link just before the time on the #community-team channel
Current group members, please.

(All others, message @jillbinder to figure out together if you should attend this meeting or wait to join us on our next one on April 8.)

WordCamp.org 4:00 am on March 23, 2020

Weekly Updates

Hello to all our Deputies, WordCamp organizers, Meetup wranglers, and WordPress Community builders! You were probably hard at work this weekend. Tell us what you got accomplished in our #weekly-update!

Have you run into a roadblock with the stuff you’re working on? Head over to #community-events or #community-team in Slack and ask for help!

Hugh Lashbrooke 1:00 pm on March 20, 2020

Taking Charity Hackathons Online

For the last few years, we have included the do_action Charity Hackathon event series in the WordPress community program, and there are some handy recap posts on the WordPress Foundation site all about how these events have been going. With the current need to go virtual with all of our events, we need to look at how these charity hackathons can be moved into an online format.

do_action events have had such a positive impact on so many organisations and people that it would be a shame to stop doing them in our current situation. With that in mind, here are a few ways we can modify the event format and things that you can try as an organiser to make these events possible:

Organise a country-wide do_action event. Since these events are going to be virtual, it makes sense to bring in talents from the whole country, as well as reach more non-profit organisations that would otherwise be possible.
Spread the work out over a few days/weeks. In order to give people the time to work on the websites for the non-profit organisations, allow them to work over a longer time period than just one day. A format I quite like the idea of is giving each team 1 week to complete their work.
Provide virtual communication channels. Use your local WordPress community Slack group (or create one if you don’t have one already) and set up separate channels for each team to communicate. You could also use some of the tools we suggest for meetups to expand on the communication options.

So, if you’re planning on organising a do_action event this year then please don’t let the lack of in-person meetings stop you! You can fill in the application form to organise an event and we can discuss your plans from there. The suggestions in this post have been added to the organiser’s handbook.

Do you have any questions about the above suggestions? Or any other ideas that could help do_action events grow in a virtual setting?

Mary Job 10:12 pm on March 17, 2020

Community Team Chat Agenda | 19 March 2020

Hello Team!

Our bi-monthly Community Team chat is happening this Thursday, 19 March 2020. Meeting times are detailed below. We use the same agenda for both meetings in order to include all time zones.

Asia-Pacific / EMEA friendly: Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 11:00 AM UTC

Americas friendly: Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 08:00 PM UTC

Deputy/Mentor check-in

What have you been doing and how is it going?

P2 posts needing review/feedback

Highlighted P2 posts

Please add any additional items to this agenda by commenting on this post as needed.

jillbinder 6:00 pm on March 17, 2020

COVID-19 And The Diverse Speaker Training (#wpdiversity) Group

As you can imagine, the COVID-19 crisis affects the Diverse Speaker Training group (#wpdiversity) which is all about creating more speakers for in-person meetups and WordCamps. Many WordCamps are being canceled or are moving to being online. Folks are confused, tired, and sad, and developing a more diverse speaker lineup is not top of mind.

During this time, if organizers are looking for community-building projects to work on remotely while in-person gatherings are not recommended, it would be worth considering putting on a Diverse Speaker Workshop to develop your speakers from underrepresented groups. You can do all of this online.

You can be getting your speakers ready for when we are able to do in-person events again.

Also, if you’re holding your events online during this time, it is worth noting that speaking online removes some of the initial barriers that some folks from underrepresented groups have in public speaking. It might be an easier time for some of the new speakers to get started.

It would also be appealing for the attendance of your online events to have fresh voices and perspectives that haven’t been heard from before.

Just something to consider, if/when folks in your group feel up to doing something like this.

We can help you with holding your Diverse Speaker Workshop online. The lead of this group has run this workshop fully online many times before.

Get started here: http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200324163140/https://tiny.cc/wpdiversity

Milana Cap 9:57 am on March 16, 2020

X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/docs: Comment on Documentation License

WordCamp.org 4:00 am on March 16, 2020

Weekly Updates

Have you run into a roadblock with the stuff you’re working on? Head over to #community-events or #community-team in Slack and ask for help!

Cami Kaos 10:20 pm on March 13, 2020

Online Conference Organizer Training

EDITED TO ADD: Crowdcast is currently experiencing a huge surge in new users and the internet at large is facing challenging outages with everyone moving to the internet in such a small window. If you are unable to access the livestream via Crowdcast, it is also being recorded and we will also attempt to share a simulcast at http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200324163140/https://youtu.be/Ha5LE68Qhe4

Howdy Deputies and Organizers! We’re excited to announce that next week we’ll have three 1-hour training sessions with Brian Richards on the use of both Crowdcast and additional tools for use with organizing and presenting online conferences.

Each one-hour session will cover different topics, so you’re welcome to attend as many as you’d like. In addition to sharing this information with organizers via the calls, our big goal is to write documentation based on this information for our handbooks to support organizers moving forward with online only events.

If you can’t attend the trainings synchronously, you can still help with writing the documentation for organizers by watching the videos which we’ll post as soon as possible.

Our first session will be held Tuesday, March 17 at 1500 UTC / 11am EDT / 4pm CET

Session 1: Running Events in Crowdcast
* Creating an event in Crowdcast (title, description, cover photo, url, registration button, privacy settings)
* Editing a multi-session schedule
* Outbound streaming via RTMP
* Customizing the email messages
* Importing attendees
* Inviting speakers on-stage
* Sharing screens, apps, and tabs
* Using CTAs, Polls, and Q&A
* Chat and Attendee Moderation
* Embedding Crowdcast
* Embedding Captions
* Exporting video recordings

Our second session will be held Wednesday, March 18 at 1500 UTC / 11am EDT / 4pm CET

Session 2: Helping speakers and emcees prepare for a virtual audience
* Think of the learner
* A/V considerations (share Crowdcast setup link)
* Preparing your environment (lighting, sound, background)
* Imagine a real person in the room
* Speak with enthusiasm
* Sharing slides vs sharing screen
* Keep slides clean and concise (imagine them at 240p resolution)
* Pre-record all demos
* Schedule either a rehearsal or an A/V test within Crowdcast
* Facilitating Q&A

Our third session will be held Thursday, March 19 at 1500 UTC / 11am EDT / 4pm CET

Session 3: Working with pre-recorded content
* Risks and limitations with pre-scheduled content
* Tools and recommendations for pre-recording content
* Preparing a recording for live re-broadcast
* Uploading content to restream.io
* Scheduling content in restream.io
* Getting an RTMP feed link from Crowdcast
* Changing the output feeds in restream.io
* Monitoring stream output for issues
* Contingency planning for schedule changes or playback issues
* How to reset a session in Crowdcast

Check out this video and sign up to learn more and be prepared to start on time next week.

Again, the goal of these training sessions is to create documentation for our handbook to support our WordCamp organizers as they move forward with online events.

If you’re available to help create documentation please let us know which session(s) you’re able to attend and take notes on.

Organizers are also welcome to attend these sessions and they will be made available for all once they’re completed.

Let us know if you have any questions in the comments below.

Michelle 1:11 pm on March 14, 2020

I can’t attend eynchronously but will happily donate time to do comprehensive notes the same day they are posted. Note taking is my jam.

megabyterose 2:38 am on March 15, 2020

Thank you for the quick action to get us some resources! Members of our Org team will be in each one. 🙂

Ryan Marks 7:03 am on March 15, 2020

@camikaos @andreamiddleton Can you guys confirm the time of the three events? The times listed in UTC does not match the EDT equivalent.
cc.: @kcristiano

kcristiano 1:25 pm on March 16, 2020

I get 10:00 EDT and 15:00 CET http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200324163140/https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/meetingdetails.html?year=2020&month=3&day=17&hour=14&min=0&sec=0&p1=179&p2=195

Cami Kaos 8:10 pm on March 16, 2020

It’s the UTC time that was off, I’m editing it now. It is 15:00 UTC

So 11am eastern.

Andrea Middleton 2:25 pm on March 17, 2020

Here’s a spreadsheet so we can keep organized about who’s writing what documentation. If you take notes or start on a page of documentation, please share the link to that content in the spreadsheet!

http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200324163140/https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KK2BxyTvx32oZZLpGChVQb_YACeXIHvcc833KEHBhtY/edit#gid=0

Michelle 3:12 pm on March 17, 2020

Attending and taking notes on all things today in a google doc. have added headers to match the table cells. will post a publicly editable link in the spreadsheet there.

Michelle 4:08 pm on March 17, 2020

Added link to the spreadsheet, and also here: http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200324163140/https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yGKXdwYr-NCJQ35YZ2q1qE3VyiMpQfyhFJ1pdB7oZcQ/edit?usp=sharing

Michelle 3:52 pm on March 19, 2020

I am willing to do annotated “Where are things in the dashboard” step by step documentation in the next week or so.

Laura Byrne-Cristiano 2:19 am on March 19, 2020

Hoping I can catch the one tomorrow. Looking forward to sharing the playback with the Philly Team

jillbinder 4:30 pm on March 12, 2020

Question for the community: Diverse Speaker Training Group (#wpdiversity) 2019 Year-End Report

2019 was quite a year!

First, we had goals in 2019 that we came close to meeting but did not quite hit. As the goal is 25 meetups/WordCamps run our workshop from May 1, 2019 – April 30, 2020, we are breaking that down to say 15 run it between June and November 2019.

We had 10 meetups run it in 7 countries. It should be noted that our number was quite close to Jan-Dec 2018, where we had 12 in 6 countries.

The places that ran it, as far as we know, are:

Canada
– Vancouver (ran it twice)

India
– Ahmedabad

Italy
– Torino
– Verona

Portugal
– Lisboa
– South Africa
– Cape Town (Ran workshop on diversity that was heavily inspired by ours)

Spain
– Sevilla

USA
– Houston
– Oakland
– Seattle

It is a challenge to know which places ran it. Most of these were self-reported to us and we followed up by confirming that they had meetup events. Some, however, were ones that we found ourselves by looking through all of the meetup events that were run in 2019.

It is quite possible that we are missing more. Particularly ones we may not have found who have events in other languages, so they would have been missed in our search through the meetup events.

We definitely want to count everybody. Who did we miss? Please comment on this post to tell us!

During this time, we accomplished more than our original goals.

There were other major items that went through months of thorough, detailed revisions from folks from different underrepresented groups:

Lead and created with a team a new, important workshop for the Community Team: Creating A Welcoming and Diverse Space (Created for WCUS)
Created 2 important handbook docs:
1. Building a Diverse Speaker Roster
2. Inclusive and Welcoming Events

We focused heavily on improving our processes that are necessary before doing the workshop on a larger scale and we achieved great results:

Improving the Attendance Rate of Our Train the Trainers Sessions:

2018 – Very low attendance & didn’t let us know they weren’t attending
2019 – A near-perfect attendance rate, telling us in advance if they were not attending!

Improving the rate of meetups/WordCamps who run the workshop after taking our training:

2018: 28%
2019: 83%!

Who did we miss? If you think other groups have run the Diverse Speaker Training workshop in 2019 that we missed, please comment on this post.

#wpdiversity

Sallie Goetsch 8:26 pm on March 12, 2020

You’ve got my meetup listed and I’m not aware of anyone else who ran the workshop that isn’t listed.

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Milana Cap 9:57 am on March 16, 2020

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