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 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. 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 20, 2020 at 11:00 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 – Postponed
  • 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

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 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., and procedures for both. This recommendation stands for both 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. 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.

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Provide virtual communication channels. Use your local WordPress community 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/. 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?

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, 11:00 UTC

Americas friendly: Thursday, March 19, 2020, 20:00 UTC

Deputy/Mentor check-in

What have you been doing and how is it going?

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/. posts needing review/feedback

  • https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/09/recap-of-the-kids-event-working-group-chat-thursday-27-february-2019/
  • https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/09/youth-event-working-group-formerly-kids-chat-agenda-thursday-12-march-2020/
  • https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/09/kim-parsell-memorial-scholarship-for-wordcamp-us-2020/
  • https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/09/wordcamp-and-meetup-application-vetting-sprints-march-2020/
  • https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/09/discussion-safe-and-welcoming-events-in-the-wordpress-community/
  • https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/10/2019-incident-reports-details-and-results/
  • https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/12/diverse-speaker-training-group-wpdiversity-2019-year-end-report/
  • https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/13/online-conference-organizer-training/
  • https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/17/covid-19-and-the-diverse-speaker-training-wpdiversity-group/

Highlighted P2 posts

  • https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/12/latest-updates-on-changes-to-wordcamps/
  • https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/03/11/new-recommendations-for-event-organizers-in-light-of-covid-19/

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

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: https://tiny.cc/wpdiversity

X-post: Documentation License

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

Weekly Updates

Hello to all our Deputies, 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. organizers, 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. 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 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/. and ask for help!

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 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 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. 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.

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 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. 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 revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. 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

Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#wpdiversity) on March 11, 2020

Summary: We talked about what people are working on, the 2019 year end report results, what our team should do in the face of COVID-19, the call out for financial support for meetups running our work, and our new tracking sheet.

Continue reading

#wpdiversity