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

Welcome to the official blog of the community/outreach team for the WordPress open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project!

This team oversees official events, mentorship programs, diversity initiatives, contributor outreach, and other ways of growing our community.

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We use this blog for policy debates, project announcements, and status reports. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to comment on posts and join the discussion.

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Communication

We have Office Hours four times a week in the #community-events channel on Slack: Mondays & Wednesdays 22:00 UTC, Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:00 UTC.

We also have regular Community Team meetings on the first and third Thursdays of every month at 11:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC in #community-team on Slack (same agenda).

Events WidgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.

If you have questions about the Events and News dashboard widget that came out in WordPress 4.8, please read this FAQ!

#wpdiversity

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

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Getting Involved

Communication