WordPress Meetup Roundtables scheduled for March

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#meetups-2, #roundtables

In an earlier post about how to assist dormant Meetup Groups, we kicked around some ideas on how to support 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. organizers in their essential community work, especially if they are struggling or suffer from burn-out.

As a test, experienced meetup organizers will host four Meetup Roundtables. Kathy Drewien, Roberto Remedios, Jim True and Ulrich Pogson have already agreed to be our hosts, and we are recruiting a couple more people right now!

The Meetup Roundtables are an opportunity for Meetup organizers to connect and discuss challenges and opportunities for their local Meetups. We’ll hold them via video chat, using Zoom.

Here are the dates and topics, all Wednesdays at 16:00 UTC

March 7th, 2018
What were the more popular topics in 2017 and 2018?
Your hosts:Karen Arnold (@karenalma) – Meetup Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
- Birgit Pauli-Haack (@bph) – Meetup Naples, Florida, USA
- Ulrich Pogson (@grapplerulrich) – Meetup Bern, Switzerland
- Jim True (@jimtrue) – Meetup Tampa & St Petersburg, USA
  Recording available on YouTube
March 14th, 2018
How did you find your venues and strategic partners?
Your hosts:
- Birgit Pauli-Haack (@bph) – Meetup Naples, Florida, USA
- Roberto Remedios @remediosgraphic – Meetup San Jose, Costa Rica
- Jim True (@jimtrue) – Meetup Tampa & St Petersburg, USA
- Karen Arnold (@karenalma) – Meetup Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
  Recording available on YouTube
March 21st, 2018
How do you promote and cross-post meetups in the local community?
Your hosts:
- Kathy Drewien (@kdrewien) – Meetup Atlanta, Georgia, USA
- Dreb Bits (@drebbits) – Meetup Davao, Philippines
- Birgit Pauli-Haack (@bph) – Meetup Naples, Florida, USA
- Jim True (@jimtrue) – Meetup Tampa & St Petersburg, USA
- Recording available on YouTube
March 28th, 2018
How did you find your co-organizers?
Your hosts:
- Kathy Drewien (@kdrewien) – Meetup Atlanta, Georgia, USA
- Birgit Pauli-Haack (@bph) – Meetup Naples, Florida, USA
- Jim True (@jimtrue) – Meetup Tampa & St Petersburg, USA
- Ulrich Pogson (@grapplerulrich) – Meetup Bern, Switzerland
- Recording available on YouTube

The format is quite informal. We’ll kick-off the meeting with introductions, name, and location. The hosts will talk about their experiences for this week’s topic for a few minutes, and then we open it up for general Q & A from participating organizers.

For this first round, we’ll plan for these video chat Meetup Roundtables to last one hour. We will record them and make them available for those that couldn’t make it.

We hope you can join the discussion! If you’re an experienced meetup organizer in the WordPress chapter program and would like to participate as a host, please comment below!

Interested in learning more about WordPress Meetups?

#meetups-2, #roundtables

Josepha 4:14 pm on February 27, 2018

I love this!
Courtney P.K. 12:53 am on February 28, 2018

This is so great. Thank you for the idea and scheduling the roundtables!
Dreb Bits 2:12 am on March 1, 2018

Finally! I could already see a positive impact to touch base with 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. organizers who feel like they’ve been on this journey by themselves. Sometimes, they just need that little push and realize that they belong to a bigger community to move forward.

If this works out well, I hope we can organize one in APAC timezone.
- Birgit Pauli-Haack 5:26 pm on March 7, 2018
  
  Thank you Dreb! Looking forward to having you participate as a host on March 21!
CrowdedTent 6:28 pm on March 10, 2018

Brilliant, thank you!
Jerry Bates (jerrysarcastic) 8:37 pm on March 28, 2018

For this first round, we’ll plan for these video chat 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. Roundtables to last one hour. We will record them and make them available for those that couldn’t make it.

We’re happy to publish these on WordPress.tv if that will help. Should fit nicely with the mission of the site. When y’all have your first video please let us know in #wptv 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 we can help you to get them posted! 🙂

Edit: Sorry I see you have the videos on YouTube. We’ll see about getting those copied over to WordPress.tv
Birgit Pauli-Haack 8:44 pm on March 28, 2018

@jerrysarcastic Thank you so much for tending to the videos to get them on WordPress.Tv. That’s fantastic. Some of us were wondering, how to obtain a transcript to make it available as text with the video and also to help community team members to compile summaries of main topics. Do you have any suggestions or ideas?
- Jerry Bates (jerrysarcastic) 8:51 pm on March 28, 2018
  
  We do have the ability to attach a caption file to a video, but it’s bit more involved of a process than just publishing a transcript (since it has to be synced with the speaking on-screen)
  
  See: https://wordpress.tv/using-amara-org-to-caption-or-subtitle-a-wordpress-tv-video/
  
  The advantage of captions over a basic transcript is that it makes the video more accessible, as well as more easily translated into other languages.
  
  However, that may be a bit more work than you are looking for, and we don’t typically have bandwidth on our team to handle this for you. Instead, if you have a link to the transcript (perhaps you have an existing PDF or text file that can be downloaded) we can add that link to the description text that appears under the video when viewed on WordPress.tv
  - Birgit Pauli-Haack 3:18 pm on March 29, 2018
    
    Thank you! This is very helpful. I see resources are sparse.

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