Hi! I’ve first sent the following lines to support[at]wordcamp.org as I wasn’t sure this blog was a good place to share about this project. Thanks to @adityakane ’s reply, I’m feeling more confident in doing so now!

In April 24, 2019, 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. Paris hosted its very first contributor dayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.. As the WordCamp Paris primary organizer and more globally as a WordPress contributor this was a meeting I absolutely wanted to put together. One of my hope was to take this opportunity to achieve these goals:

1. build a french documentation about how to get started about contributing to WordPress,
2. write about how to organize this specific type of WordPress events,
3. inspire other WordCamp cities in France to also organize contributor days during their events.

During the making of the WordCamp Paris 2019, the contributor day co-organizers and I took some time to organize 6 contributor meetups:

• Development environment setup(VVV) and contributing to the Polyglots team
• Contributing to WordPress Beta Testing
• Doing Theme reviews
• Discovering the Plugin API
• Contributing to documentation
• a11y in themes

We also worked on points 1 & 2 from a GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ repository. But there is still a lot to do into the documentation area.

The first WordCamp Paris contributor day was great and gathered 76 contributors. But I believe we have not accomplished 100% of what I was planning to do. In particular when we consider the 3rd goal (Inspire other french WordCamps), I guess we still have to find ways to progress on it.

I am convinced, as part of the french community, we need to promote a lot more these contributor meetings and I must say what have accomplished the italian community about it is very inspiring. 

A few weeks ago, I’ve thrown a bottle into the Twitter sea to evaluate if I could get some interests & help from contributors and sponsors. The replies and likes the tweet got made me very enthousiastic about it and..

I’ve decided to try to put together standalone contributor meetings in France.

I’ve added an “s” to “meeting” because my project is to perform a France tour. The first stage will happen in Paris (very likely the day after the WordCamp Paris 2020). The next city stages are not scheduled yet but I have a plan to start filling the blanks.

I’ve used “contributor meetings” instead of “contributor days” because I believe it gives us more freedom about duration and format: we can do contributor mornings, afternoons, days, evenings, nights, etc.

Who is us ?

For now it’s only me, but everyone wishing to contribute to this project is very welcome. My idea is to have an online place to discuss, share & learn about this project very openly.

I think not having to register to a specific 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/. to read the informations about the project will maximize our chance to get contributors & even more so new ones. By the way & anyway, Slack’s free plan does not match the needs for openness & to always be able to look back into history.

“Us” is everyone as I said and I hope it will include :

• local 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 wishing to put up contributor nights,
• WordCamp organizers wanting to add a contributor day to their event,
• contributors wishing to be involved into the making of the event they registered to,
• in kind sponsors contributing by hosting the event or taking in charge the food/drinks.

Who is me ?

I’m imath. I’ve been contributing to WordPress for 10 years, I participated to my first contributor day on March 20 in 2015 (BuddyPress table at WordCamp London) and it was a really great experience. In 2017, I contributed to the WCEU contributor day organization and this was an awesome experience. In 2018 & 2019 I’ve contributed to the WordCamp Paris organization, coordinating it. I’m a BuddyPress CoreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. developer since January 2014 and I joined the WordPress Community team in July 2019.

The main/first need

A website is the first (and probably the only) need I have. Ideally I think it would be great to have a fr.wordpress.org subsite with the o2 & handbook plugins activated. As some countries (eg: it, es, nl)  have a /community area, I believe this would be nice to use this opportunity to also have it for France to :

• log the french WordCamps history,
• introduce the existing WordPress meetups,
• give a space for upcoming contributor meetings.
• translate the community handbooks so that it’s easier for Event organizers to get started/

The o2 pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party would make it possible to discuss publicly about any french community topics and using categories would allow us to manage the contributor meetings by cities (It would require some hooksHooks In WordPress theme and development, hooks are functions that can be applied to an action or a Filter in WordPress. Actions are functions performed when a certain event occurs in WordPress. Filters allow you to modify certain functions. Arguments used to hook both filters and actions look the same. as it’s not native in o2, but I’ve already have it working on a 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/. Breathe child themeChild theme A Child Theme is a customized theme based upon a Parent Theme. It’s considered best practice to create a child theme if you want to modify the CSS of your theme. https://developer.wordpress.org/themes/advanced-topics/child-themes/.).

Contributing areas ?

I believe we have the opportunity to do many great things all together:

• Meet more regularly, everywhere it’s possible !
• Contribute to one or more “Make” areas (Polyglots, Core, MetaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress.…).
• Contribute to the french translation of the WordCamp/Meetup/Contributor events handbooks hosted on the Make/Community site. That’s why the handbook plugin is needed.
• Contribute to the content of the /community subsite of  fr.wordpress.org (introduce the existing official WordPress events).
• Strenghthen the ties into the French community.

Having the website on WordPress.orgWordPress.org The community site where WordPress code is created and shared by the users. This is where you can download the source code for WordPress core, plugins and themes as well as the central location for community conversations and organization. https://wordpress.org/ would be a real benefit and very convenient as we need a WordPress.org user account to contribute, but it’s not a blocker: if it’s not possible I’ll use an external site (I first thought of WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/, but it lacks the handbook plugin).

Thanks a lot for your time and happy to read your feedbacks, advice, and thoughts about this project.

#contributor-event