I got the funding renewal! The new direction for our team for the next while. How the workshops went last week. I need a volunteer to make a notes document about the Online Stage Presence workshop. Upcoming events: Group coaching; All-women train the trainers in Latin America; TBD our group’s workshops & coaching schedule for the next few months
Start: http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1587574762413300
Attended: @jillbinder @cguntur @anyssa
Agenda:
- How are you?
- New direction
- a) How the Diverse Speaker workshops went last week
b) Online stage presence notes: needs a volunteer
- Upcoming events a) Group coaching; b) All-women train the trainers in Latin America; c) TBD our group’s workshops and coaching schedule for the next few months
- Open: Reports on what you’ve been doing, thoughts about the new direction, or anything you want to talk about
1. How are you
I was alone at this point in the meeting. I talked to myself about how I’m doing. 🤣
2. New direction
I just got the green light yesterday from Automattic for another year of funding, May 2020 – April 2021! Woohoo!
This is in addition to some funding to support these efforts from GreenGeeks, as well.
Yay to both companies!
My funding from Automattic was based on a new plan to carry out during these COVID-19 times.
As you may recall, we’ve talked about how WordPress event organizers are in no position to be learning a new workshop right now, nor to be thinking about diversifying their speaker lineups.
Individual WordPress community members, however, are looking for things to learn at home. Additionally, speaking at virtual WordPress events presents new challenges that we can help the potential speakers navigate.
The plan is similar to what we tried in April, with a few modifications.
Each month, I will carry out something in 3 categories.
Category The 'category' taxonomy lets you group posts / content together that share a common bond. Categories are pre-defined and broad ranging. 1: A workshop:
- Diverse Speaker workshop (like I did last week), or
- Creating a Welcoming and Inclusive WordPress event online, or
- Hold your own Diverse Speaker workshop for meetups (like our usual work pre-COVID)
Category 2: I will host:
Category 3: Running our #WPDiversity group:
Onboarding and leading our volunteers and having our team carry out initiatives that are still important during these times, such as:
- Oversight of a 1:1 speaker mentorship program
- Training material translation efforts
- Marketing
- Other initiatives
3 a) How the Diverse Speaker workshops went last week
Last week I did a trial run of doing three 1-hour Diverse Speaker workshops 3 days in a row. They went excellently!
26 people attended
from 21 cities in 6 countries
- Bulgaria
- Costa Rica
- India
- Italy
- Nigeria
A special thank you to @cguntur for doing administrative tasks before and during the workshops, and for watching to start learning how to run it in the future.
I also measured self-reported public speaking confidence scores before and after participants attended a workshop. They went up 34%!
We had a pretty good rate of return on the post-workshop follow-up questionnaires as I let them know they would receive our Speaker Mentorship Program & Resources if they sent it in. So about half who attended sent it in!
3. b) Online stage presence notes: needs a volunteer
I’m looking for a volunteer for a task. Does anyone want to get to know the online stage presence material really well?
A participant asked for the notes from the class.
Can someone create a document with a bullet list of the points?
You’ll have access to the slides, my notes to myself, and the recording from the session.
4. Upcoming events
Really cool events coming up being put on by our team (or by me):
a) Next week, I am holding two diverse speaking group coaching sessions on Zoom:
- Tuesday, April 28 @ 9am Pacific
- Thursday, April 30 @ 12pm Pacific
More info and registration is here:
http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/04/14/diverse-speaker-group-coaching-april-28-30/
All folks who work with WordPress and who identify as being from a marginalized or underrepresented group in tech are welcome.
We already have 8 signed up for Tuesday!
And 1 for Thursday.
(So if you’re not sure which day to attend, I do recommend Thursday.)
b) I am holding a “Hold your own Speaker Diversity Workshop” (aka our Train the Trainers) for women WordPress meetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/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. and WordCamp 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 of Latin America!
This women empowerment event is being put on by GreenGeeks.
It is on Saturday, July 11.
I posted about it on LinkedIn this morning, and I’ll be posting about it on Twitter later today. I would love the retweets to help us reach the community in Latin America.
It’s a big issue of not having much female representation in the communities in WordPress in Latin America, and GreenGeeks is seeking to change this with the Diverse Speaker workshop so that we can get more of the female talent on (virtual) stages.
@cguntur: Really good news about the women empowerment in Latin America
@jillbinder: Thanks, @cguntur! It’s great news and a really cool initiative, for sure.
@anyssa: This is really nice @jillbinder! A question: what will be the official language of the event?
@jillbinder: Thanks, @anyssa! This one will be in English. We’ll have a translator or two who can help people out, but it’s best if people can follow in English for this one.
@anyssa: OK! I’ll share it when you post it
c) The WordCamp Deputies and I are going to work out what will be the workshops and coaching plan for our team for the next few months, now that the funding and contract is being secured. But first we need to finish that paperwork.
@jillbinder: I’m so pleased that our team can still be supporting the WordPress community during this difficult time. There are still WordPress events online, and diverse leadership is always needed, perhaps now more than ever – which is one of the direct results that happens from people who take our workshop – and so our work is still very needed.
5. Open: Reports on what you’ve been doing, thoughts about the new direction, or anything you want to talk about
@jillbinder: @cguntur You’ve been one of the few people who has still been busy on our team during this transition!
@cguntur: I have been monitoring HelpScout
@jillbinder: You have been doing quite a few more things for us, too. You did admin before and during the workshops, you are coordinating the speaker mentorship program, you’re replying to questions on Helpscout…
@cguntur: I actually have a few more things on my mind… would love to talk to you about it @jillbinder
@jillbinder: That sounds great, @cguntur! Let’s schedule a chat.
End: http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1587577350452600
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!
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**:
[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.
Should a link to this be sent out to MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/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. chapter organizers? There may be some who are not monitoring this site.
Probably should, since one I just talked to minutes ago was unaware of this post.
P.S. @andreamiddleton great work on this post.
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.
Just got that meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/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. email! Thanks.
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 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. 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 :
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 💪👍
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 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 can use — please check the #community-team slackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. channel if you’re interested in collaborating on the templates or translating the templates. 🙂
Fantastic, you can count on me for the translations 👌
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”.
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.
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.
Thank you Andrea for this much needed statement. We started in march to hold our local MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/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. in Düsseldorf exclusively online. This will affect all upcoming events in our local community until further notice.
Thanks for this Andrea, it’s appreciated. It’s looking like we’ll need to cancel our first MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/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.. I’ll look at hosting a Zoom call (or similar) instead. Has anyone else had any joy with this?
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…
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?
Earlier this week, the facility we used informed us we could not meet there for the time being, so we had our first virtual MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/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. 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.
Thank you for posting these guidelines. I was very worried about how to proceed with my local meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/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., and I appreciate the clear guidance and being able to link to this reference. We’ll be trying to set up an online gathering.
We just published a handbook page with tools and tips and tricks for meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20200423152535/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 for virtual events.