You have most likely heard that WordCamp Europe 2020 has moved online, after the in-person event in Porto was postponed to 2021. Contributor Day for WCEU will take place as planned, in just seven weeks time on 4 June. It will be the first time a WordPress contributor event on this scale will take place completely online.

WCEU Online team is working really hard to make plans, preparations, and getting all details ready. We will be sharing more on the details about the Contributor Day, the tools and platforms as details get worked out. We will keep you regularly updated.

Our goal to leave no contributor behind continues as the event for this year moves online. We want to help attendees become longer term contributors to the project and enthuse others to take part too. We know that it may be harder for new contributors to join in for the first time virtually.

To create a welcoming and positive experience, especially for new contributors, we are asking help from Make team reps and experienced contributors.

Onboarding before the contributor day

Because Contributor Day will be shorter than usual, our goal is to onboard the majority of new contributors before the actual event day. We will pay special attention to promoting the Contributor Day Orientation tool to help attendees choose the right Make team for them and on providing guides on setting up needed accounts and tools.

How each Make team can help:

1. Update the “Getting Started at a Contributor Day” page in your handbook (example from Polyglots). This page should give a general idea of what and how the team works during Contributor Days. If you don’t have such a page, can you please create one.
2. Schedule a special office hour in Slack specifically targeted for new contributors. At this time, experienced contributors can be available to help newer members, for example, in setting up the tools. These office hours should take place between 25 May and 3 June 2020 in a time that is friendly for European timezones. When the time for office hours is chosen, please inform the WCEU Contributor Day team in the comments. We will gather the responses into one blog post.
3. Choose an experienced contributor(s) from the team to record a short video introduction about your team. These videos will replace the traditional live introductions given during opening remarks and also used in the Contributor Day Orientation tool. Detailed guides for making these videos will be shared in the coming weeks.

Better support during the day

It can be harder to know if a contributor is stuck or needs more support during an online event. We want to try and avoid new, enthusiastic contributors leaving during the event. We want to work with you to help make the experience more positive and fun.

How each Make team can do to help us avoid prevent this:

1. Divide the tasks planned for the day between ‘good first tasks’ and ‘tasks for experienced contributors’. Make sure that every new contributor gets an easy task first. An example of how the Community Team does this: Call for ideas and plans for the day.
2. Choose at least two experienced contributors to facilitate the work during the day, to help new contributors and to answer their questions quickly and happily.
3. Could you plan an introductory session to help onboard new contributors to your team? The team-specific introductory sessions will take place after opening remarks.

Tasks for Team Reps

We are also asking Team Reps for your suggestions on how the day should be organized, and what tools and platforms we will need. We know we’re asking quite a lot in a short timescale. We really want to work with the Make WordPress teams to create a successful Contributor Day. It is the first time we have attempted an event on this scale online, and we know working together we can produce something awesome.

All the tasks for the Team Reps

1. Update the ‘Getting Started at a Contributor Day’ page in your handbook or create it.
2. Schedule European timezones friendly office hours taking place in Slack between 25 May and 3 June, targeted to answer questions from new contributors and help them to set up tools.
3. Choose contributor(s) from your team to help and start thinking about the content of your team video introduction. We will share the details about this in the coming weeks.
4. Plan your team tasks for the day in advance and keep a separate list of good first tasks.
5. Look for experienced contributors that will facilitate and help other contributors during the day.
6. Talk with the team about the need for an introductory session to help onboard new contributors and decide if it’s something your team will do.
7. Make a rough estimate of how many working groups your team needs during the day. Working groups are contributors working together with specific tasks or features, who will need a dedicated virtual table/space for discussion. This information is crucial for WCEU in planning platform usage and layout.

The WCEU 2020 Online Contributor Day organizing team will contact all reps in the following weeks to make sure that this information has reached every team. We will start collecting the information needed to finalize our plans starting at the end of April.

If you have any ideas about making the online Contributor Day a more valuable and comfortable experience for contributors or about the event in general, let us know in the comments or via email to contributing@wp-europe.org.

Thank you, let’s make history together with the very first fully online Contributor Day!

The WCEU 2020 Online Contributor Day Team
Abha, Laetitia, Marco, Michael, Pedro, Timi

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