Angela Jin 8:01 am on July 13, 2020
Tags: #meetups ( 9 ), events ( 23 ), WordCamps ( 211 )

Reimagining Online Events

This year, the WordPress Community has faced an unprecedented challenge. In response, we took big steps in moving WordCamps, Meetups, and other community events online, and together, we provided the community with some stability during this global crisis, by bringing the in-person 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. experience online.

Now that we’ve had a number of outstanding online WordCamps, including WordCamp Europe, we have the opportunity to think beyond simply recreating in-person events.

Instead, we can take this chance to get creative and take our online WordPress events to the next level, exploring how we can transform online events to better serve our community.

Let’s innovate and iterate!

Successful WordPress Community events help people learn to use and contribute to WordPress. Community organizers make this possible by connecting WordPress enthusiasts and inspiring people to do more with WordPress, making it easier for people to contribute to WordPress.

How can we best achieve these goals, advancing the growth and adoption of WordPress, through online events? As an attendee, what would inspire you to participate in an online event?

A few concepts that have been brainstormed by Community deputies include:

WordCamp JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/.
WordCamp Portuguese Online
Advanced Developer WordCamp Online, August Edition
WordPress 101 Online, Hindi Edition
BlockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. Builders Bi-Weekly
WordCamp “How It Works”**
Documentation Contributor Workshop
WordCamp for Non-Profits
Content Creators Weekly Round-up

**Wins the prize for worst event title.

Other, broader ideas include:

Decouple online events from geography
Encourage events and workshops defined by topics, languages, etc.
Explore shorter, “snack-sized” online events
Experiment with the frequency of events

Share your ideas

What can online events make possible for WordPress? What do you think about these ideas, and what other ideas do you have? What online events have impressed you? What online events have been successful in your local community?

Please share as many ideas as you can, in comments to this post by 17 July, 2020. Community team deputies will then start working on how to support organizers in creating effective and powerful online WordPress events, to be discussed in a follow-up post.

Thanks to the following deputies for their feedback and contributions to this post: @andreamiddleton, @bph, @camikaos @courtneypk, @harishanker, @hlashbrooke, @kcristiano, @monchomad, @sippis

#meetups, #events-2, #wordcamps

Timi Wahalahti 8:23 am on July 13, 2020

Working name: 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. WordPress.tv watch party.

Instead of a normal call for speakers, ask submission from past WordCamp talks. The recorded talk would be streamed and after steam, the speaker gets a short slot to talk live about the session seen after which normal Q&A could take place. Minimal effort for organisers and speakers, still inetesring content (what WordPress.tv is full of).
- Hugh Lashbrooke 8:44 am on July 13, 2020
  
  Oh I like that! Requires minimal effort from the speakers, uncovers content on WPTV that people would otherwise not have found, and gives some community interaction the Q&A and possibly a live chat going on alongside the streaming (which would be easy to do if this was done on Zoom). Love it.
- Pascal Casier 3:30 pm on July 13, 2020
  
  Of course I fully agree to this one 🙂
  We have done similar things during WPTranslationDay where previous recordings were streamed.
- Maja Loncar 2:47 pm on July 14, 2020
  
  on spot!
- Courtney P.K. 10:49 pm on July 15, 2020
  
  I really like this idea — it’s a riff on one of my favorite suggestions for 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. events! The lower level of effort is really appealing. And I especially like finding good relevant/interesting talks that not everyone has seen 🙂
- Hari Shanker R 7:09 am on July 16, 2020
  
  Love this idea for its simplicity, and its effectiveness! Minimum effort – maximum impact! 🙂
- Yogesh Londhe 1:05 pm on July 16, 2020
  
  This is really cool idea. Simple and easy to organize, good impact.
- jamestryon 6:22 pm on July 20, 2020
  
  +1
  
  We have been talking about this for WCORL to save on money for transcriptions and to showcase some of the best talks from the past year.
Hugh Lashbrooke 8:57 am on July 13, 2020

Something that I’m very conscious of is that people are getting tired of watching online conferences – 8 hours of watching people talking on your screen is way more tiring than it sounds and it’s hard to keep your attention for that whole time. As we get further along in the year, people are going to be attending more and more of these events (both inside and outside the WP community), so doing something outside of that box will give a much-needed break from a format that tires people out so quickly.

I don’t have a catchy name for this, but I like the idea of an event that’s somewhere between a 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. and a 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.. It can be 2-3 hours of sessions – either one long practical workshop or 2-3 talks/workshops during that time. It can be tun on Zoom and streamed to YouTube Live (so it’s easy to do with no additional cost).

This removes the organisation burden by reducing the number of sessions and the software needed to make it happen, and it could allow these events to happen more frequently without organisers feeling like they need to put on a full WordCamp.
- Timi Wahalahti 9:11 am on July 13, 2020
  
  +1
  
  people are getting tired of watching online conferences – 8 hours of watching people talking on your screen is way more tiring than it sounds and it’s hard to keep your attention for that whole time.
  
  This. I think online events should be a maximum of five to six hours, which is also quite a long time to concentrate at once.
  
  The idea of 2-3 hours long session is nice! That also allows a wider audience to attend, if timed correctly, because not everyone can take even that five hours from their day to attend a 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..
- Aditya Kane 10:16 am on July 13, 2020
  
  I don’t have a catchy name for this, but I like the idea of an event that’s somewhere between a 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. and a 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.. It can be 2-3 hours of sessions – either one long practical workshop or 2-3 talks/workshops during that time. It can be tun on Zoom and streamed to YouTube Live (so it’s easy to do with no additional cost).
  
  This removes the organisation burden by reducing the number of sessions and the software needed to make it happen, and it could allow these events to happen more frequently without organisers feeling like they need to put on a full WordCamp.
  
  I think some online WordCamp that are regional or language-based with several organisers – could possibly do an online event over 4-6 days so that could help with more targetted workshops and learning-based sessions and everyone does not have to see everything.
  
  It would also take the pressure off organisers a little bit.
  - Courtney P.K. 11:40 pm on July 15, 2020
    
    I do like the notion of shorter events at 2–3 hours, and your thought of stretching a larger event over multiple days would really help with the fatigue for both organizers and volunteers!
  - Yogesh Londhe 1:07 pm on July 16, 2020
    
    +1. Totally agree. Variety of workshops/Show & Tell/talks for different target audience. Easy to organize and max impact for audience.
- Maja Loncar 2:48 pm on July 14, 2020
  
  agree
- Josh Pollock 12:20 am on July 15, 2020
  
  +1x💯 I would particpate in a facilitated discussion or workshop. So much less excited about presentation after presentation at a 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..
  
  That’s before they became online.
  - Angela Jin 2:59 pm on July 15, 2020
    
    I agree that a 2-3 hour session is a good amount of time for an online event. And I also think that more panels, workshops, and other different forms of presenting content would be of more interest to the community.
- Andrea Middleton 11:34 pm on July 15, 2020
  
  Controversial questions incoming:
  
  Do we need a different name for online events? Should we keep “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.” for an in-person, all-day conference, and use a different name for online events?
  - Courtney P.K. 11:42 pm on July 15, 2020
    
    I think there’s a certain expectation attached to the term “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.”, and could be one of the reasons why we’ve all been trying to replicate the in-person WordCamp experience online. These new online event formats sound like something completely different, and I think they should be differentiated with a new name. I just don’t know what to call it yet 🙂
  - Hari Shanker R 7:22 am on July 16, 2020
    I agree that we need not use the name “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.” for events of the new format. We could come up with a new name (like the famous “unconference” :D).
    
    With that said, by following this discussion, I noticed a lot of event proposals coming up, which includes everything from news updates to a 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/.. Finding one name to define a name for an entire gamut of WordPress events could be tricky.
    
    Based on all the suggestions that we get from this post, perhaps, we could crystallize all the ideas into a certain number of event types and find names for them?
    
    For instance, after reading through the post, and the comments, some the ideas that really stood out (at least for me) are:
    
    Topic-oriented online workshops (e.g. Building blocks, JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/.)
    
    Topic-oriented online conferences (e.g. Mini online conference for bloggers)
    
    Online Contributor day (either team specific, or broad)
    
    Recurring online events/workshops
    
    Would it help to find a different name for each of these events, and to formalize a format for the same, so as to help our organizers?
  - Kevin Cristiano 4:43 pm on July 16, 2020
    
    I agree, I’d like to see a new name. I do think these events are different and we need to reset expectations and a whole ton of expectations come along with “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.”. I believe a new name will help foster innovation and help attain the programs goals.
  - Matt Cromwell 11:42 pm on July 16, 2020
    
    I like this idea A LOT. WordCamps have such strong loyalty because of the physical presence. And some of the ways they’re being done virutally now are too much of an attempt to recreate that feeling when instead the online version has to be its own animal, a very different experience with different expectations. You’ve got my FULL support on this idea, Andrea. Thanks!
  - Timi Wahalahti 7:20 am on July 17, 2020
    
    It feels like 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. should be reserved for longer and bigger events, as there are a set of expectations from everyone what WordCamp should be. And those expectations don’t ease the work of organisers either. New name for other event formats, sure!
    
    But. I personally wouldn’t ban the WordCamp name from all online events. If the online event is in longer format (more than 2-4 hours) and contains mostly sessions, then it’s in my opinion justified to call the event WordCamop Online.
    
    There’s already strong brand built for that term, so abandoning it altogether for an unspecified time (half a year? year? until we can safely organise in-person events again) sounds like a bad idea. Without at least some events happening with familiar names, I afraid that we’ll lose some audience.
  - Angela Jin 7:35 am on July 17, 2020
    
    I also agree 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.” is very closely tied to a set of expectations that is very different from the new online event formats we are discussing. I would love to see a new name for these online events!
  - JenniferSwisher 2:33 pm on July 17, 2020
    
    +1 to everything said here.
  - Aditya Kane 3:36 am on July 30, 2020
    I guess not a popular opinion going by the support here 🙂
    
    I would support online events being branded as something else too – if this was just a natural progression, as in having these events side by side in person WordCamps.
    
    I would agree if even we had a good chance for the project to get back to normal or rather old times if this was happening say 6 month from now.
    
    But I do not think we are going to have physical events happen anytime soon. Possibly even through 2021. So rebranding might not really be needed.
    
    Here are some of my concerns
    
    There are smaller online events happening already and they are called meetups. This can potentially get confusing.
    
    We might possibly be in our bubbles thinking WordCamps having their own expectations. Many people might not think like us and would recognize the brand 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. a lot better and more likely to be part of it.
    
    I feel at this strange cultural moment, something local communities will struggle a lot with is encouraging newer participants and volunteers. But a lot of people still recognize WordCamp and want to be part of it. This reduces some of that labour from organizers; when its called WordCamp.
    
    Our world is adapting to online events and literally all of us are adapting to the pandemic around us. I do not see why WordCamp and its set of expectations and what they mean cannot end up changing and adapting.
    
    In any case @andreamiddleton the question “Do we need a different name for online events?” might need a separate 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/. discussion?
Aditya Kane 10:12 am on July 13, 2020

I like some of these ideas but I am assuming we are talking of something of a fork of WordCamps here?

A fork that works like standalone online events with different concepts and ideas (maybe?)

Are we planning to sunset online events at such a time?

I hope we are not going to do that because I really do not see any in-person events happening for 2020 – dare I say even 2021. And by then it would be unfaair to sunset an online community space.

But it would be great to have more clarity and a discussion around it.

Who gets to organize these events?

While events ideas like Advanced Developer WordCamp Online, August Edition or Content Creators Weekly Round-up are really interesting – but who would to organize them? Maybe no one gets to organize them and its a collective effort of all attendees? (and all attendees can get badges 😁)
- Andrea Middleton 11:42 pm on July 13, 2020
  
  Are we planning to sunset online events at such a time?
  
  I really doubt we’ll be abandoning online events, after COVID-19 is more under control worldwide. I think that we’ll need to figure out how in-person events and online events can best coexist, but it seems like we’ll have time to figure that out. If you have some particular concerns about that, I’d love to hear them! 🙂
  
  While events ideas like Advanced Developer 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. Online, August Edition or Content Creators Weekly Round-up are really interesting – but who would to organize them?
  
  That is a really interesting question! We have an expectation that, if you’re going to represent a certain local community by organizing WordCamp Place, that you actually live in Place, and that you be part of the local Place community. This facilitates open and participatory events. How can we keep events open in a similar way, when the definition of “who does this event represent” isn’t so conveniently defined?
  
  Or do we need to worry about that at all, for online events?
  - Courtney P.K. 11:47 pm on July 15, 2020
    
    I’m really excited for the prospect for new types of event that can co-exist alongside in-person events (when we eventually are able to have them again)!
    
    As far as who would organize them, I could see that the ideas for different focused events could be submitted to the Community Team, and if there is enough interest, the Community Team opens up the call for organizers and does the usual vetting/processing.
    - Angela Jin 7:36 am on July 17, 2020
      
      +1 for an open call for organizers.
    - Timi Wahalahti 7:54 am on July 17, 2020
      
      +1!
Abhishek Deshpande 1:26 pm on July 13, 2020

Recently along with few Community Friends, we hosted a First Indian Virtual Conference – WPCouchCon. It was Quite a learning curve.

We were lazy enough to sit for Day long event, so we split it into two days for three hours each. The audience turnup was Nice.

Post Event, we received some responses to Host Niche-Specific event. Happy to List them here:
– Publisher Specific in Regional Language
– Design Specific
– New Feature Showcase (In Our ecosystem, changelogs are still in the readme file. 3-5 min slot for 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/Theme devs showcasing feature changelogs live interest’s few)

So a Not so (8 hour) long event. Ideally 2-3 Hours is what we can sit down comfortably.
- Maja Loncar 2:49 pm on July 14, 2020
  
  was great event!
Carike 1:44 pm on July 13, 2020

Perhaps re-imagining online events in the WordPress ecosystem can help the project as a whole to shift its value proposition.

It can change the way that teams interact, the way that we recruit and retain contributors – and the value we offer to society as a whole.

This is something that myself and a few others are looking in to:

The current global health situation means that many students have not been inside of a classroom for 4 months.
I have had a look at our information technology local curriculum for our equivalent of A-levels / senior year.
A more ambitious long term plan would be to get buy-in from schools and / or the Department of Education, to allow for students to receive credit towards their practical (project) component of their final mark by contributing patches to TracTrac Trac is the place where contributors create issues for bugs or feature requests much like GitHub.https://core.trac.wordpress.org/. tickets and / or doing bug gardening.
If students are registered by their schools, this would significantly relieve the administrative burden (such as obtaining parental consent).
That having been said, there are also easier (shorter, more self-contained) contributions that can be made, such as creating a 2 hour webinar panel discussion around privacy to cater to the specific items in the 3rd term grade 12 curriculum. (:hero: @Jono Alderson)

Some hosts already offer hosting for KidsCamps. :hero: @MegPhillips91 has also offered access to hosting for a youth initiative.
:hero: @Dani Long has offered assistance as well and hopes that participation may help her when organizing something similar where she lives.
By focusing on younger contributors, we can help foster a culture of contributorship ( 😉 @williampatton);
By offering genuine value, possibly in the form of certificates of participation / completion (this can be automated using an LMS 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), or letters of recommendation for outstanding contributions, we will be able to make a real difference in the world, as well as “recruit” more contributors;
By focusing on students ages 16 – 19, we can “retain” them as contributors longer;
These students, once they reach university may then be able to help with the next group, making the project “evergreen”.

Jono also points out that I did not mention that we would like to run a “pilot” project of sorts, so we would not need to start out with the whole country and can limit the available spaces we can reasonably manage.
- Andrea Middleton 11:57 pm on July 13, 2020
  
  I think that online events focused on younger audiences would be a great thing to try! Both to teach younger people how to use WordPress, and how to contribute to it. 🙂
  
  I know that at least two different WordCamps have offered a participation certificate, using a script of some sort to merge the names into the pdf, so that’s definitely possible. Defining “outstanding” contributions is… complicated, but factual descriptions of someone’s work, and the impact thereof, is usually feasible.
- Sandy Edwards 3:12 pm on July 14, 2020
  
  There are several initiatives for moving to online for Youth Programming.
  
  Our global sponsors have graciously provided for any hosting needs to facilitate.
  
  I would love to see more attend our weekly meetings on Thursdays at 2100UTC in the #community-events 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/..
  
  We also have a call to help with this initiative up here: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/07/08/youth-event-working-group-call-for-more-volunteers-and-new-meeting-time/
  
  Together this community should be able to pull off some really awesome events for both 7-12, 13-16, and 16-19 age groups.
- Courtney Engle Robertson 11:28 am on July 20, 2020
  
  The organization where I am teaching is very interested in participating in this initiative.
Pascal Casier 3:29 pm on July 13, 2020

Reading all the current ideas, just some random thoughts:
1. Forget anything longer then 5 hours. I have been organizing and assisting multiple telemeetings on a daily basis in the last months and the concentration or willingness to follow seems to drop a lot if it goes over 5 hours.
2. These online events are great to bring people together from different regions. We are getting together with people from 100-300km away to join the same presentation. This of course means that our own 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. account has not been used for months.
3. For topics like GDPR/Privacy there might not be people in the local community that have the good knowledge. Being able to see/hear those now from home is really great
4. Lots of us (me included) miss the physical presence, seeing each other on WordCamps. Focusing now on improving for another 9 months the online events is great, but soon we should probably also start thinking of how we want to (re)start the physical events. Any changes to our concept?
Drivingralle 6:07 pm on July 13, 2020

I like the idea of topic based events. Also I like the idea of breaking events free of “conference days”.
Shaan Nicol 8:35 am on July 14, 2020

For our Singapore 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., we switched to 2 online events a month in April.

We kept out regular meetup of 2 talks, and also added a more in-depth workshop which was aimed more towards exploring a practical application of WordPress. We discussed building a WooCommerce site, building a site with GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/, Setting up your first WordPress website and last night we did a deep dive into Custom Post Types and taxonomies. These were largely about 2 hours long each time and we had most dropoff after the first hour.

We might bring these back but for the moment we will be going back to our regular meetups, it was just taking up too much of my time to organise and prepare for every 2 weeks.

For me, I don’t think i’d be able to sit through anything longer than 2 hours max
Optimocha.com 10:17 am on July 14, 2020

“Decouple online events from geography”

This is one of the most important ideas in the post, in my opinion. Organizers should be able to select a “language” instead of a city/region for online events, so wp-admin users could be shown online events in their language.

Obviously, tens/hundreds of events in English can’t be shown to every wp-admin user using the English language, so a second tier of filtering (like country) could be set.
Mariano Perez 11:09 am on July 14, 2020

One option is to do semi-presential events. Only the speakers and the organizers would be on site, without an audience. The public would see it online. This would be like an Apple keynote 😀
The expenses would not be as small as an online event but it would only be the speakers’ dinner, cleaning, etc. It could be done for less than 3000$, easy to cover with sponsorships.
Mariano Perez 11:10 am on July 14, 2020

And yet another option is to plan events online but in television program format: reports, interviews, magazine about WordPress.
It doesn’t always have to be a fixed face in the speaker’s room, you have to be able to innovate with camera shots.
- Andrea Middleton 11:11 pm on July 14, 2020
  
  I love those ideas! More format variations make the content a lot more fresh and enticing.
- Cami Kaos 3:49 pm on July 15, 2020
  
  I love this format idea!
  - Courtney P.K. 11:50 pm on July 15, 2020
    
    +1! I could see this being really compelling and easy to digest. And it could bring a nice human-interest component to the event.
    - harmonyromo 3:02 pm on July 16, 2020
      
      Yes! I feel this would be a way to bring in even more diversity
- Timi Wahalahti 7:24 am on July 17, 2020
  
  Excellent idea! I can see how this kind of events would have huge value for the whole community, bringing it together as well as being an easy step for WordPress users who aren’t involved in the community.
Sandy Edwards 3:53 pm on July 14, 2020

These are all amazing ideas, but as someone that has more recently started attending WordCamps from the sponsor side, I’m wondering how sponsors fit into this?

I’m super excited to see all this come together!
- Andrea Middleton 11:46 pm on July 14, 2020
  
  That’s a great question, Sandy! Not to turn it around on you (but that’s totally what I’m going to do here…) — I’m interested to know your thoughts about how sponsors could or should fit in!
- Angela Jin 2:43 pm on July 15, 2020
  
  +1 to wanting to hear your thoughts about how sponsors could fit in, and welcome input from other sponsors on this as well.
- Carike 2:46 pm on July 15, 2020
  
  Do we have stats on the attendance for the sponsors’ virtual booths during WCEU 2020 Online?
  - Adam W. Warner 9:59 pm on July 15, 2020
    
    We have loose numbers of how many people visited our booths.
    
    WCEU – Less than 50 people
    (8,600 registered for event)
    
    WC Denver – 100+ people
    (don’t know the registered number)
    
    We can attribute the increase in booth visits directly to communicating with organizers and detailing the hurdles of buried navigation and sponsor mentions, and they made sure sponsors were easy to find and mentioned the sponsor booths in every session. See my comment below for more detail on why these two things mattered so much.
    - Carike 1:11 pm on July 16, 2020
      
      Thank you for the feedback, Adam. That really helps!
  - Taco Verdonschot 2:01 pm on July 17, 2020
    
    I’d like to second Adam’s findings.
    
    In the virtual Yoast booths, we’ve seen similar numbers for both WCEU and WC Denver. If I’m not mistaken, WC Denver “sold” around 2400 tickets.
- Adam W. Warner 9:53 pm on July 15, 2020
  I have a lot of thoughts and experiences to share from a sponsor perspective since everything pivoted, but honestly, I’m feeling overwhelmed at the thought of writing it all out at the moment.
  
  The bottom line is that the sponsor experience for online events started out being less than stellar but we’ve learned from each event we’ve done (dozens since March including every 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.), there are certain things that have helped make the connection between sponsors and attendees more visible and valuable for both parties.
  
  The inclusion of additional sponsor benefit line items such as:
  - Regular mentions that sponsors are available (emails, pre/post session mentions, etc.)
  - Interstitial slides and 10-30 sec video
  - Dedicated sponsor sessions for activities, demos, Q&A, etc. Worked when on the actual schedule.
  - A dedicated landing page with available CTA link options
  - Making sure that links to sponsor booths are easy to get to. This means on the schedule page, watch pages, track pages. Case in point: sponsor links were buried 3 levels deep in a menu at one event and for two days, we had less than 20 attendees visit our booth.
  If anyone wants more detail on the above, feel free to ask or reach out on 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/..
  
  Re: Reimagining Online Events
  
  The ideas that jumped out most to me as a long-time WP person and sponsor are…
  - Topic or Vertical based events.
    This allows me as an attendee to pick and choose what event aligns best with what I’m seeking to learn. As a sponsor, we would be able to highlight how we can solve for any specific topic/vertical, and produce relevant content (demos, talks, case studies to share).
  - Shorter Events.
    4-5 hours of educational intake is much more consumable than 8 hours. As a sponsor, this could allow for post-event networking sessions similar to a physical event when we have conversations at the venue, hotel lobby, or dinner.
  More thoughts later 🙂
  - jamestryon 8:14 pm on July 20, 2020
    
    +100 to all of this.
    
    We should have blocks of time before and after all talks for sponsors. It could be a prerecorded ad or some type of demo(really whatever, it would be the sponsor’s time).
    
    For example, workshops. We could have a sponsor break 45 mins in or so, plus a 5 mins personal time break and back to the workshop.
Mariano Perez 6:03 pm on July 14, 2020

Sponsors have the opportunity to have an exclusive videoconference room, the possibility of sending their messages to attendees, the possibility of holding contests, giving gifts of their products, offers, etc.
Hugh Lashbrooke 4:41 pm on July 15, 2020

There are some excellent ideas in this thread – I’m really loving the innovative thinking going on here!

I saw this tweet from @dimensionmedia and I gotta say that I really like the idea of events focussed on verticals, languages or other criteria that aren’t necessarily geography. I wonder if we could even facilitate this with a centralised 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. stream that local organisers could get involved in by getting speakers onto it. This is all very much ideas in my head that I haven’t thought through a whole bunch, but it’s got my gears working – if we can come up with a centralised WordCamp platform, without removing the agency from local organisers then that could be an excellent way to surface diverse and topical content from all over the world.
- Courtney P.K. 11:57 pm on July 15, 2020
  
  Yes, agreed! I would love to see more language-specific events. I think 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. Spain is an successful example. Timezone-specific events also sound appealing.
  
  Here’s a new related idea I just thought of: I wonder if there could be the same ideas for sessions established for each language or timezone focused event, and given by different presenter for each event?
  
  I also like the idea of market-specific WordPress events too!
  - Adam W. Warner 1:10 am on July 16, 2020
    +1 for these…
    
    topic/interest-based
    
    language-based
    
    time zone based
Cami Kaos 5:58 pm on July 15, 2020
It’s taken me a lot of time to process all the thoughts and feelings that come up around reimagining this program. Having worked as a full time volunteer on WordCamps and Meetups for the last 7+ years and having been involved in my local community before that my grip on how things should be based on how they have been has been firm.

But when I take a deep breath and reflect on what we COULD do… well I’m really excited. There have been some things I’ve always wanted to work on that haven’t really fit into the model of what we “do” and don’t fit into the model of a local 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..

Examples
- WordCamp or 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. for bloggers/content creators. Perhaps even focused on the type of blogging they do: mental health, cooking, family, technology, etc.
- Women in WordPress event focused on providing women and non-binary folx a safe space to gather, connect, and learn and also a platform to amplify their voices.
- More content for organizers (was attempted with thoughts around WordCamp for organizers). Perhaps this is a good pivot for Tuesday Trainings?
- More online workshops
- More online contributor days
- WordPress news
- Contributor team centric events that aren’t contributor days – think content and workshops
I want to see what we can do. How we can reach new people, and make a better experience for those we’ve already reached. Change is scary. I’m a little terrified thinking about how we handle all this logistically but I think it’s completely worth it.

I do want to bring up two small concerns around “general” WordCamps/ events that are decentralized.
- We always see a certain number of speakers that seem to show up at every event in their country or region. It’s something I don’t encourage with in-person events. But it happens and that’s that. With online events seeing those speakers over and over again giving those same talks is just repeating the same content from the same speaker to the same attendees since folx can show up from anywhere. I would like to hear ideas on ways to keep this from becoming a problem. We need fresh new content. And we need content from new voices from a variety of lived experiences.
- Timezones. While I love the idea of not having events focused on a specific city or place, I worry logistically about getting people to the content best for their timezones. Is there a way a tool could be used to put the right timed events in front of users. Kind of like the way we use the dashboard to let folx know which events will be near them?
- Carike 6:10 pm on July 15, 2020
  
  +1 for more contributor days.
  We just need to figure out how to integrate them into our team workflows better.
- Adam W. Warner 1:26 am on July 16, 2020
  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. or 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. for bloggers/content creators. Perhaps even focused on the type of blogging they do: mental health, cooking, family, technology, etc.
  Women in WordPress event focused on providing women and non-binary folx a safe space to gather, connect, and learn and also a platform to amplify their voices.
  More content for organizers (was attempted with thoughts around WordCamp for organizers). Perhaps this is a good pivot for Tuesday Trainings?
  More online workshops
  More online contributor days
  WordPress news
  Contributor team centric events that aren’t contributor days – think content and workshops
  
  I think these are all valid ideas to be explored. The idea of getting more fine-grained with event types is especially interesting to me.
  
  We always see a certain number of speakers that seem to show up at every event in their country or region. It’s something I don’t encourage with in-person events. But it happens and that’s that. With online events seeing those speakers over and over again giving those same talks is just repeating the same content from the same speaker to the same attendees since folx can show up from anywhere. I would like to hear ideas on ways to keep this from becoming a problem. We need fresh new content. And we need content from new voices from a variety of lived experiences.
  
  Idea to keep this from becoming an issue…
  - Limit # of repeat talks at multiple events per speaker (online events only)
  Timezones. While I love the idea of not having events focused on a specific city or place, I worry logistically about getting people to the content best for their timezones. Is there a way a tool could be used to put the right timed events in front of users. Kind of like the way we use the dashboard to let folx know which events will be near them?
  
  See wpcalendar.io/online, imagine this kind of time-based listing on central.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/.
  - Adam W. Warner 1:27 am on July 16, 2020
    
    ^^^ Click the “Online” button on this page to see listing.
- Timi Wahalahti 7:32 am on July 17, 2020
  
  Huge +1 for online Contributor Days. I think the WCEU one was a great success and most of the teams and attendees felt the same based on feedback, so definitely something to do again and more often! Only thing I would have liked to do differently, was cross-team coordination and discussions. That is something that needs a good amount of thoughts on how to improve because in the online format it’s easier to work just in your own team and not to have discussions with contributors from other teams. Which often leads to great ideas.
  
  Timezones are a real concern when organising online events that aren’t locally organised. We definitely don’t want anyone to feel left out. That’s why I think the same event format should be repeated at least two times in some period of time, to cover two of three major timezones (US, EU, APAC).
jillbinder 6:04 am on July 16, 2020

I love this! What a great opportunity to innovate. There are great examples of this working well already, like https://javascriptforwp.com/conference/

Things to think about:
1. Timezones for global events are always hard to navigate around to stay inclusive of as many regions as possible
2. Will it be harder to get a diverse speaker lineup? (or actually easier?)
3. Try to have the diverse organizing teams, both in the standard way we strive for (gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, age, etc.) as well as diversity in areas of the world.
Hari Shanker R 7:48 am on July 16, 2020

I find these upcoming changes to online events quite exciting! I honestly feel that there is immense potential for a lot of innovation for our events program, which can help us find opportunity (both for the WordPress project and for members of our community) even amidst the challenges of the pandemic.

As a lot of folks here have mentioned in this thread, I think online events are a great way to onboard new contributors to our WordPress project. I’d like to suggest doing a
24 Standalone online 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/..

This could either be organized project-wide, or team-wide to accommodate multiple timezones. This could involve new contributor onboarding, training sessions, and mentoring, as well. It could even be spread out across multiple days. These events would need to be organized globally with a global team of volunteers. Organizing one such event a year would be nice, but if we could do an event per quarter, it would be great.
Sodiq Akinjobi 11:52 am on July 16, 2020

Hi!

Amazing idea you have there. I think having a 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. or WordPress for JavaScriptJavaScript JavaScript or JS is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers. WordPress makes extensive use of JS for a better user experience. While PHP is executed on the server, JS executes within a user’s browser. https://www.javascript.com/. focused event to leverage on the huge influence of JS in the ecosystem. Something like what @zacgordon does for JS for WP Conf.
Carike 12:19 pm on July 16, 2020

Copying from 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/. so it does not get lost:
https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C02RQC7RN/p1594892487487100

@carike
[code]Adding this here so it does not get lost in a thread:
I’ve been pondering product sponsorship options instead of only financial tiers.
Have WCs (or perhaps meetups) tried this in the past?[/code]

@sippis
[code]What do you mean with product sponsorships exactly?[/code]

@carike
[code]Online events are going to need different things to in-person WCs.
There are already quite a few hosting providers that offer hosting for KidsCamps.
Some companies may be much more willing to sponsor a few premium packages than they able to make a large financial contribution.
For example, some stores may be willing to provide better headsets and microphones for the speakers.[/code]

@sippis
[code]Oh, I understand now – so in-kind sponsorships. It’s a hard topic![/code]

@carike
[code]Some telecom companies may be willing to provide temporary access to better internet.
Some countries have very unreliable internet in general – so that could make a HUGE difference to the quality of the event.
When the quality of your presentation is capped at the speed of the participant with the slowest internet.[/code]

@sippis
[code]Money sponsorships sets all the sponsors to the same level and treats them equally.
With in-kind sponsorships it’s sometimes hard to say the (monetary) value of their sponsorship and place the company to right “tier” next to others.[/code]

@carike
[code]All of those packages have open-market values.
It should be their normal selling price as advertised for the product.
(Bundled rate, if bundled, since that is generally less.) [/code]

@sippis
[code]Sponsorships should also benefit the whole community, not individuals.
I can see how temporary better internet can be argued to do that, but sending better gear to speakers is most of all profit for small group of individuals.
Assuming that they own the gear after receiving it.
And if we would have equipment that is sent to speaker from speaker (like we do with camera kits for in-person WordCamps) – that would be something for central to handle instead of individual sponsor in my opinion.
Having a event with only few or only in-kind sponsorships to make things lot easier!
Then it wouldn’t probably be so challenging to try to find the right sport for mentioning the in-kind sponsors.[/code]

@carike
[code]There are lots of unique challenges in developing countries – the cost of internet access probably being the biggest one.
Since this is a huge opportunity to work on D&I, it is important to realize that YT may not be the best platform choice.
Better choices may include podcasting platforms, because audio takes less data and if it is just people sitting around in their living rooms and chatting about cool things, it isn’t actually necessary to see them.
There are also community radio stations that have provided free airtime to initiatives like these in the past. So, for example, when you are looking at teen initiatives, they could listen to the material on the radio and save their data for the actual practical stuff that they need it for.[/code]

@sippis
[code]Idea about centralised gear that would be shipped to speakers if they need better camera or microphone is actually very interesting!
Something to propose in comments on this post.
There might be logistical difficulties tho now that coronavirus has affected reliability of postal services as well.[/code]

@carike
[code]Yes, sharing gear would be more complicated during a pandemic because many ports of entries are closed and that is affecting the delivery of goods.
Courier services are mostly uninterrupted in many countries though (and even at a higher alert level, computer equipment was classed as an essential service because people need it to be able to work from home).
For the current situation, having those things sponsored locally (on-loan if need be) is more practical.
Some companies may also be willing to sponsor cheap flash drives for participants, which means over the longer term, we could send them their notes (even on CD if need be) so they can follow along with any visual material if they are not able to access YT.
Some cellphone companies have zero-rated access for educational institution websites in the past.
Again, in the longer term, it may be possible to get a WC site added to that list directly, or to partner up with an accredited university.
But they are not going to zero-rate YT.[/code]

@harishanker
[code]You basically recharged my brainstorming muscles, @Carike! 🙂
You’re right, as we iterate, we should definitely re-evaluate our sponsorship options.
Many camps already do in-kind sponsorships, but since we’re making changes to the program in itself, I think unique events (such as the workshops that you have in mind) could benefit from unique sponsorships.
I think this would work in a case-by-case basis, but it would be nice to bring all ideas on to the table to see which one would work best! :100:[/code]
[code]I agree. Our existing online 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. program is dependent on the online WordCamps that we’ve approved so far. But as the program evolves, the tools/guidelines will also evolve.
If YT proves to be a barrier for doing sessions in a developing country, we must definitely find an alternative. The challenge is to find a service that’s also accessible, and usable.
But as we’re in the experimenting state, I think that’s something we can work on as well! :smile:[/code]

@sippis
[code]Yeah – different kind of events than basic WordCamps can leverage from in-kind sponsorships in very different way than WordCamp would! For example organising standalone virtual 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/. could benefit from having a development/testing setups provided by some hosting company.[/code]

@carike
[code]For some type of contributions (reviewing themes), it may be beneficial to partner with local dev setup providers. Those can be much harder to set up and learn how to use, than learning how to review a theme is.
It basically all depends on the specific needs of the topic and the resources of the participants. Not all teams will need the same type of sponsors.[/code]
Jonathan Bossenger 2:49 pm on July 16, 2020

wrt to the comments here around sponsors, I’ve started a separate post specific to sponsorships of online events here.

I’m of the opinion that this post is a good central location to manage how we re-imagine events from the point of view of the organisers/attendees, and it might be valuable to have a separate discussion around how we re-imagine sponsorships.
BobWP 9:03 pm on July 16, 2020

Wow, I love seeing this conversation going on. And on all on board for the reimagining.

Aside from all that has been said, having gone to WordCamps for over a decade I have not been enticed to go to a single one online. But that is me. And the main reason is the lack of interaction with attendees, randomly and scheduled.

When I’m at a 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., it’s a potpourri of experiences. If there is a blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. with no session that I’m interested in, I can wander around, find someone I know or someone new to chat with. I can go and visit a sponsor. I can join a group having a conversation.

Online, other than the sessions, I would be only tempted to pull away from it and go do some other work, take care of something else, in hopes I return for a session I might want see.

As we all knew and know, it’s apples and oranges. Specific driven content and shorter times spans sound delightful to me.
- Birgit Pauli-Haack 8:00 pm on July 23, 2020
  
  I am so with you, BobWP – I miss the wandering around and pick-up one-on-one conversations and enjoy the time away from the rest of my life, be in the moment and connect with other people. I miss this kind of interaction everyone very much.
Lidia Arroyo Vargas 9:06 pm on July 16, 2020

San José WordPress Day

in case of a day: community name + WordPress + Day
Taco Verdonschot 2:25 pm on July 17, 2020

I like the idea of reimagining online events, and giving them a new name as @andreamiddleton suggested/proposed so that it’s clear what type of event we’re dealing with.

In-person events have back-to-back sessions, because we only have people at a location for a limited amount of time. People are in town for 2-3 days, and we “need” to transfer as much information as we can in this short period of time. It’s also fairly easy to skip a round of presentations and visit a sponsor booth, just have a conversation with (new) friends.

Online, we’re very much used to working/living asynchronous. Back in the day, one would have a guide and watch the movie that’s on TV now. If you were 5 minutes late, you’d miss the start of the movie. Nowadays, we’re used to having Netflix/Disney+ and we consume what we want when we want it.

When thinking about online events, I think we should cater to that need. Not just to mitigate time differences, but to accommodate the change in culture we’ve seen in the past few years. However, in order to do so, we’d have to let go of the concept that an online 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. is a series of back-to-back sessions.

The online thing that’s hard, if not impossible, to do async is the social part of a WordCamp. I really like the platform Big Orange Heart uses for the WP Meetups in London, which mimics the offline experience pretty well.

So while I don’t have a solution ready, but I think we should really focus on how to get the social aspect of the event working well.
- Andrea Middleton 12:01 am on July 18, 2020
  
  I was nodding along while reading your comment, @tacoverdo, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree that in-person events have a good reason to share large numbers of talks, and that those reasons seem to dry up when we move online.
  
  I love the idea of standalone, async content, especially tutorials and teaching, but also case studies and the like.
  
  At the same time, I’ve been thinking about how a personal connection with a group… makes information “stickier,” or more compelling over a period of time.
  
  I wonder if anyone would be interested in exploring this idea: recording a workshop, maybe even a series of workshops (on, I don’t know, building a theme, or a simple blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience., or choosing a theme, whatever)… and then organizing interactive meetings of people who’ve watched the workshop and have questions. The person leading the interactive portion wouldn’t have to be the presenter, they would just have to be able to answer questions about the content in the workshop. And then people could get that rich, interactive connection, but without requiring someone to give live presentations every week. What do you think?
  - Carike 3:12 pm on July 18, 2020
    
    I’ve had significant success with a similar format in-person.
    The participants struggled to understand how to apply the theory (the requirements were legal ones, long story).
    They were all professionals and already had a background of the requirements.
    Basically, the day was similar to a group consultation, where we settled on a list of generally accepted practical procedures – and discussed what would constitute acceptable variances.
    Basically the whole presentation is a conversation with the audience – guiding them along a journey to discover solutions for themselves.
    I can attest that it works.
  - jamestryon 8:28 pm on July 20, 2020
    
    We were talking about this ideal locally. Doing a Netflix content dumb and let people watch what they want. Turning the event into more of a hallway track or more hands-on workshops.
    
    Then that led us to the following idea about reusing content or curating content and having themed events based on “the best of” and save on the transcription cost because they are already transcribed(hopefully).
megabyterose 7:15 pm on July 17, 2020

I like the idea of spreading events out more and I think it’ll help with longevity and reducing burnout. (Though on the note of burnout, this might be requiring longer commitment terms of volunteers, which might deter some from volunteering.)
We had been discussing in our 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. group wanting to do mini contributor days that are team-specific, kinda falling in line with this list of potential events.
I’m just not sure what the frequency or lengths of the events should be. (But if we can make the events easy to organize, we can play with that later.)
Agree with Taco & Bob above, too. And like the 24hr 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/. idea as well, as it would feel less rushed (contributor days always feel rushed to me).
Also agree with Hari and others who suggested a rename.
tangpeter 2:42 am on July 18, 2020

l
jamestryon 9:30 pm on July 20, 2020

Locally we have been talking about the idea of day camps. Something you did a couple of hours a day for a week as a kid.

This would work great for extended or tracked workshops. Think 2 90mins workshops a day for 3 days.

Smaller hands-on zoom style interactive workshops.

I would not run too many things at one time. In fact Not sure I would run anything against anything but hallway and sponsor tracks.
Samuel Aadekunle 6:12 pm on July 21, 2020

I was thinking around having Social Events that’s targeted towards less work to help devs and digital creatives in general relax outside work.

*WordParty or *WordPress Party can be an informal style of event for creatives who are looking out for more interesting way to relax, interact socially and enjoy each others company with the ambience of good music and informal activities like Virtual karaoke, games, quizzes and sponsor powered prizes and other fun activities.

I think we can maintain this even after the Lock down.
Adam W. Warner 8:43 pm on July 21, 2020
Riffing off of the ideas above…

“WordPress Day Q&A – XXX Edition”

Monday:
- Pre-recorded speaker presentations published on WC site.
- The ability for ticket registrants to submit questions/comments per session.
Monday-Thursday:
- Orgs and sponsors promote via social channels, etc.
Friday:
- Live Q&A single day event (per session or all together) with presenters.
annezazu 7:08 pm on July 23, 2020
Throwing yet another idea into the mix… In talking with others (plus comments on
this thread) and in my own experience attending these recently moved online events, there seems to be a missing element from in person gatherings that the virtual environment is struggling to recreate. Specifically, it’s really hard to recreate the natural smaller scale interactions that happen in person. For example, we’ve all likely had that moment where you’re moving in between sessions during a break, run into a speaker or someone you know, and can pause to share a design, think together about a complex technical problem, talk through the latest proposal, or simply catch up. These brainstorming, investigative, and collaborative hangouts help create a sense of belonging that online events often don’t have the capacity to facilitate. I like to call these moments “hallway hangouts”!

Thinking a few months ahead and to help fill this gap while online events adapt, I’d love to experiment with intentionally creating “Hallway Hangouts” virtually. Right now, I’ve grouped the different types of sessions into the following categories and would love to hear if there are any obvious ones I’m missing:
- Work Sharing/Jam Sessions
- Topic Discussions
- Demos
- Q&A’s
I took some time to develop the idea and write out some best practices based on efforts like this that I’ve already seen happen in the community from people like @michael-arestad @itsjonq @youknowriad. Would love feedback and to hear what others think!

For now, I’ve gathered a few willing participants of core contributorsCore Contributors Core contributors are those who have worked on a release of WordPress, by creating the functions or finding and patching bugs. These contributions are done through Trac. https://core.trac.wordpress.org. to give this format a try. If you’re interested in running these too though, comment and let me know (or message me 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/. aka @annezazu)! I’d like to support your efforts over the coming months and see how we can get creative as a community. I’ll loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop. back as I can with any insights to see what can be learned from this idea since the online format is likely here to stay for a while longer.
Andrea Middleton 10:11 pm on July 23, 2020

Thanks to everyone who participated in this discussion! It’s inspiring to see so many people willing to embrace the opportunity that this global crisis brings, and diving in to find better ways for the Community Team to succeed at our mission.

Summary: Some of the ideas shared included: WordPress video watch/discussion parties, panels, workshops, trainings, language-specific events, topic or vertical based events, television program or news formats, events for underrepresented groups, online contributor days or contributor team events, social events, and Q&As.

There was general consensus on the question of length, with a suggested limit of 2-3 hours per day, as well as support for not using the term “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.” to describe our online events any longer. We think these are both smart moves, though of course we’ll need to figure out what to do about naming the events currently being organized. But that’s probably another post.

Check out the follow-up post for more information on next steps!
Yogesh Londhe 5:12 am on July 29, 2020
In Bangalore / Bengaluru, India we usually used to have a full day WordPress 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. twice a year, we used to call it “A Day with WP”. The event would have multiple speakers, multiple themes, AMA sessions, we used to have sponsors for venue, meals, are some times small swags as well. We miss those “Day with WP” events.

We were planning to have a 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. in 2020, which is out of question now and even 2021 looks doubtful as of now. The community has put in lot of time, thought, energy, and effort to plan WCBLR2020 and we want to do something with that invested energy.

We are planning to have a multi-day WordPress gathering/conference with a theme for each day. (e.g. Marketing Thursday, Developer Friday, …)

We plan to have:
- At least two workshops (on any themes marketing/seo/technical/…)
- A ‘Show & Tell’ session to display what people have built with WordPress
- At least one session for no-code WordPress people
- At least one session on ‘mental health’
We hope to have gender balance in the event (speakers, attendees, and organizers) We are struggling with gender balance in organizing team at present.

We are still in planning stage. We will try to blog everything we do.
WIsh us luck!
Dhanendran 6:11 am on July 30, 2020
Along with these lines we need to think about below points as well.
1. How are we going to announce/share these events details like date announcement, speak details, agenda/schedule?
  Can we use different website domain like Central.WordCamp.org with the new name for this events?
2. How are we going to credit the speakers and organisers?
  Can we give the same speaker badge and organiser badge?
3. Can we get suggestions for the name?
  - WordCon (WordPress Conference)
  - WordFerence (WordPress Conference)
  - WordRing (WordPress Gathering)
- Manny (emanweb) 11:21 pm on July 31, 2020
  
  WordCon is the best option since we need to think globallly and that seems a known term. Just need to see how hard would be to use such name (meaning no trademarks issues).

WordPress.org

Getting Involved

Communication

Reimagining Online Events

Let’s innovate and iterate!

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WordPress.org

Getting Involved

Communication

Let’s innovate and iterate!

Share your ideas

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