Hugh Lashbrooke 10:24 am on December 1, 2020  

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jillbinder 4:28 am on January 28, 2021
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Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on January 27, 2021

Summary: I presented our new plan for the next few months. We decided that in February we are going to hold an experimental “Interactive, Transformational Watch Party.” We are also putting up our “Creating a Diverse and Welcoming Space” workshop from WCUS up on Learn WordPress, and group member @oneal is going to help with creating items needed for it.

Continue reading →

#wpdiversity

Cami Kaos 11:04 pm on January 27, 2021
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X-post: Learn WordPress Working Group – Call for Handbook Volunteers

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/training: Learn WordPress Working Group – Call for Handbook Volunteers

Cami Kaos 9:19 pm on January 27, 2021
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Learn WordPress: Wanna build a workshop?

Thursday, January 28 at 2pm PST I’ll be hosting a Q&A session on building and submitting Learn WordPress workshops in the #community-events channel.

Where to submit your application

https://learn.wordpress.org/workshop-presenter-application/

What information needs to be included in your application

  • Short description
  • Long Description
  • Learning objectives
  • Comprehension Questions

Steps to follow once your application as been approved.

  • write workshop script/lesson plan
  • update descriptions, objectives, and comprehension questions
  • record video
  • submit video to WP.tv
  • have post and video reviewed before publishing

Then I’ll answer any remaining questions you may have.

Please come prepared with questions and curiosity!

+make.wordpress.org/training/

#learn-wordpress

Angela Jin 10:25 am on January 26, 2021
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Proposal Update: Decision making checklist for safe, in-person meetups

Following the proposal earlier this month around a decision making checklist for safe, in-person meetups, there was additional conversation and questions about how an organizer would use the checklist. To help everyone better understand the process as currently envisioned, I’ve done my best to describe it below, incorporating some additional, excellent ideas that were shared. Before moving forward on this, I invite everyone to read through this process, and to share your feedback. 

A quick note: until this process is implemented, all WordCamps and Meetups are expected to be held online.The Community team knows that it is still very unsafe to meet in person in many areas. The goal of this process is to help meetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers assess the risk of hosting an in-person event, in the hopes that some areas that have more effectively contained COVID (like New Zealand and Taiwan) can be supported in hosting in-person meetups.

The process as currently envisioned would look like this for a meetup organizer: 

  1. Review the resources. Meetup organizers would reference some new (to be created) handbook pages in the Meetup Organizer Handbook. These new pages will include: 
    • The checklist to determine whether organizers can proceed, with caution, in organizing an in-person event.
    • Links to frequently referenced health authority data, to help organizers determine positivity rates, basic reproduction number, etc. 
    • Templates to help meetup organizers, such as language for requesting info for contract tracing, expected behavior and safety protocols, etc. 
    • Reporting mechanism that allows organizers and community members to report to Community deputies if they need support or see any safety concerns or broken protocols. 
  2. Use the checklist. The Meetup organizer uses the checklist (put together based off of feedback from the previous proposal), which is a CrowdSignal form embedded in the handbook page. The form will only recommend moving forward with an in-person meetup if organizers are able to answer yes to all questions. Organizers can use the handbook page with links to health authority data, or use local resources, to help fill in the checklist.
    • The checklist recommends “no”. If the checklist says “no”, organizers are expected to follow this recommendation. At this point, they can close out the survey without submitting. If they would like to provide the Community team with feedback on the form, or share what health authority references they used, they do have that option.
    • The checklist recommends “yes, proceed with caution”. If the organizer gets the recommendation that they can proceed with an in-person meetup, they will be required to submit the form, which also asks for: 
      • Agreement to the recommendations and guidelines provided.
      • Organizer name, Meetup URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org, health authority references

Although organizers do not need to wait for further approval from the Community team, submitting the form is mandatory for organizers who want to organize in-person meetups. 

  1. Organize the in-person meetup. If the organizers proceed with an in person event, they can use templates in the meetup description to explain safety protocols or measures to their meetup participants. Some examples might include expected behaviors (wearing a mask, agreeing to share contact information for contact tracing, etc), or that the meetup may move online or be cancelled if local situations change. 
  2. Reporting back to Community Deputies. If something unexpected happens, the Community team would like to know immediately. Organizers and meetup attendees can reach us in a number of ways: by pinging deputies in the #community-events channel, or emailing support@wordcamp.org. Community members can report concerns or ask questions, specifically around in-person meetups, using a new, dedicated handbook page. 

Community Team deputies will be responsible for directing meetup organizers to these resources, answering questions as they come up, and broadly, to help all meetups follow these guidelines. 

Feedback requested

Please share your thoughts on this proposal update by Friday, February 5, 2021. Specifically, it would be helpful to hear:

  • Are the steps or checks missing in this process? 
  • Do you have any questions about the process?
  • What happens if organizers or attendees don’t follow these guidelines?

Thank you all for your patience and thoughtful feedback in creating this process. This is a hard, hard topic with no precedent we can refer to, so I am grateful that this considerate community is tackling this together. 

Kudos to @sippis, @andreamiddleton, @evarlese, @jenniferswisher for helping to write this post!

#meetups

Cami Kaos 2:23 am on January 26, 2021
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Tuesday Trainings: How do I get speakers for my meetup?

As we start to change up the format of Tuesday Trainings we’re going to try some new things. Today and for the three following weeks I’ll share a question that I, and other Community Team Deputies, are often asked. I’ve not yet selected our next few so if you have a question that you think could beneficial in this format let me know in the comments. Now onto this week’s topic

How do I get speakers for my 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.?

How many of you have been asked this question? How many of you have asked this question? I think all community organizers have had occasion to ask how to get speakers for their events. But let’s not just answer that exact question. Let’s level up the ask. Not how do I get speakers for my meetup, but how do I ensure I’m providing a diverse roster of speakers for my meetup?

My best advice on providing a diverse lineup of speakers:

I’m going to share a few thoughts that I have on the topic, but more importantly if this new format is going to benefit all of us in the WordPress community I need  you all to share a few thoughts as well. I’m going to kick us off with some tried and true methods of bringing in speakers for your events.

Just ask

I know, this is really simple, it might even sound too easy. But times are different right now and so this back to basics approach to booking a speaker for your event can work better than ever. With events currently still being limited to online only you can ask an expert from pretty much anywhere in the world to join you. Our community is deeply caring and open and so many community members are committed to the growth of others in our program. So if there’s a member of the WordPress community you admire and have enjoyed a talk they’ve given at an event in the past then you should send them a pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.”. Be specific about what you are looking for and when you hold your event and find out if they’re willing to speak to your group.

Collaborate with other nearby groups

This is another way we can really be taking advantage of the online meetup format this pandemic has led us to. In the past our meetups and events were constrained by the number of people we could fit in a space or by the ability to physically get to the venue. We’ve seen a number of meetup organizer collaborate with one another to host a meetup for their combined areas. If three meetups each meet monthly and you combine your efforts and share  your speaker or subject that means each organizing team is only coming up with the content or speaker for one meetup a quarter. That’s a quarter of the content work you’d be doing in a regular year.

Look within.

Your meetup group is made up of all sorts of tremendously talented and experienced individuals. So they’re not speakers. That doesn’t mean they can’t be at some point. Frequently people don’t think of themselves as presenters because no one has given them the opportunity or training to be a presenter. Luckily we have just the thing for you, a Diverse Speaker Training Series. You can ask if anyone would be interested in taking it on their own, or you could organize a watch party event for your meetup using the video series as content, then host a discussion group. Making it open to your entire meetup gives everyone a chance to consider if they’d be interested in sharing what they know.

Learn.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/

What I just said above about the Diverse Speaker Training series can work with literally any video on Learn WordPress that suits the needs of your group. Play the video for attendees for the first portion of the meetup and then use the comprehension questions provided as a jumping off point for a great discussion.

Your best advice on providing a diverse lineup of speakers?

Those are just a few of the things I typically recommend, but there are so many more ways to recruit speakers to fill out a great and diverse roster throughout the year. Share with us what you have tried that has worked to bring in speakers. Or maybe what you tried that failed, because we can learn from that too. Even if you think it’s simple. Even if you think it’s common sense, I’d love for you to share your approach to speaker recruitment and content creation for your meetup. Remember common sense is based on a lifetime of lived experience, which means your common sense is only common to you. 

#tuesdaytrainings
WordCamp.org 4:00 am on January 25, 2021
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Weekly Updates

Hello to all our Deputies, 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, 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. wranglers, and WordPress Community builders! You were probably hard at work this weekend. Tell us what you got accomplished in our #weekly-update!

Have you run into a roadblock with the stuff you’re working on? Head over to #community-events or #community-team in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/. and ask for help!

Timi Wahalahti 9:05 pm on January 20, 2021
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Community Team Meeting agenda for 2021-01-21

The Community Team bi-weekly meeting is happening this week. The meeting is meant for all contributors on the team and everyone who is interested in taking part in some of the things our team does. Feel free to join us, even if you are not currently active in the team!

Meeting times are detailed below:

Asia-Pacific / EMEA friendly: 2021-01-21 11:00 UTC
Americas friendly:2021-01-21 20:00 UTC

Below is a preliminary agenda for the meeting. If you wish to add things you’d like bring to into discussion, comment below or reach out to team reps @sippis or @kcristiano. It does not need to be a blog post yet, the topic can be discussed during the meeting nevertheless. We use the same agenda for both meetings.

Preliminary agenda

Deputy / Mentor / Contributor check-ins

What have you been doing and how is it going? What you got accomplished after the last meeting? Are there any blockers? Can other team members help you in some way?

Highlights

Contributor Working Group
The group is working towards creating a comprehensive, centralized location for all Contributor information. If you’d like to get involved, reach out to @amethystanswers. Their last meeting was on 2021-01-06, here’s a recap of it.

Diverse Speaker Training Working Group
The group supports meetups and WordPress events to run a workshop that will help increase the number of speaker applications from people from marginalized and underrepresented groups. If you’d like to get involved, reach out to @jillbinder. Their last meeting was on 2021-01-13, here’s a recap of it.

2020 Incident Reports – Details and Results
In 2020, Community Team received a total of 2 incident reports. @camikaos posted a summary of those reports and actions taken.

New and ongoing discussions

Proposal: Slack Channel for Online Events
@annezazu posted a proposal about creating new 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/. channel where information about upcoming online events could be shared cross-team and across team boundaries. Please leave your feedback!

Proposal: Translating Learn WordPress
@evarlese started the discussion around translating the new Learn WordPress platform. There are many steps to do and decide, before getting, so chime into the discussion before Sunday, January 24, 2021.

Request for Feedback: Organizing do_action and Open Source Workshops in 2021
The community held online 5 do_action hackathons and a handful of open-source workshops in 2020. @harishanker is looking for ideas and feedback on how we could support these event format organizers. Share your thoughts on the topic before Monday, January 25, 2021.

Request for Feedback: Community Team Meeting times for 2021
It has been a long time since our Community Team Meetings times have been revised. We are now in the process of selecting new meeting times which accommodates our current active team members. Go and vote before 2021-02-05.

Tuesday Trainings: A Call to Action!
@camikaos started great Tuesday Training series last year, which has brought many important topics and helpful resources for the team. Cami is now requesting new submissions, topic ideas, suggestions for possible authors and help to curate the series. Volunteer to write a Tuesday Training post or lend a hand on curation!

Open floor

Opportunity to bring things into discussions that weren’t on the meeting agenda and if anyone has something they would like to share with the team. If you have a topic in mind before the meeting, please add it into the comments of this post.

Hope to see you on Thursday, either on Asia-Pacific / EMEA or Americas friendly version of the meeting!

Preliminary agenda was put together in collaboration of @sippis and @kcristiano.

#meeting, #team-chat, #team-meeting

Timi Wahalahti 7:28 pm on January 20, 2021
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Request for Feedback: Community Team Meeting times for 2021

It has been a long time since our Community Team Meetings times have been revised, and we’ve checked the suitability of those from our current team members. As the new year starts, it’s a good time to do the check and see if there’s a need to change the meeting times.

Community Team Meetings are held on the first and third Thursdays of every month. Each meeting happens twice in the same day to cater to different time zones. We plan to keep all this unchanged.

Currently, our meeting times are 11:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC. This is the part we are interested in and looking to change in case some other times prove to be more appropriate for most of the Community Team members.

To vote on the times, please fill this Doodle. Times are shown in your local timezone by default. Make sure to check that Doodle guessed your timezone right. If you want to change the timezone for times shown, use the timezone selector right above the table view.

Please note that the poll is used to vote on times for the rest of the year, regardless it having only one date.

You can vote for multiple times and for both, EMEA / Asia-Pacific and US friendly, meeting times. Team reps will choose the two times that have gotten most votes but do use consideration in order to ensure covering all timezones.

Next two team meetings, on 2021-01-21 and 2021-02-04, will still be held 11:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC. If meeting times are subject to change as a result of this vote, first meeting which will take place at the new time is 2020-02-18.

Please vote before 2021-02-05.

This post was written in collaboration of @sippis and @kcristiano.

#meeting, #meeting-time, #meetings, #team-meeting

Christina Workman 9:14 pm on January 19, 2021  

Contributor Working Group Agenda | January 20 2021

Here is the Agenda for our meeting on Wednesday January 20, 2021 at 20:00 UTC in the #community-team channel 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/.. As always, you can add comments to the meeting afterwards, and/or add comments to the recap post.

Agenda

  1. Team check-in
  2. Group updates: how are things going, blockers, what help do you need?
  3. Next steps

#WPContributors

Erica Varlese 8:53 pm on January 19, 2021
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X-post: Learn Working Group agenda – January 21, 2021 (15:00 UTC)

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/training: Learn Working Group agenda – January 21, 2021 (15:00 UTC)