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Weekly Updates

Hello to all our DeputiesDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook., 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 Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. 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!

Announcing a WordPress Community Translation Sprint on September 20 – 24!

One of our Community Team goals for 2021 was to translate our Community handbook into different languages. We officially started work on translating our handbooks to different languages as part of past documentation sprints. I would like to extend our efforts by using the Translation Day Celebrations as an opportunity to translate our handbooks to as many languages as possible. 

Towards this, let’s plan another Documentation sprint (focusing on translating Community team content) from September 20 – 24, 2021, in conjunction with the WordPress Translation Day celebrations organized by the Polyglots team! (Thanks for the idea, @evarlese!)

What is the Community Translation sprint?

From September 20 through 24, community contributors and deputiesDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. work together to translate Community team handbooks and any related documentation for the Community Team to their local language. This differs slightly from the traditional docs sprints we have organized before in that our focus will be on translation. If you are proficient in a non-English language, feel free to join us and help translate the Make/WordPress Community handbook to your local language!

Please note: This translation sprint is restricted to the community team handbook pages – we will not be working on the official 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/ documentation as part of this sprint. However, if you wish to translate wordpress.org documentation and need help, please reach out to your local translation team, or simply 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.” in #polyglots

Read on to find out more!

Continue reading

#documentation-sprint, #sprint, #wptranslationday

Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on August 25, 2021

Attending: @jillbinder @onealtr @katiejrichards @wpfangirl

Start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1629910947391900

We talked about the Allyship workshop last week: the initial stats (very good), things that went well, things that could be improved.

We asked everyone to fill out the follow-up questionnaire.

We asked for volunteers for Friday’s How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events AMER/EMEA workshop (letting attendees in from the wait room, muting people, being model participants, paying attention to the watch party videos which helps attendees pay attention too, and other things that come up as needs during these workshops).

We talked about if there are better solutions for viewing watch parties online, rather than sharing through Zoom, that would still meet all of the needs (full screen, shows the closed captions, watch together because we stop and re-start videos to do exercises together).

Please help us get the word out about Friday’s workshop by sharing this tweet from the Marketing team: https://twitter.com/wordcamp/status/1430480472715538434

If you have thoughts on any of the above, please either reply to this post or share in the #community-team 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 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.” @jillbinder). Thanks!

End: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1629914878448500

#wpdiversity

Tuesday Training: How to re-activate an inactive Meetup group

Are you a WordPress enthusiast and would like to attend a MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. event in your city?
If the answer is yes, great!  The next step is to check the official chapter program of WordPress Meetups to see if there is already an existing group in your town/city.

If there is not an existing WordPress Meetup group, you can follow these steps and apply to start organizing a new WordPress Meetup group in your city.

But… What if there is an existing Meetup group in your city, but it hasn’t been active for months?

Once every 6-12 months, the WordPress Global Community TeamGlobal Community Team A group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. deputiesDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. try to contact the organizers of inactive groups (no events in the past 6 months) to see if they are still planning to organize events in the future. Deputies also help find a new organizer in the case no organizer has such a plan.

If you’re checking a group, and you find something like this:

Meetup group with no upcoming events

Past events of a Meetup group

If the group has not had any event in recent months, and you’d love to share your interest in the group and/or you’re willing to help with organizing more events, these would be the next steps:

  1. Contact the current organizers

The first step would be to contact the current organizers and to share with them your interest in seeing more events. All organizers of Meetup groups are volunteers and you’ll help their motivation if they discover that there are people interested in the meetup! Many times, organizers lose their incentive when they don’t see interest from the members of the group.


So, sending them a message, letting them know that you’re interested in the group, that you’d love to see more events, and even better, that you’re willing to help them with the organization (topic, speaker, etc.), is enough, in most cases, to reactivate the group.

Where to find the list of organizers of a WordPress Meetup group
  1. Apply to become an organizer of the existing inactive Meetup group: 

Perhaps you have contacted the current organizers of the group already and you didn’t hear back from them, or they replied to you letting you know that they’re no longer interested in being organizers of the group. 

In that case, a possible next step is to apply to become an organizer of that existing group (if you’re interested in organizing meetup events).

  1. Read carefully the WordPress Meetup Program Basics to see if you are aligned with the values and philosophy of the project (Pay special attention to the sections “What does it take to be an organizer?” and “The Five Good Faith Rules”).
  2. If after reading, you’re enthusiastic about reactivating the existing Meetup group and you’d love to help organize Meetup events, read the guidelines and submit your application following the link at the end of that page. A community deputyDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. will then vet your application and be in touch.
Meetup Organizer Handbook: Form to apply to become an organizer
  1. Start organizing events!

Remember that due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most WordPress events are online. Please refer to our online events handbook.

For communities where COVID-19 has been more effectively contained or have access to COVID-19 vaccination and/or testing, returning to hosting an in-person meetup event is possible, with caution, using the resources provided.

If you plan to move forward with an in-person meetup, you must use the provided checklist.       

  1. Building and growing your Meetup group:
    Now that you’re an organizer of the group and you’ve re-activated it, don’t forget that it’s important to find new organizers, the more, the merrier. That way, the activity of the group will not depend only on your shoulders or on a very small group of people.

    Check our resources to create and build your team of organizers and to create a diverse and inclusive group of enthusiastic WordPress lovers!


And now it’s your turn! Give me your opinion in the comments and/or answer the following questions:

  1. Do you have any questions about this process?
  2. Am I missing any steps or edge cases that you’d like to mention or ask about?


Don’t hesitate to become a new organizer just because there is an existing group. Chances are, other community members are also waiting for the group to become active again 🙂

Thanks for reading and hope this has been helpful! 🙂 

#tuesdaytrainings

Weekly Updates

Hello to all our DeputiesDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook., 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 Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. 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!

Community Team Meeting Agenda for 2021-08-19

The Community Team bi-weekly meeting is happening today. 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!

Asia-Pacific / EMEA friendly meeting: 2021-08-19 12:00
Americas friendly meeting:
2021-08-19 21:00

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.

DeputyDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. / MentorMentor Someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. / 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?

Tuesday Trainings:

Announcements, Invites, and Workshops

Proposals:

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!

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

Tuesday Trainings: Why no one gets paid for organizing WordPress events?

Did you know that the almost 800 WordPress MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. groups and (in the pre-pandemic world) a few hundred WordCamps are all organised on a fully voluntary basis?

That means organisers are committing to use their own time to make the events happen. That’s a huge amount of hours contributed to our WordPress Community and project every year!

Quick math: organizing one meetup takes at least 30 minutes of preparation and the meetup itself usually lasts at least one hour. In 2019 there were over 6,000 meetup events across the world. The overly conservative estimation is that meetup organisers (who are community members just like you!) contributed at least 9,000 hours in total for making the meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. happen. To put it into context, 9,000 hours equals over a year.

Why doesn’t WordPress Community pay for organizing the events?

Clearly, that is a lot of hours of unpaid work. So why do community members choose to contribute to the project? Why doesn’t WordPress Community Support PBCWordPress Community Support WordPress Community Support PBC is a subsidiary of WordPress Foundation. It is created specifically to be the financial and legal support for WordCamps, WordPress Meetup groups, and any additional “official” events organized within the WordPress Community Events program. pay any compensation for that time?

One reason is that, while there aren’t financial benefits, there are other benefits to contributing that time. @andreamiddleton wrote an excellent post in 2019 on what organisers get for all their hard work. She outlined four main “gets” as: making an impact, opportunities for personal growth, learning new things, and getting support and protection from the Community team. In the comments, @davelo shared that getting friends and making connections is a very important “get” for organisers as well.

I think that post covers very well why community contributors are choosing to spend their valuable free time towards the WordPress events. Some might still ask, shouldn’t we nonetheless compensate for the time used in some way? There are few main reasons why we don’t do that.

One of the neat things about the WordPress Community team is that anyone can organize a WordPress event. Even if you don’t have any event organizing experience, that’s ok! This is a great place to get that, and community building experience. One of the main requirements of WordPress event organizers, however, is enthusiasm for bringing people together around WordPress. The Community team will help cover expenses related to event organizing, like venue costs or Zoom, but the main motivation of event organizers is community-driven, not financially driven.  

Another amazing thing about WordPress is how many people are able to build their livelihood through WordPress. Because of this, the WordPress community wants to make events as accessible to as many people as possible – this community literally changes lives! This is why WordPress meetups are free to attend and 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. ticket prices are kept intentionally low. Relying on volunteer work to help create great communities and keeping expenses as low as possible, enables the WordPress open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. project to have an even greater reach.

Surely someone is getting paid?!

I know, at this point you are probably thinking “I’m quite sure someone is getting paid”. And that’s partially true, but not as simple as someone might think at first. Let me explain.

The community team is very lucky to have sponsored contributors. Some of them are sponsored full time, while most are sponsored to contribute a few hours weekly or monthly. They receive their paycheck from their employers, not from WordPress Community Support PBC (sometimes referred to as “WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each.”) or the WordPress FoundationWordPress Foundation The WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software. Find more on wordpressfoundation.org.. Companies are donating their talents time as part of the Five for the Future initiative.

The majority of the work of sponsored contributors is supporting our local communities and volunteer organisers to make the best out of their community, doing administrative work to keep things running and money flowing as well as facilitating conversations between volunteer contributors. Sometimes sponsored contributors do help to organise events, from local meetups to flagship WordCamps. To put it in a nutshell, sponsored contributors are supporting the communities when needed and crunching mundane tasks to allow local organisers to focus on benefitting their community the most.

And as always if you have any questions or topics you’d like to see addressed in this space let us know in the comments or by emailing support@wordcamp

Thanks to @angelasjin who helped with this post.

#tuesdaytrainings

Weekly Updates

Hello to all our DeputiesDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook., 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 Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. 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!

Upcoming workshop: How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events

This is an event for people from marginalized or underrepresented groups in WordPress in AMER & EMEA and for participants in our Allyship program who have taken the “Allyship for WordPress event organizers” workshop on August 19th, 2021.

The Diverse Speaker Training Group (#WPDiversity) invites you to join us for a workshop in a fun format: an Interactive, Transformational Watch Party! We will watch a video on Learn WordPress.

Facilitators: @onealtr and @volkswagenchick

Does the thought of speaking at one of our WordPress meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. or WordCamps intrigue you? This is a workshop for people from marginalized and underrepresented groups who are thinking about speaking at a meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. or 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.. The focus of this hands-on session is to look at what has stopped you from speaking in the past and explore how to move past your fears, generate WordPress-related topics to give a talk on, boost your speaking confidence, and allow you to practice speaking in a safe space. At the end of the workshop, you will have a few ideas for talks that the community wants to hear!

***You do NOT have to have any experience in public speaking. This workshop is for all levels of experience.***

WordPress Meetup and WordCamp organizers: Want to foster more diverse speaker lineups for your events? Please invite your communities!

Friday, 27 August 2021
5.00PM – 6.30PM UTC / 1.00PM – 2.30PM ET / 10.00AM – 11.30AM PDT
Free

Register now

#wpdiversityworkshops

Meetup Organizer Newsletter: August 2021

Hello friends,

Welcome to the August 2021 edition of the MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. Organizer newsletter! We have some exciting updates for you in this edition of our newsletter – read on to find out more! 

Newsletter contents:

  • Returning to safe in-person WordCamps
  • 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/ needs your feedback
  • Celebrate WordPress 5.8 with your Meetup Group
  • Online event updates
  • Tuesday Trainings
  • News from the WordPress world

🔙⛺️ Returning to safe in-person WordCamps

The Community Team has published a proposal to discuss how the WordPress community can return to in-person WordCamps. The proposal shares ideas on organizing small in-person events in areas that meet the in-person meetup safety checklist or with vaccination or testing freely available, following local safety guidelines with additional recommendations for organizing safe events. Please share your thoughts in the comments on that post

 👩‍🏫👩‍🎓Learn.WordPress.Org needs your feedback

The Training Team wishes to find what learners and potential learners would like to see in the learn.wordpress.org platform. To contribute, please fill out an anonymous survey (by August 13) OR join a short video call to share feedback.

❤️ Celebrate WordPress 5.8 with your Meetup Group

The latest and greatest WordPress release – WordPress 5.8, came out on July 20, 2021! This major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality. offers features like 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.-based widgets, a host of new blocks and patterns, a template editor, a duotone feature to stylize images, theme.jsonJSON JSON, or JavaScript Object Notation, is a minimal, readable format for structuring data. It is used primarily to transmit data between a server and web application, as an alternative to XML., and support for webP images, to name a few. Read more in the release post and the field guide

Celebrate the launch of this exciting release by organizing a local meetup for your meetup group or by generating buzz in social media. Check out this blog post on talking points for WordPress 5.8, along with the release field guide. You can also help by sharing release updates on social media using our social media pack. A slides template to adapt is also available on GitHub

Looking for inspiration? Several meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. are planning or have organized meetup events on WordPress 5.8. Check them out:

 🌍🎪 Online event updates

Reminder: You can organize in-person meetups for your group if your region meets guidelines in our safety checklist OR if your location has vaccinations or testing freely available – all you need to do is to fill out the safety checklist. You will find more details in our handbook. If it is not safe in your region or if you simply do not wish to organize in-person events, you can continue organizing online meetups for your group. You can make use of community Zoom accounts for your online meetups! Stay updated on online WordPress meetups worldwide by following the Marketing Team’s WordPress Meetup roundup every Monday.

Don’t miss 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. US on October 1!
One of the most exciting WordPress events – WordCamp US, is back as a single-day online event on October 1, 2021. Organizers of the event have several exciting plans in the pipeline, including networking opportunities, speaker sessions, workshops, and more. Call for speaker nominations is already open – and calls for volunteers and sponsors will be out soon. Follow the Camp website to stay updated on the latest event news.

Gear up for WordPress Translation Day Celebrations in September 2021!
The Polyglots TeamPolyglots Team Polyglots Team is a group of multilingual translators who work on translating plugins, themes, documentation, and front-facing marketing copy. https://make.wordpress.org/polyglots/teams/. is planning a month-long translation day celebration in September 2021, with two weeks of “coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. events” from September 17 to 30. The WordPress Translation Day team will announce more details on the event shortly, and you can follow all the latest updates on the Polyglots blog too. Want to participate? Join the celebrations by organizing a local Translation event for your meetup in September! 

Upcoming WordPress events 

The following WordCamps are already on the calendar. Don’t miss these events! 

Check out these WP Diversity speaker workshops for AMER/EMEA in August!
The Diverse Speaker Training group of the Community Team announced three new programs for Meetup and WordCamp organizers –  including a new Diverse Speaker Support program and an Allyship program. The team has some exciting workshops in the pipeline for August! Please share about these

🛠 Tuesday Trainings

Through Tuesday Trainings (#TuesdayTrainings), the Community Team publishes a different topic on the WordPress Community Blog to help organizers and interested community members learn various skills. Don’t forget to check out our other Tuesday Training posts this month:

🗞 News from the WordPress world


If you have any questions, Community Team deputiesDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. are available to help. Please send an email to support@wordcamp.org or join 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/. channel. Thanks for everything you do to grow the WordPress community. Let’s keep sharing knowledge and inspiring each other with our contributions! 

We will see you online soon!

The following people contributed to August’s Meetup newsletter: @evarlese @eidolonnight @meher and @webcommsat

#meetup-organizer-newsletter

#newsletter