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Hugh Lashbrooke 10:24 am on December 1, 2020

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Courtney P.K. 8:00 am on September 7, 2021

Tuesday Trainings: How can I recruit organizers for my Meetup or WordCamp?

If there’s a question you’d like to see answered, or a topic you’d like to see discussed, please share it in the comments or email support@wordcamp.org with the subject line “Tuesday Trainings”. Now onto this week’s topic!

Organizing a WordPress Meetup group or WordCamp can be a lot of work! If you want to grow and develop your local WordPress community, you will need others around you to help. But how do you find the right people to join your organizing team?

Meetup Organizers

As stated in the Five Good Faith Rules, WordPress chapter meetup groups allow events to be organized by any reliable and trusted member of their community. Reliable and trusted community members:

  • Actively participate in meetup events
  • Help without being asked
  • Are team players — they are constantly around and dependable
  • May be the first to arrive and the last to leave an event
  • May be interested in organizing meetup events around their area of interest and/or expertise in WordPress

Potential quality team members may not always be the loudest, most outgoing person. Keep an eye out for the quiet achievers who are loyal and regular attendees of your meetup events — they could be quietly encouraged to take on an organizing role!

It is expected that all Meetup co-organizers agree with the principles in the same Five Good Faith Rules that you also agreed to when you became an organizer.

WordCamp Organizers

Your WordCamp organizing team should consist of people from your immediate area who want to promote WordPress and help grow the local community. Members of a WordCamp organizing team can come from:

  • Your meetup group’s co-organizers
  • Active members of your local meetup group
  • Businesses that are built on working with WordPress
  • Local bloggers using WordPress

But of course, it is not limited to the above! The most important things to remember while forming your organizing team: Recruit from your local community, and distribute the organizing responsibilities. Too few people handling too many things leads to things getting missed, and/or people getting burned out!

It is expected that all WordCamp organizing team members and volunteers agree with the principles in the Agreement among WordCamp Organizers, Speakers, Sponsors, and Volunteers.

Representing WordPress

Remember that organizers are representing WordPress in an official capacity. When representing WordPress, one is expected to uphold the principles of the WordPress open source project, including the GPL. This helps protect the user/attendee, who might not realize that by using a non-GPL plugin or theme, they are giving away the rights that WordPress provides them.

Want to learn more?

Here is some recommended reading:

Questions?

Contact the Community Team, or come join the conversation in the #community-events channel in the Making WP Slack!

Are you a Meetup or WordCamp organizer and have more tips for recruiting an organizing team? Please share your ideas in the comments!

#community-team, #tuesdaytrainings

WordCamp.org 4:00 am on September 6, 2021

Weekly Updates

Hello to all our Deputies, WordCamp organizers, Meetup 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 Slack and ask for help!

Hari Shanker R 1:05 pm on September 6, 2021
  • Did an orientation for the Dakar, Senegal WordPress meetup group.
  • Set up their Meetup group in Meetup.com!
  • Organized a Learn WordPress discussion group on Intro to open source with @yoga1103.
  • Some light Deputy orientation and guidance for our newest Deputy – @yoga1103
  • Contributed to, and helped publish August’s Month in WordPress
  • Hosted the APAC/EMEA community team chat
  • Schedule local translation events for the ml_IN locale.
  • Helped organize WP Translation Day events.
  • Published a proposal for organizing Centralized global do_action charity hackathons.
jillbinder 12:19 am on September 2, 2021

Report: Allyship and Diverse Speaker Workshops August 2021

This month we launched our inaugural Allyship workshop from the new Allyship program, and we offered our monthly-ish Diverse Speaker workshop.

August 2021

Allyship for WordPress event organizers AMER/EMEA, August 19, 2021

Facilitator: @jillbinder

We are running the new Allyship program in quarterly cohorts. This was the first workshop for the first cohort.

It was an interactive watch party of the “Creating a Welcoming and Diverse Space Part 1” and Part 2 on Learn WordPress. We paused the video for doing exercises in the workbook and having discussions.

Number who attended: 13
Out of how many who had registered: 68%! (19 registered)
From number of cities: 13
From number of countries: 6 (Canada, Nigeria, Philippines, Serbia, UK, USA)
Self-reported increase in preparedness to help create more inclusive WordPress event after taking the workshop: 52%!

Testimonials

“I love how actionable the workshop is.”

– Anonymous

“I loved being with other organizers and hearing what they’ve done. The checklists in the workbook are helpful in terms of tracking what I have done and what I can still improve. I’d love to see ALL THE ORGANIZERS go through this. This felt like a great complement to other material that WordPress has about not disparaging people; the focus of the Allyship workshop was on how to be actively welcoming.”

– Sallie Goetsch, organizer, East Bay WordPress Meetup

“I learned a lot from the discussions amongst the attendees. I can’t wait for the next one!”

– Oneal Rosero, Community Contributor, The Philippines

“I thought I was holding inclusive events already, and this workshop showed me ways to make things even more inclusive that I hadn’t thought of before. I especially liked learning that changing just a few words can make my Meetups and WordCamps even more welcoming to more people.”

– Shanta R. Nathwani, President & CEO, Namara Technologies Inc., Canada

“This is an important issue for me. I’m glad to have solid steps to take and ongoing support to keep improving. Thank you for holding these workshops.”

– Susan Smylie, WordCamp Organizer, Web Developer, San Antonio, TX

“The content was great and I really loved the workbook!”

– Megan Rose, WordPress Community Deputy, USA

Diverse Speaker Workshop AMER/EMEA, August 27, 2021

“How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events”

Facilitator: @onealtr

The only people in attendance were Oneal, myself, and a volunteer from our working group, @danitto. No participants attended.

Thank you

A lot of people contribute to making these workshops successful. Thank you to each and every one!

Upcoming

Love this? Come attend a workshop!

Watch http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20210908145018/https://make.wordpress.org/community/tag/wpdiversityworkshops/ for our next workshop announcement.

If you are holding a WordCamp this year, we would like to help you get more great speakers. Please get in touch with @jillbinder on the WordPress Slack and we will arrange a #WPDiversity speakers workshop for you.

#diversespeakerworkshopsreports, #wpdiversity

Kevin Cristiano 2:00 pm on September 1, 2021

Community Team Agenda for 2021-09-02

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: Thursday, September 2, 2021 at 12:00 PM UTC
Americas friendly meeting: Thursday, September 2, 2021 at 09:00 PM 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.

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?

Tuesday Trainings:

Announcements, Invites, and Workshops

Proposals

The below are closed for comments, but should be updated soon

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

Hari Shanker R 11:30 am on September 2, 2021

@kcristiano Also to be added to the agenda: http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20210908145018/https://make.wordpress.org/community/2021/09/01/proposal-centralized-global-do_action-charity-hackathons/

Kevin Cristiano 12:22 pm on September 2, 2021

@harishanker That post is there at least I can see it.

@jillbinder I am adding your link

Hari Shanker R 12:27 pm on September 2, 2021

My apologies, @kcristiano! The proposal was already added to the post and I saw it only after commenting. Thanks for double-checking!

Kevin Cristiano 12:29 pm on September 2, 2021

No worries. Rather double check than not have it there. We (all of us) tend to publish just before the meeting so it’s hard to stay current on the agenda.

Hari Shanker R 11:47 am on September 1, 2021

Proposal: Centralized global do_action charity hackathons

Earlier this year, I proposed an update to do_action charity hackathons. My proposal was to expand the program, leveraging the WordPress Foundation’s mission (“to make sure we can continue to serve the public good through freely accessible software.”), in order to better support non-profits during the COVID-19 pandemic.  So far, three applications for do_action events have come in this year, out of which, one event has been completed (do_action Karnataka 2021), and yet another one is already on the schedule (do_action Nigeria 2021). 

do_action charity hackathons are a great way to make a lasting positive impact on regional local communities, because of how they empower non-profits with an online presence. I strongly feel that we can make even more of a more lasting impact on the global community by expanding this program. Towards this goal, I propose an idea (that was originally suggested by @andreamiddleton): How about organizing centralized, global do_action charity hackathons several times throughout the year, where volunteers build websites for non-profits from all corners of the world? 

The idea in brief

I’ll be clear — I do not mean to suggest that we close down local/regional do_action events. Local/regional events are quite effective and I vote for keeping them going in the current format! What I propose is that, in addition to local events, the Community Team and the WordPress Foundation could organize centralized online global hackathons that are held several times throughout the year on a regular frequency (cadence TBD).

Global hackathons can be small events held completely online and will be open to a global audience. Anyone – companies, local communities, or distributed groups of individuals can participate in this program. Similar to do_action charity hackathons, charities can apply to participate in this initiative. Based on the number of applications we receive, community deputies will pick a charity to work on and match them with a group of volunteers who will work to build the charity’s new website over the course of a month or so.

Like all other do_action hackathons, this will be a WordPress Foundation event but organized by Community Team volunteers and deputies.

Where the Community Team and Deputies come in

Community Team members and Deputies can help facilitate the program. While they need not be involved directly in building non profit websites, they can volunteer to do so if they wish to. In other words: 

  • We (Community Team members and/or Deputies) select NPOs and volunteers and match them (we will vet them just like what we do with WordCamps).
  • We oversee the project progress and periodically check in with the team to see how they are doing.
  • We do communications and outreach for the initiative and publish blog posts about each website project.
  • We arrange ongoing tech support for the non-profit by working with volunteers or sponsors.

If this sounds like a good idea, I propose that we test this out as a pilot program later this year. If the pilot turns out to be successful, perhaps we can expand the program and continue organizing regular global hackathons in 2022 and beyond.

Request for feedback

This is just an idea and is not set in stone. I would love to hear from you to see if this is feasible in the first place!

  • What do you think about this idea? Do you think this is feasible? Does the Community Team have the bandwidth to execute this?
  • What would be the best way to execute a global event like this? 
  • What guidelines should we have in place for an event like this? I know we can reuse a lot of the do_action guidelines – but how do we best match NPOs and volunteers/companies?
  • How do we handle sponsorships for a centralized event like this? Should we take a page out of our global sponsorship program? (Sponsorships for do_action are in-kind)

I know that there are a lot of questions – I just wanted to put it out there for us to brainstorm. Please share your feedback in the comments by September 24 2021 (Friday).

The following people contributed to this post: @andreamiddleton @courtneypk @evarlese @hlashbrooke @nao and @yoga1103

#do_action #proposal #do_action_online

Rocio Valdivia 12:39 pm on September 2, 2021

I really love this idea and +1 to go for it, Hari!
I think we can have even more impact doing these hackatons global and online 🙂

Courtney P.K. 9:26 pm on September 2, 2021

Global do_actions are a great idea and a natural direction for the program to go! I think it’s feasible, but I do also wonder if the team has the bandwidth to make it happen.

Courtney P.K. 8:00 am on August 31, 2021

Tuesday Trainings: What is the WordCamp Mentorship program and how does it work?

If there’s a question you’d like to see answered, or a topic you’d like to see discussed, please share it in the comments or email support@wordcamp.org with the subject line “Tuesday Trainings”. Now onto this week’s topic!

Previously, we learned all about Community Deputies and what they do, which includes mentoring WordCamps. But what exactly is the WordCamp mentorship program, and how does it work?

What is the WordCamp mentorship program?

The WordCamp mentorship program helps make WordCamps easier to plan for organizers, and better for attendees! This is done by providing peer support to folks actively organizing a WordCamp.

Who are the WordCamp Mentors?

WordCamp mentors are Community team deputies who are also experienced WordCamp organizers. You can see the current roster of mentors on the Community Deputies page.

What do WordCamp Mentors do?

WordCamp mentors support other organizers as they plan their WordCamp! Their involvement should be advising on procedure and sharing of knowledge based on the mentor’s history organizing WordCamps. Note that mentors are not on the WordCamp’s organizing team, so they shouldn’t be doing any actual organizing tasks.

Mentors help a lead organizer keep their team on schedule by checking in every month during the pre-planning process, and typically every 2 weeks during active planning to make sure everything is going as planned.

Mentors are hopefully able to help organizers avoid problems before they become problems. They are expected to check in frequently with their WordCamp(s), and also keep up to date on new tools, developments, and decisions made by the Community Team that impact WordCamp organizers.

How do I get involved with the WordCamp mentorship program?

Any WordCamp organizer with experience and who is in good standing with the WordPress events program can be a WordCamp mentor. To learn more about being a WordCamp Mentor, you can check out the deputy handbook and take the WordCamp mentor self-training course. When you’re ready, go ahead and submit an application!

If you are currently a WordCamp organizer and feel like you would benefit from mentorship, check out the handbook page on mentors, and submit a request for a mentor.

Want to Learn More?

Want to learn even more? Come join our conversations in the #community-events or #community-team channels in the Making WP Slack.

#community-team, #mentors, #mentorship, #tuesdaytrainings

WordCamp.org 4:00 am on August 30, 2021

Weekly Updates

Hello to all our Deputies, WordCamp organizers, Meetup 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 Slack and ask for help!

Hari Shanker R 4:52 pm on August 30, 2021
Hari Shanker R 12:30 pm on August 27, 2021

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 deputies 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.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 ping in #polyglots

Read on to find out more!

Show full post

What contents need translating?

While it’s up to you to decide where to get started, here are some of the commonly translated contents:

Recommended contents to translate 

If you don’t have any preference for the contents to translate, you can start from these recommended contents.

Meetup Basics
These are the WordPress Meetup Chapter Program basics and are likely to stay relevant for a long time.

Virtual Event Resources
If you see a lot of confusion in your community with the transition to online events, it’s a good idea to provide translated information for reference. Please note these pages may change more often than others, as the Community Team updates the online event guidelines to adopt the community’s needs.

Returning to In-person WordPress events
The Community Team has prepared resources on how to return to in-person WordPress Meetups. As in-person meetups return in locations wherever eligible, getting this documentation translated would help immensely in bringing in-person events back! Here are the documents that need translation:

How do I participate in the documentation sprint?

Anyone can participate in this initiative! The team will keep track of edits in a Google Sheet. Please log all the changes you make in that sheet. The team will also coordinate together in the #community-team channel.

Translate Handbook pages, announcements, and Tuesday Training posts
Translating handbooks is an​ important part of our Translation sprint. All you need to do is to pick a document from the handbook, and start working on a translation in the language of your choice. If you are confused about which document to translate, you can choose from the recommendations in this post. In case you do not have access to your locale’s Rosetta site or HelpHub, you can prepare your translations in a Google Doc (please set the document’s privacy setting to “Anyone with the link can comment,”). Once you have completed the document, please fill-up the Translation sprint tracking sheet so that deputies can track the changes.

If you are creating your translations in Google Docs, don’t forget to reach out to the Locale managers of your Translation locale to merge them into your HelpHub. If you are a Locale Manager or a GTE, you can start off by creating a handbook page for your Team P2 (in case you do not have one already) and start adding contents over there. If you need permission to create or edit handbook pages, ask in your local community Slack or in #polyglots channel.

You can use the same process to translate important announcements in the Community Team blog or one of the Tuesday Training posts as well! Make sure to publish the posts in your locale’s blog though (speak with your locale manager about the same). While translating documents, please follow the style guide or guidelines set by your locale. Check out the Translating Community Team Handbooks page and the corresponding Tuesday Training to learn more on how to translate handbook pages. You will find more information in our handbook.

WordCamp.org site interface and contents
You can translate the UI text of the WordCamp.org site on translate.wordpress.org as part of the sprint. For more information about the translation platform, visit the First Steps page of the Polyglots Handbook. Please log any translations you make on the site in the Translation sprint tracking sheet.

Remember: Every contribution, however small, is valuable!

What’s next, once the event is over? 

Locale managers will review and publish all the changes made to the Community Team handbook pages into the respective Rosetta sites and make the contents available for viewing. Community Deputies will also review the event, along with the updates that were made to the docs, to evaluate our work and identify areas of improvement in our process (if any). 

I warmly welcome you all once again to join us in this initiative and to help us translate our documentation pages into as many languages as possible. It will go a long way in supporting the WordPress community!

The following people contributed to this post: @evarlese @nao

#sprint #documentation-sprint #wptranslationday

jillbinder 6:22 pm on August 25, 2021

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

Attending: @jillbinder @onealtr @katiejrichards @wpfangirl

Start: http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20210908145018/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: http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20210908145018/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 Slack (and ping @jillbinder). Thanks!

End: http://wayback.fauppsala.se:80/wayback/20210908145018/https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1629914878448500

#wpdiversity

Rocio Valdivia 7:00 am on August 24, 2021

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

Are you a WordPress enthusiast and would like to attend a Meetup 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 Team deputies 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 deputy 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