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Tuesday Training: How to run a successful Help Desk meetup

If there is a question you would like to see answered or a topic you would 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!

One of the most popular 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. formats is the Help Desk. A good Help Desk is a huge draw for any local meetup. If you are looking to grow your group, I encourage you to schedule one. They are also quite easy to set up. All you need is a space with reliable wifi and a few folks with some expertise!

Running a successful Help Desk, however, can be quite challenging, especially when you draw lots and lots of people. As someone that has run lots of Help Desks (and made lots of mistakes), let me share a few pointers to help you be successful.

Introduce the Helpers

If you skip this step, you will have a free-for-all on your hands. I start every Help Desk meetup asking everyone who wants to be a helper to stand up, introduce themself, and tell the group what they can do to help others. I also mention that to be a helper does not require you be a master coder or an expert in a field. Simply knowing how to do something and helping someone solve a problem is enough. This can be coding, SEO, blogging, social media, content creation, etc.

I also try to encourage people that have started gaining knowledge from attending Help Desks regularly to be helpers. This goes a long way to helping people gain confidence in their skills, give back to the community, and be inclusive to all.

Once everyone has been introduced, the folks that are looking for help probably have a good idea who the best person is to get help from. This really does keep things moving smoothly.

Keep Things Safe

This especially applies to anyone that is touching a website. Make sure your helpers know to ask some very important questions to the folks that are receiving help… like, is this your website or a client’s website? Do you have a local or staging environmentStaging Environment A staging environment is a non-production copy of your site. This is a private place to build the site -- design, copy, and code -- until your client approves it for production or live. Sometimes used in addition to, or as a Development Environment. we can try things on? Do you have backups of the website?

Things can go very wrong very fast, so it is best to err on the side of caution. Make sure all your helpers know this, so you do not have a mess on your hands.

Help Everyone Get Helped

There’s nothing worse than attending a Help Desk meetup and not being helped. You will have some people that will do everything they can to flag someone down to get help, but you will have others that will sit quietly, never speak up, want help, and never receive it. It is your job as an organizer to help everyone that wants help to get it.

To do this well, keep track of who your helpers are and what they can help with. If you see someone that is not being helped (or someone you suspect has not been helped), go over and ask “Has anyone helped you yet?” If they say they need help, ask them to explain the problem in a couple of words. With that information, find the right person that can help them and get the person that needs help on their radar.

Be aware that some helpers will stay with the same person for the duration of the meetup if left unchecked. Try to limit the time a helper spends with a single person as this can lead to excluding others and supporting only a few. It is important to encourage helpers to make the rounds. Especially your more experienced helpers.

Depending on the breakdown of helpers to folks that need help, you may want to adjust your approach. For instance, if you only have a few helpers and lots of folks that need help, you might want to limit things to 5-minutes for each person until everyone has received some level of help.

You Cannot Solve Everything

Questions at Help Desks run the gamut. Some problems can be solved quickly, but others cannot. It is important to set expectations. Everyone that is a helper is a volunteer and will do the best they can within reason. Sometimes it is important to remind people that are being helped that their problem might be out of the expertise of your helpers, or they might need to pay a developer to do what they are requesting.

Virtual Help Desk

Approaching Help Desk in a virtual environment (like Zoom) can be very challenging. Many of the things mentioned above like introducing helpers will keep things orderly, but I would say utilizing breakout rooms with a helper or two in each should be your approach.

How many breakout rooms will depend on how many people are in attendance, and how many helpers you have. I have found 10 people in a breakout room to be the limit before things can feel a little chaotic.

The idea is to keep things small, so folks do not get lost in the crowd. As an organizer, you should move between breakout rooms and ensure folks are happy and getting helped.

Also, if your group has a 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/. account, I would encourage creating a #helpdesk channel where people can ask their questions. Especially if you decide a virtual Help Desk meetup is too much work.

Final Thoughts

As your group grows, you will be amazed at how popular your Help Desk 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. become. It can feel overwhelming and chaotic at times. That is why it is very important to go in with a process, so everyone has a positive experience, feels they were helped, and knows they belong.

Are you a Meetup organizer and have more tips for organizing a Help-Desk-style event? Share your thoughts in the comments!

#meetups #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!

Tuesday Training: Why is diversity important — To WordPress and YOUR local community?

The WordPress Community is putting more and more effort into diversity. Why? And why is the Community asking you to get on board with this vision, too?

At all tech events — and WordPress is no exception — diversity is a point of concern. Even if your event already seems diverse to you, there is always more that you can do to make sure that people from all walks of life not only feel included, but valued. There may even be members of other underrepresented groups who you hadn’t considered yet who would benefit from your event.

What do we mean by diversity? If everyone who comes to your event looks alike or comes from the same background, your event is not diverse. We often think of diversity in terms of gender, race, or sexuality… but it also includes class, caste, ability, age, and more.

Let’s talk now about seven reasons why diversity in WordPress events is beneficial to WordPress and your local community:

How Does Diversity Benefit WordPress?

1. Diverse events reflect the diversity of WordPress users

WordPress can be used by anybody, so it should also be built by anybody.”
— Josepha Haden Chomphosy (@chanthaboune), WordPress Executive Director, 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 2021

As developers, designers, marketers, business owners, and content creators, we are not building WordPress and WordPress products just for ourselves. The group of people building WordPress must reflect the group of people who use it. When it’s mainly one kind of person building it, we fail to include the voices and perspectives of other types of users. Just like how new designers who are unaware of color vision deficiencies may not consider adding other forms of visual cues while creating a user interface, there are all kinds of things that we may be overlooking for our users.

2. Diversity makes WordPress more innovative

People from underrepresented groups in technology have a wide range of history, life experiences, and knowledge to share.

When you have a diverse array of life experiences, you approach problems differently. Just as a developer’s point of view is different from a user’s point of view, so are our overall viewpoints.

By inviting more people to the table, more people’s needs will be included and it will bring in fresh ideas that will benefit everyone. Think of how video captions were originally created for people with limited hearing, and now they also benefit, as @annezazu says in Core Editor Improvement: Video Subtitles, people who don’t want to wake a sleeping baby/pet/person nearby, or who prefer reading along while watching your video.

3. Diversity creates space for unique perspectives

More diversity means a better chance of bringing in contributors who are straddling several roles and thus creating unique things with unique perspectives. For example, consider power users who use WordPress in interesting ways, front-end developers, business people who use plugins to make specific kinds of sites, or typographers who use WordPress to do creative things with typography. It’s also important to include people who can talk about running a business in WordPress, how developers can communicate with designers, different things you can do with WordPress, etc.

How Does Diversity Benefit Your Local In-Person or Virtual Community?

4. Fostering a more interesting, creative, and engaged community

“A diverse set of people are more creative. They are also more productive and motivated, and overall, everything becomes far more interesting.

“In fact, diversity and inclusiveness help people stay, invite others, and be far more engaged than a group lacking in diversity and inclusiveness. This makes a lot of sense. If people feel welcome, safe, and don’t feel like the odd man out, they are more likely to enjoy themselves and contribute more.

“And just like a colourful mosaic wall is more fun to look at, a variety of people makes for more fun and interesting experiences!”

– Aurooba Ahmed (@aurooba) (“Allyship for Event Organizers” workshop and “Creating a Welcoming and Diverse Space” workshop)

5. Growing your community

As event organizers, we care about how many people are coming out to 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. and WordCamps. The more people, the better! Diversity efforts are a great way to grow your community and have even more people with different backgrounds and skills attend your events. Especially if you see the same faces all the time — it’s always nice to have fresh faces and perspectives. Attendees who come to events for networking or job opportunities will find immense value in the prospect of always meeting new people at each event.

6. Creating Diversity in Leadership

More and more, people are recognizing the importance of having a diverse group of leaders for their Meetups and WordCamps. When the leadership team is diverse, the events will benefit from having multiple perspectives, and attendees and volunteers will feel more comfortable participating. Invite people of underrepresented groups who already attend and love your events to be leaders in order to empower them and encourage them to grow your event.

In Vancouver, after Luiza and Andrina took our Diverse Speakers workshop, they created and led a new initiative in our community: A monthly WP Users 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.. It was very popular!

7. Unlocking new opportunities

Bringing in more people with different opinions, viewpoints, and experiences can unlock more opportunities for them. For example, when Kirsten contributed at our local Vancouver WordCamp, she connected with a local agency, became their first female developer, and quickly became the senior developer and team lead. Simply by being at the event, she was introduced to an opportunity she may not have discovered otherwise.

Because there is a lack of learner advocacy, TC (@tlc1206) is creating a business helping Black men learn 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/. for WordPress. He is creating a community to support and enable men of color to earn a living in tech.

Final Thought

Although I’ve pointed out some good reasons above, you don’t need an objective reason to make your events more diverse. Creating a more inclusive and welcoming environment is also just the right thing to do.

“‘Diversity is good for business‘ is not the point, even if it is true. It’s almost like people are afraid of taking an ’ideological’ stand. It’s ok to want to *just* want to address systemic inequality. You don’t need a ’business case.’”
–John Cutler @johncutlefish

If you would like to learn more about the specifics on how to promote and foster diversity in your local WordPress Meetup or WordCamp community, please sign up for our Allyship for WordPress Event Organizers workshop on November 17, 2021.

Thank you for help on this article @alliennimmons, @annezazu, @cbringmann, @courtneypk, @evarlese

#tuesdaytrainings, #wpdiversity

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!

Meetup Organizer Newsletter: October 2021

Hello friends,

Welcome to the October 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! Read on for the latest updates from the WordPress Community.

Newsletter contents:

  • New Meetup.com Features for Meetup organizers
  • Proposal for the 2022 Global Sponsorship Program
  • Online Event Updates
  • News from the WordPress Community
  • Tuesday Trainings

🎭 New Meetup.com Features for Meetup Organizers

Meetup.com has announced some exciting new features to give better support to community organizers: 

  • COVID-19 safety measures for organizers: A new section has been added to the event scheduler page in Meetup.com titled “COVID-19 safety measures” where organizers can set guidelines such as vaccinations, mask policy, venue types, etc. Read more on this post from the Meetup blog.
  • Add topics for Meetup events: Previously organizers could set topics for Meetup groups, now you can add topics for individual meetup events too. Some organizers may see a list of default topics to choose from when they schedule a new event, which they can modify. The feature is still being tested and may not be available to all organizers yet. You can read all about this feature in the Meetup blog.
  • Viewing events in your preferred time zone: As many meetup groups have been gathering online, their events have been attracting attendees from all around the world! Attendees can now view online events in their preferred time zone. In-person events will continue to be shown in the event’s time zone.

If your local authority allows in-person events and if vaccines OR testing are freely available, you may be able to organize an in-person WordPress meetup. Just fill out our in-person meetup decision checklist and follow the recommendations. Check out our handbook for more.

💰 Proposal for the 2022 Global Sponsorship Program

The Community Team kicked-off discussions on the updated 2022 Global sponsorship program, and is inviting feedback. Similar to the 2021 program, global sponsors will get access to a single sponsorship package to support Meetup groups.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. sponsorship (for all camps in a quarter) will be available as an add-on, billed quarterly. The team aims to finalize the proposal by October 28, 2021.

 🌍🎪 WordPress Event Updates

As the world is slowly returning to normalcy, in-person WordPress events are also coming back. The Community Team has opened up pathways for in-person WordCamps and Meetups, in regions where it is safe to do so, even though most 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 still online. To support WordCamp organizers and facilitate hassle-free in-person WordCamps, the Community Team recently introduced additional legal protections such as ticket disclaimers and an insurance policy.

Sign up for the following Upcoming Diverse Speaker Training Events

  • Allyship for WordPress event organizers AMER/EMEA November 17, 2021 at 6-8pm UTC / 1-3pm ET / 10-12pm PT. Learn how to be a good ally and to create welcoming and diverse WordPress Meetups and WordCamps for your WordPress community.  
  • How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events Asia #WPDiversity. November 27, 2021 at 7-8.30am UTC / 1500H-1630 GMT+8 / 1230H-1400H IST.
    Aimed at community organizers from Southeast to Southern Asia, this workshop focuses on how to encourage people from underrepresented groups (in terms of gender, race, class, caste, sexuality, ability, age, etc.) to speak at WordPress meetups and WordCamps.

WordCamp US 2021 concludes
One of the biggest WordPress events – WordCamp US 2021 was held on October 1, 2021. The online event offered a unique online experience that united WordPress fans around the world. The camp, which was supported by nearly 20 organizers, sold more than 3,600 tickets, had 18 speakers, and 27 sponsors. Catch the event replay on its website. The sessions will be available on WordPress.tv soon. 

WordPress Translation Day 2021 Celebrations ran for 30 days
WordPress contributors from around the world joined hands  by translating WordPress into their own languages for the entire month of September as part of WordPress Translation Day celebrations. The celebrations consisted of a host of global and local events, translation sprints, and discussion groups. News from local events and stories highlighting notable polyglots contributors will be coming soon. Check out the WP Translation Day website for links to video recordings and more.

In-person do_actiondo_action do_action hackathons are community-organised events that are focussed on using WordPress to give deserving charitable organisations their own online presence. Learn more on doaction.org. charity hackathons are back
The Community Team shared new guidelines for the return of in-person do_action hackathons in regions where local events are allowed. In short, community organizers can plan in-person do_action hackathons either in regions with reduced COVID spread OR exclusively or fully vaccinated/recently tested (negative)/ recently recovered folks in regions where vaccination and testing are freely available.

Upcoming WordPress events 

Past WordPress events

🗞 News from the WordPress Community

🛠 Tuesday Trainings

Check out our Tuesday Trainings (#TuesdayTrainings), where the Community Team publishes a different topic on our blog each week to help organizers and interested community members:

The team is currently discussing the future of weekly Tuesday Trainings. Share your thoughts as comments on the post. Is there a question you would like to answer, or a topic you would like to see discussed? Send an email support@wordcamp.org with the subject line “Tuesday Trainings”!


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!

#meetup-organizer-newsletter

#newsletter

The following people contributed to this edition of the Meetup newsletter: @webcommsat, @courtneypk, @eidolonnight, @harishanker, @meher, @jillbinder

Workshops from #WPDiversity: October and November 2021

We have workshops for underrepresented community members and for WP event organizers coming up in October and November, 2021. Please join us and help us spread the word!

Allyship for WordPress event organizers AMER/EMEA Accountability

The cohort of the first Allyship program is meeting for an accountability 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/. chat about the actions they are taking after the first Allyship for event organizers workshop. Although this session won’t have coaching as one of the main focuses, we will still welcome open discussion.

Others who did not attend the workshop are welcome to participate or lurk. 🙂

Thursday, October 28, 2021
5pm-6pm UTC / 1pm-2pm ET
#community-events Slack channel

Empower Women Speakers For Your WordPress Events in Latin America

A hybrid event in-person in San José, Costa Rica, and over Zoom for women WordPress organizers in Latin America to learn to run Women Speaker workshops.

We will teach you how to run the 4-5 hour workshop that will:

  • Help you understand some of the reasons why women aren’t submitting talks
  • Help the women in your communities overcome their personal barriers to public speaking at your WordPress events
  • Help them create a talk title, pitch, outline, bio, and slide deck
  • Give the new women speakers motivation and confidence to start speaking
  • Increase how many women are giving talks in your community

Saturday, November 6, 2021
1pm-5pm CST
San José, Costa Rica and over Zoom

Register now

Allyship for WordPress event organizers AMER/EMEA

After a successful cohort 1 in August, we are beginning cohort 2 in November. Members of cohort 1 are invited to return and join our new members.

A 2-hour interactive watch party online to learn how to create welcoming and diverse 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. and WordCamps for your WordPress community.

This is not just for organizers, but anyone who wants to champion this kind of environment, now or in the future.

Do you run or attend WordPress events and notice only one type of person is attending? You’d love to see more diversity represented, but people are either not showing up — or they attend once and don’t come back. What can you do to be a good ally to foster, promote, and support diversity and an inclusive space?

We know that you have good intentions and really want to do things “right”, and therefore need a supportive space to talk through sensitive real-life challenges, so this watch party workshop will NOT be recorded.

This interactive watch party workshop was created by Allie Nimmons, Aurooba Ahmed, David Wolfpaw, and Jill Binder for 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 2019.

Wednesday, November 17, 2021
6pm-7pm UTC / 1pm-3pm ET

Register now

How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events Southeast to Southern Asia

Does the thought of speaking at one of our WordPress Meetups or WordCamps intrigue you? Do you identify as a person from a marginalized and underrepresented group (in terms of gender, race, class, caste, sexuality, ability, age, etc.) who is 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 WordCamp in the Philippines, India, Indonesia, or other nearby timezone? Do you think you don’t know or have anything worth speaking about?

This workshop is for you!

This interactive watch party workshop will be held in English.

Saturday, November 27, 2021
0700H-0830H UTC / 1500H-1630 GMT+8 / 1230H-1400H IST

Register now


We will be holding a “How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events” for AMER/EMEA in December. Stay tuned!

#wpdiversity, #wpdiversityworkshops

Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) Agenda | Wed, Oct 13, 2021

The Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) meets the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of the month at 5-6pm UTC. The next meeting is tomorrow — Wednesday, October 13, 2021. It takes place 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/. channel.

We welcome new and curious volunteers! All are welcome.

Agenda

  1. Report – how group members doing on items they’re working on for us?
  2. Translations
  3. Update on September 2021 workshops
  4. Chatting about upcoming events:
    1. Upcoming: October 28 Allyship accountability
    2. Upcoming: November 6 Empowering Women in Latin America
    3. Upcoming: November Allyship workshop (cohort 2!) — figuring out the date
    4. Upcoming: November 27 speaker workshop Southeast to Southern Asia
    5. Upcoming: December Allyship coaching and accountability — figuring out the date
    6. Upcoming: December speaker workshop Americas and Europe — figuring out the date
  5. Update on #diverse-speaker-support channel
  6. Jill away Oct 17 – 26, 2021
  7. Open discussion (if time)

The Future of Tuesday Trainings

We hope that you have been enjoying the Tuesday Trainings series, and that you have learned some new things along the way!

Tuesday Trainings has been a great and informative series, but it has been brought up recently that the weekly cadence might be too much for the team, at least at this point in time while our resources are a bit low.

There are a couple of options for changing the cadence:

  • Change the cadence to monthly
  • Pause Tuesday Trainings for now and revisit in 2022

Which option do you think would work best? Or are there other options that we could consider? Please comment below with your thoughts.

In addition, we are seeking a volunteer to take over the management of the Tuesday Training series. Managing the series includes writing posts, recruiting other community members to write posts, and maintaining the editorial calendar (which is essentially a spreadsheet to track the topics and posts). If you’re interested in helping out, please let us know!

#community-team, #tuesdaytrainings

Community Team Rep Nominations for 2022

It is time to start the process to select new Community Team reps for 2022 to replace @kcristiano and myself.

The Role

In 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, each team has one or two (or more!) representatives, abbreviated as “reps”. On the Community team, we have historically had two reps who are asked to commit to the role for a full calendar year.

Team reps are responsible for communicating on behalf of the group to the other contributor groups via weekly updates, as well as occasional chats. 

As a reminder, it is not called “team lead” for a reason. While the people elected as team reps will generally come from the pool of folks that people think of as experienced leaders, the team repTeam Rep A Team Rep is a person who represents the Make WordPress team to the rest of the project, make sure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and coordinates cross-team efforts. role is designed to change hands regularly.

This role does have a time commitment attached to it, at least one hour a week. The main tasks include:

  • Writing the agenda for the Community Team meetings
  • Run the chat
  • Write the recap and post it in
  • Keep an eye on the moving parts of the team and provide reports for quarterly updates.

Over the year, the team can decide to add one or two people to help, depending on how much work there is. For now, let’s get us two new reps!

How Community Team Rep elections work

Following our election process last year, the Community team is planning on these key steps: 

  1. Call for Nominations: Anyone can nominate a Community team rep! The deadline is 2021-10-29.
  2. Voting for Team Reps: We will open a poll for voting on 2021-11-03. The poll will stay open for three weeks, and close on 2021-11-24. We will then be able to announce our new team reps before the end of 2021! 

Call for Community Team Rep nominations!

Please nominate people for Community team rep in the comments of this post by 2021-10-29. Self-nominations are welcome.

If you would like to nominate someone in private, please reach out to @sippis, @kcristiano or @_dorsvenabili.

If you get nominated, you do not have to say yes! We will only add people who respond positively to a nomination to the poll, so feel free to decline a nomination if you don’t feel like this is the right fit for any reason.

Finally, if you have any questions, please also feel free to ask in the comments.

#team-reps

Legal protections for organizers

As the WordPress Community begins to transition to in-person events, organizers are wondering what legal protections are available to them related to COVID-19. Here are a couple of solutions!

Disclaimer on 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 Purchases

We will be adding a disclaimer to the WordCamp ticket purchase page, which will protect organizers against claims related to COVID-19. The disclaimer text will read:

An inherent risk of exposure to COVID-19 exists in any public place where people are present. COVID-19 is an extremely contagious disease that can lead to severe illness and death. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, senior citizens and guests with underlying medical conditions are especially vulnerable.

By attending WordCamp {city} {year}, you voluntarily assume all risks related to exposure to COVID-19 and waive any claims against the event organizers; volunteers; sponsors; 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.; WordPress Community SupportWordPress 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., PBC; and their respective affiliates.

This disclaimer will appear on the ticket purchase page for the ticket purchaser to agree to. Agreement is given by checking a box next to the disclaimer (similar to agreeing to the Code of ConductCode of Conduct “A code of conduct is a set of rules outlining the norms, rules, and responsibilities or proper practices of an individual party.” - Wikipedia), before completing their ticket purchase.

We are aiming to roll this update out to WordCamp sites on Wednesday, 13 October 2021.

Insurance Policy

This year, WPCSWordPress Coding Standards A collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) to validate code developed for WordPress. It ensures code quality and adherence to coding conventions, especially the official standards for WordPress Core. added a “communicable disease liability coverage” policy to our event insurance. This policy provides coverage to help defer any legal fees and costs related to lawsuits claiming damages due to:

  • Actual or alleged transmission of a communicable disease
  • An act, error, or omission by or on behalf of WPFWordPress 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./WPCS in:
    • The supervision of any person who transmits, is infected with, and/or alleged to be infected with a communicable disease
    • Testing for a communicable disease
    • Actual or alleged failure to prevent the spread of a communicable disease
    • Actual or alleged failure to report a communicable disease to the authorities

This policy is currently in effect and covers all official WordCamps and WordPress Chapter 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..

Summary

These legal protections should hopefully ease the minds of organizers concerned about planning in-person WordCamps and WordPress Meetups. Please leave a comment below if you have any concerns or questions!

#policy, #wordcamps