Community Outreach Team Projects

Welcome to the official blog of the community/outreach team for 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!

This team oversees official events, mentorship programs, diversity initiatives, contributor outreach, and other ways of growing our community.

If you love WordPress and want to help us do these things, join in!

Getting Involved

We use this blog for policy debates, project announcements, and status reports. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to comment on posts and join the discussion.

You can learn about our current activities on the Team Projects page. These projects are suitable for everyone from newcomers to WordPress community elders.

You can use our contact form to volunteer for one of our projects.

Communication

We have Office Hours four times a week in the #community-events channel on Slack: Mondays & Wednesdays 22:00 UTC, Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:00 UTC.

We also have regular Community Team meetings on the first and third Thursdays of every month at 11:00 UTC and 20:00 UTC in #community-team on Slack (same agenda).

Events WidgetWidget A WordPress Widget is a small block that performs a specific function. You can add these widgets in sidebars also known as widget-ready areas on your web page. WordPress widgets were originally created to provide a simple and easy-to-use way of giving design and structure control of the WordPress theme to the user.

If you have questions about the Events and News dashboard widget that came out in WordPress 4.8, please read this FAQ!

This page serves to keep track of the various projects that the community team are currently engaged with.

Local Meetups

Meetups are the groups that power year-round local WordPress communities. The WordPress chapter program with meetup.com provides central account management for official groups. The Meetups program is overseen by a group of people including Courtney Patubo Kranzke, Rocío Valdivia, and involves the projects listed below. To get involved, 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.�? them in the #community-team Slack channel, leave a comment on a relevant post, or use the team contact form.

New MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. Application Review

Respond to incoming requests to join the meetup chapter program. Includes vetting meetup applications, interviewing applicants, running organizer orientations, checking for existing groups, and chapter setup on meetup.com if approved. This group of volunteers also initiates swag shipments to new organizers.

Status: Ongoing.
Volunteers Needed: Yes, 4–5 people.
Experience Required: Good search skills (to check for poorly indexed groups not on meetup.com, as well as to vet applicants), good written communication skills, friendly and welcoming attitude.
Time Commitment: Flexible, about an hour or two per week.

Existing Meetup Transfers

Respond to incoming requests from existing meetup organizers to join the chapter account, and reach out to qualifying groups to invite them to join. Review the guidelines with organizers and make sure there are no conflicts that need to be resolved. Submit group information to meetup.com for quarterly opt-in process if approved.

Status: Ongoing, but finite — just until we’ve contacted all the WordPress groups on meetup.com.
Volunteers Needed: Yes, 1–2 people.
Experience Required: Excellent written and verbal communication skills, at least 1–2 years in the WordPress community (so you’re familiar with the community’s background), ability to defuse tense situations, and not take it personally if a community member directs their frustration/anger/defensiveness at you.
Time Commitment: Flexible, and as much time as you’d like. At least 1 hour per week, but as many hours as you want to offer, we’ll take.

Running a Local WordPress Meetup

Organize a local group, or an event series within a group to bring together WordPress users in your area.

Status: Ongoing
Volunteers Needed: Yes
Experience Required: Familiarity with and/or have a love of WordPress, desire to meet other people who love WordPress, good communication skills, reliability, good organization skills.
Time Commitment: Varies based on role. Anywhere from 2 hours up to 10+ hours per month, depending on what you want to do.

Introduction to 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. workshops

This program is overseen by Aditya Kane.

Status: Ongoing
Volunteers Needed: Yes
Experience Required: Familiarity with and/or have a love of WordPress, involvement in your local WordPress meetup group, desire to spread the word about open source, good communication skills, reliability, good organization skills.
Time Commitment: Varies based on role. Anywhere from 2 hours up to 10+ hours per month, depending on what you want to do.
Get Involved: Check out the WordPress Foundation blog to learn more!

do_action charity hackathons

This program is overseen by Hugh Lashbrooke, with help from Aditya Kane and Angela Jin.

Status: Ongoing
Volunteers Needed: Yes
Experience Required: Familiarity with and/or have a love of WordPress, desire to help non-profit organizations meet their goals using WordPress, good communication skills, reliability, good organization skills.
Time Commitment: Varies based on role. Anywhere from 2 hours up to 10+ hours per month, depending on what you want to do.
Get Involved: Check out https://doaction.org/ or the do_action organizer handbook to learn more!

WordCamps

WordCamps are the annual WordPress events organized by local communities. The WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. program is overseen by Andrea Middleton and Cami Kaos, and involves the projects listed below. To get involved, ping them in the #community-team Slack channel, leave a comment on a relevant post, or use the team contact form.

Community Deputy Program

Community deputies are a team of volunteers in the Community Team from all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview and train lead organizers, order swag for Meetups and WordCamps, mentor WordCamp organizers,wrangle & advise sponsors, and generally keep things moving at 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.. The Deputy handbook has more information as well as a sign up form for those interested in joining the program. You can see the list of currently active deputies here.

Mentorship Programs

Currently our participation in the below mentorship programs is on hold, pending enough interested volunteers to coordinate and manage our involvement. If you’d like to volunteer in this capacity, please email [email protected]!

Google Summer of Code

The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program, first held from May to August 2005,^[1] in which Google awards stipends, which depends on the purchasing power parity of the country the student’s university belongs to,^[2] to all students who successfully complete a requested free and open-source software coding project during the summer. The program is open to university students aged 18 or over.

For more information, please see the full article on Wikipedia.

Outreachy

Outreachy helps people from groups underrepresented in free and open source software get involved. We provide a supportive community for beginning to contribute any time throughout the year and offer focused internship opportunities twice a year with a number of free software organizations.

For more information, please check the Outreachy program site.

WordPress.org