Hugh Lashbrooke 8:31 am on October 23, 2020
Tags:   

Learn WordPress course planning

In order to make sure Learn WordPress is ready for a full launch, we need to work towards publishing content as soon as possible that can empower WordPress users to learn relevant and valuable skills. The best way to do that is by compiling courses that target specific learning outcomes. I proposed this on GitHub, so check that out for a deeper explanation of the data structure for this.

In this post, I’d like to explore some course outlines that we could use on Learn WordPress. For a full launch later this year, we need to have a minimum of two complete courses published on the site.

Alongside the course outlines below there are links to existing docs and lesson plans that could be used for people to record the workshops, as well as currently available workshops in some cases. The existing lesson plans and documentation make it very easy for anyone to record a workshop on the topic with minimal effort.

The course & workshop names aren’t set in stone – they’re just from initial brainstorming and this can all be evolved over time.

The feedback needed here is:

  1. Is there anything you would add/change about the course outlines listed here?
  2. Are there any additional courses you can think of that would be good to include?
  3. Which two courses should we make sure to have ready before we do a full, marketed launch of Learn WordPress before the end of 2020?
  4. Are there any workshops that you would like to be involved in creating/recording? If a lesson plan exists, then the workshop is simply using that as your script to record the workshop.

Please read through the proposed courses and outlines below and leave your feedback in the comments!

Continue reading →

#learn-wordpress

Christina Workman 9:41 pm on October 30, 2020
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Recap of Contributor Working Group Meeting (#WPContributors) for Oct. 21, 2020

In attendance: @annezazu, @tacoverdo, @daisyo, @webcommsat

Agenda Link: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2020/10/15/contributor-working-group-wpcontributors-agenda-for-wednesday-october-21-2020-1900utc/
Meeting Start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1603306957162400

Sorry for the delay in getting this out!

Check-in and Meeting Schedule

We kicked off the meeting with a quick check in to see how folx are doing.

The new meeting schedule was announced: 1st and 3rd Wednesday of the month at 19:00UTC

Tools Update

Google Drive and TrelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing. have been set up. Please DM @amethystanswers with an email address to send invites to.

Links

Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/2/folders/196mfjYP0tAQAHNQ00Wkye8eKFE9Zznap
Trello: https://trello.com/b/TqOKBcxO/contributor-working-group-general-board

Communications

We have a hashtag (also being used by Marketing): #WPContributors
Please use this whenever you post about or for the group on any platform. I’ll include it in all P2P2 P2 or O2 is the term people use to refer to the Make WordPress blog. It can be found at https://make.wordpress.org/. posts moving forward.
Note: please capitalize the WPC so that the hashtag is accessible for all. Thanks to @webcommsat for pointing this out.

The Marketing Team is available to help us with any communications: messaging, cross-promotion, etc.

Group Chat Recaps

Before the meeting, we started chatting in sub-groups about our varying experiences with contributing. During the meeting, a few people shared their experience. It looks like we have a good variety of experience from different areas within the community, and I know we have some who are starting out fairly fresh. These perspectives will all be useful as we move forward!

Next Steps

Group Leads

Designate someone in each task group to be the Lead. This will be the person who keeps things organized and reports updates in our meetings.

Measurable Goals

Establish goals so we know we are keeping on track and can celebrate our achievements. We can brainstorm, and then keep track, on the Google Doc linked below.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qtkj9hBkQilK2f3PjErIcyvn8Cgax83nEbjrvJXw8Og/edit?usp=sharing

Resources

Start seeking out and documenting resources that are currently available for each task group. In addition to documenting the resources and information that you find, consider including notes on how easy it was to find, if it’s connected to other documentation, etc. Documents have been set up in Google Drive to add to.

Next Meeting

Our next meeting will be Wednesday, Nov 5, 2020 at 19:00 UTC in the #community-team channel on 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/..

Timi Wahalahti 4:56 pm on October 30, 2020
Tags: , , discussion groups, , ,   

Getting more Learn WordPress Discussion Group leaders and attendees

Learn WordPress is getting closer to its full launch and more workshops are being published, worked on and planned. One essential idea with workshops are discussion groups, that are a great way to share thoughts and ideas between others that have watched the recorded workshop.

Discussion groups can be held via Zoom or in #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 by original workshop presenter(s) or anyone who wants to be a discussion group leader. Virtually anyone interested in leading a discussion group on any of the workshops on the site is welcome to do so.

To make the most out of workshops and discussion groups, it would be great to have at least two discussion groups per each workshop. These discussion groups can happen anytime and even after the workshop has been published already months ago – it’s up to the discussion group leaders interest.

Currently, discussion groups are a bit hidden in the Learn WordPress platform. I’m proposing the following additions in order to raise awareness about discussion groups happening and more attendees and discussion group leaders:

1. Add “Upcoming discussion groups” section between “Recent workshops” and workshop idea submission CTA on the front page.

This new section would list three next upcoming discussion groups and link to the meetup.com page where all upcoming discussion groups are listed. This way also older workshops get some attention on the front page if new discussions groups for those are scheduled.

We already have code to get meetups from meetup.com, so it shouldn’t be a big job to get scheduled discussion groups from there as well. Of course, it needs some dev time, but I’m sure it will be worth it.

2. Add “Interested in running a discussion group?” CTA next to current “Have an Idea for a Workshop?“ CTA on the front page.

I’d like to have many discussion group leaders, so running those won’t fall into the responsibility of a workshop presenter(s) and a small group of an active group of Learn WP deputies. With this new CTA in place, we make it more visible that virtually anyone can run a discussion group if they find a workshop they’re really interested in and there’s no scheduled discussion group for that workshop.

Quick mockup showing how upcoming discussion groups and new CTA could be places on the front page.

3. Add details about discussion groups in workshop pages.

Currently, the page of a single workshop only has a button “Join a Discussion Group” which is a bit vague. We should add a small blurb on top of the button explaining what is a discussion group. Below the button could be a small text, much like the CoC notice, saying that if there’s no scheduled discussion group for this workshop, apply to be a discussion group leader to run one.

4. Create a new “Be a Discussion Group leader” page

As you might notice, two previous proposals contain a link to a page that doesn’t exist at this time on Learn WP platform. We should create a new page where it is explained what discussion group is, what it means to be a discussion group leader and how to apply. Currently, this information exists only in this make/community posts.

Tracking all the upcoming discussion groups and keeping an eye that each workshop has at least two groups

It would be nice to have at least two discussion groups for each workshop. These can happen anytime after the workshop has been published, even months later.

To keep track of upcoming discussion groups, we’ll use meetup.com where all scheduled discussion groups are being added.

In parallel to public listing on scheduled groups, I suggest that we create a new Google sheet with each workshop listed on it. In the sheet we can track if;

  • Zoom discussion group has been scheduled/held
  • Slack discussion group has been scheduled/held
  • Additional discussion groups have been scheduled/held

It would fall mostly under my lap, as I promised to manage discussion groups, but everyone who schedules a new discussion group in meetup.com should update this sheet.

With this sheet, we can track if a workshop hasn’t had any discussion groups and we can reach out to our discussion group leaders and workshop presenter(s) (not too) regularly asking whether they would like to schedule one. In future, the list of workshops needing a discussion group leader, could be added to the new “Be a Discussion Group leader” in Learn WP platform.

What do you think? Thoughts, ideas, comments, questions? How we could attract more discussion group leaders and attendees in your opinion? Please share your feedback before 2020-11-09.

#discussion, #discussion-groups, #learn, #learn-wordpress, #learn-roadmap
Joost de Valk 11:54 am on October 30, 2020  

Proposal: Event Schema for WordCamp.org

We have taken some great steps in improving the SEO of 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. sites by rearranging the URL structure. I think the next step should be outputting Event Schema, to allow WordCamp sites to get rich event snippets. Wordcamp.org should output event schema on event homepages as well as on the individual 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. event page.

What is “event schema”?

Event schema is metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. data, in 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.+LD format, that tells Google, and other search engines and platforms, about our events. It gives them the most important event details in computer readable format, so they can use that when they highlight an event.

Schema examples

Below are the examples for event schema that should be shown on the WordCamp.org event homepage. When adding this Event schema to WordCamp Central (here, for example) we should add a url attribute at the top level, pointing to the WordCamp homepage URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org.

Note that this event schema can be left on the page after the event is done. The event schema can also stay on the previous homepage, so a 2019 version of a WordCamp could still have the 2019 schema.

Schema for online events

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Event",
  "organizer": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "WordCamp Finland 2020 organizing team",
    "url": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/about/organizers/"
  },  
  "name": "WordCamp Finland 2020",
  "description": "Join the Finnish, Nordic and European WordPress Community for a full day of learning, sharing and fun!",
  "image": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/files/2020/09/wpfi2020-logo-black.png",
  "startDate": "2020-11-12T12:00+02:00",
  "endDate": "2020-11-12T17:00+02:00",
  "eventStatus": "https://schema.org/EventScheduled",
  "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OnlineEventAttendanceMode",
  "location": {
    "@type": "VirtualLocation",
    "url": "https://example.com/"
  },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "name": "Free ticket",
    "price": "0",
    "priceCurrency": "EUR",
    "validFrom": "2020-10-27",
    "url": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/tickets/",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
  }
}

Schema for offline events

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Event",
  "organizer": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "WordCamp Alaska 2020 organizing team",
    "url": "https://alaska.wordcamp.org/2020/about/organizers/"
  },  
  "name": "WordCamp Alaska 2020",
  "description": "Join the Alaskan WordPress Community for a full day of learning, sharing and fun!",
  "image": "https://alaska.wordcamp.org/2020/files/2020/09/wp-alaska-2020-logo-black.png",
  "startDate": "2020-11-12T12:00+02:00",
  "endDate": "2020-11-12T17:00+02:00",
  "eventStatus": "https://schema.org/EventScheduled",
  "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OfflineEventAttendanceMode",
  "location": {     
    "@type": "Place",
    "name": "Our WordCamp venue",
    "address": {
      "@type": "PostalAddress",
      "streetAddress": "Address line 1",
      "addressLocality": "City",
      "addressRegion": "AK",
      "postalCode": "12345",
      "addressCountry": "US"
    }
  },
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "name": "Regular ticket",
    "price": "25",
    "priceCurrency": "EUR",
    "validFrom": "2020-10-27",
    "url": "https://alaska.wordcamp.org/2020/tickets/",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
  }
}

Schema for cancelled events

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Event",
  "name": "WordCamp Finland 2020",
  "description": "Join the Finnish, Nordic and European WordPress Community for a full day of learning, sharing and fun!",
  "image": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/files/2020/09/wpfi2020-logo-black.png",
  "startDate": "2020-11-12T12:00+02:00",
  "endDate": "2020-11-12T17:00+02:00",
  "eventStatus": "https://schema.org/EventCancelled",
  "eventAttendanceMode": "https://schema.org/OnlineEventAttendanceMode",
  "location": {
    "@type": "VirtualLocation",
    "url": "https://example.com/"
  },
  "organizer": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "WordCamp Finland 2020 organizing team",
    "url": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/about/organizers/"
  },  
  "offers": {
    "@type": "Offer",
    "name": "Free ticket",
    "price": "0",
    "priceCurrency": "EUR",
    "validFrom": "2020-10-27",
    "url": "https://finland.wordcamp.org/2020/tickets/",
    "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"
  }
}

UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. controls

A lot of this data comes from existing fields / settings in the system. I think these are the ones that we might need to be able to change manually:

Decisions still left to make

  • Should the organization bit refer to the organizing team or to the WordCamp foundation or something else?

Thanks to @francina, @sippis and @jonoaldersonwp for providing early feedback on this idea.

jillbinder 1:08 am on October 29, 2020
Tags:   

Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on October 28, 2020

Summary: We talked about how our workshops went in October, the Intermediate workshop series coming up in November, Spanish translations, Community badges, working on our annual report for consideration for the upcoming State of the WordState of the Word This is the annual report given by Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress at WordCamp US. It looks at what we’ve done, what we’re doing, and the future of WordPress. https://wordpress.tv/tag/state-of-the-word/., finding roles for a new volunteer, and how confusing it currently is to find what workshops we have upcoming.

Continue reading →

#wpdiversity

Cami Kaos 7:21 pm on October 27, 2020
Tags:   

Tuesday Trainings: Organizing WordPress Meetups Part 1: Getting Started

Welcome back to Tuesday Trainings

We took a bit of a break from the Tuesday Trainings series to reassess and see how best to proceed. But now we’re back. The aim of this series is the same as it was before, to shed light on topics and information that folx in this community may find valuable. Some weeks I’ll provide you with fresh content from contributors on the community team but other weeks I am excited to share with you some of the workshops being built for the Learn WordPress Workshop program.

This week and next we’ll focus on the Organizing WordPress Meetups series created by @harmonyromo @harishanker @evarlese and @angelasjin.

Learning outcomes

Each workshop in the learn series has a set of objectives called the learning outcomes. For this workshop (part 1 of 2) the following learning outcomes have been set by your workshop hosts:

  1. Learn how to apply to organize an official WordPress Chapter 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..
  2. Understand the five good faith rules and expectations of all organizers.
  3. Learn about how sponsorships for meetups are handled
  4. Learn why the trademark and GPLGPL GPL is an acronym for GNU Public License. It is the standard license WordPress uses for Open Source licensing https://wordpress.org/about/license/. The GPL is a ‘copyleft’ license https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html. This means that derivative work can only be distributed under the same license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD license and the MIT License are widely used examples. guidelines are important for anyone who represents WordPress in an official capacity.

Now that you know what you’re going to learn, you can watch this video workshop here!

Comprehension questions

Once the video is complete ask yourself these questions to see if you got from the workshop what your hosts hoped you would:

  • Learn how to apply to organize an official WordPress Chapter meetup.
  • Understand the five good faith rules and expectations of all organizers.
  • Learn about how sponsorships for meetups are handled
  • Learn why the trademark and GPL guidelines are important for anyone who represents WordPress in an official capacity.

Talk about it

Now that you’ve taken something away from the workshop I hope you’ll take this all a step further and join a live discussion group to discuss the content with others who have watched it as well. You can find discussion groups specific to any of the workshops you find on Learn.WordPress here on Meetup.com.

You’re also welcome to bring your questions here in the comments!

#tuesdaytrainings

Ian Dunn 12:00 am on October 27, 2020
Tags:   

WordCamp.org URL Migration Complete

Background

Earlier this year, @jonoaldersonwp and @joostdevalk highlighted some significant SEO problems with WordCamp.org, and proposed changing the URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org structure to help fix them.

After discussion, the team decided to change the existing structure of year.city.wordcamp.org to city.wordcamp.org/year.

Status

All sites have now been migrated to the new structure. I’m not aware of any significant problems on past or current sites, but if you notice any please let me know.

Next Steps

We’ll need to wait a few months, in order for search engines to update their indexes. After that, we can measure the discoverability of 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. sites again, to see what problems remain, and how severe they are. Based on that, we can re-evaluate potential solutions for the remaining problems.

Feedback

If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please leave a comment below.

#wordcamp-org

WordCamp.org 4:00 am on October 26, 2020
Tags:   

Weekly Updates

Hello to all our Deputies, WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. organizers, MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. wranglers, and WordPress Community builders! You were probably hard at work this weekend. Tell us what you got accomplished in our #weekly-update!

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

Hari Shanker R 11:09 am on October 20, 2020
Tags: , , ,   

Meetup Organizer Newsletter: October 2020

Hello friends,

Welcome to the October edition of our 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. organizer newsletter! We have many exciting news and updates from the WordPress community and resources for your local meetup group.

Newsletter contents:

  • Learn WordPress 
  • Meetup Organizer resources
  • Online Event updates

Learn WordPress

The Learn WordPress initiative offers WordPress video workshops that can help WordPress meetups. Check out our new workshops on Contributing to WordPress, Using the WordPress Block Editor, WordPress Troubleshooting, and the Diverse Speaker Training, topics! Have questions on these workshops? Participate in our upcoming discussion groups to get answers!

All community members can now submit their workshop ideas for the program in any language of their choice! Meetup organizers can also organize discussion groups based on workshops for their local meetup groups. You can also contribute to Learn WordPress by helping the Training team update screenshots on existing lesson plans.

Meetup Organizer Resources

  • Sponsored Zoom Pro accounts for Online Meetups: In the light of WordPress events moving online in April 2020, the Community team started offering Zoom Pro accounts for online WordCamps and special WordPress events. The team has opened up a discussion to investigate if these accounts can be made available for meetup groups. Please comment on the post to share what you need to successfully run your local meetup online, if you would like to get Paid Zoom accounts for your local meetup or if you have ideas on how to improve the process.
  • WordPress 5.5 marketing resources: Meetup groups can make use of the WordPress 5.5 marketing resources from the Marketing team and other teams. The resources consist of video presentations, slides, questions & answers, social media posts, and more – aimed at both developers and non-developers. If you would like to help out with WordPress 5.6 outreach, reach out to the team on the #marketing channel in the Make WordPress Slack.
  • Videos to help onboard WordPress contributors: Step-by-step video instructions on how to set up accounts on 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/ and Make WordPress 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/. are now available on YouTube in the Marketing Team’s YouTube channel. The captioned videos are available in several languages. If you wish to add captions and voiceovers in your language for the video, get involved through the #marketing Slack channel.

Online Event Updates

Upcoming Online WordCamps
Don’t miss the chance to get free tickets for these online WordCamps! 

Upcoming Online meetups

You can find all the upcoming online meetups across the world at: https://make.wordpress.org/community/events/online/.

Past Online WordCamps
Several online WordCamps were held successfully in the past few weeks. Did you miss these events, and would you like to catch up with them? Check out their websites to follow their recorded live streams. Videos of these camps are being uploaded to WordPress.tv.

The WordPress Translation Week

As part of the International Translation Day celebrations on September 30, a host of WordPress translation events were held from 28 September to 4 October. After a couple of weeks, the celebrations are still ongoing! You can catch recorded talks and interviews with Polyglots on YouTube. In response to requests, the Polyglots and Marketing teams are considering month-long translation periods once or twice a year to promote translations. Follow @TranslateWP, and use the #WPTranslationDay tag on Twitter to share your translation adventures. The Translation week event highlights will be published on: https://wptranslationday.org/2020-events/.

Diverse Speaker Training Workshops (#WPDiversity)

More workshops will be in October and November to encourage diverse voices to share their knowledge and stories to online WordPress Meetups and WordCamps. Here’s a list of upcoming events for you or your members:

Don’t forget to keep up with the #WPDiversity announcements on 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. Twitter and Facebook accounts, along with the Marketing team LinkedIn Page. 

If you have any questions, Community Team deputies are available to help. Please send an email to [email protected] or join the #community-events Slack 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 the newsletter this month: @angelasjin @chaion07 @courane01 @harishanker @hlashbrooke @jillbinder @lmurillom @meher @nao @oglekler @webcommsat and @tacoverdo

#newsletter #meetup-organizer-newsletter

Hari Shanker R 11:20 am on October 19, 2020
Tags: , ,   

Addressing Mailchimp and Newsletter service privacy concerns

A few weeks back, @hlashbrooke and I jointly-published a post that announced Mailchimp as the chosen newsletter service for the Community Team. In the following days, members of the community shared concerns about the lack of transparency in the newsletter service selection process and the privacy implications of using a newsletter service. I had published a follow-up post last week, to shed more light on the process behind the 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. newsletter service selection. The current post is a second follow-up that will hopefully address the concerns that were raised by community members about community organizer and meetup group member privacy.

I have privacy law concerns about using a third-party service such as Mailchimp for contacting Meetup organizers. Is this move legal and GDPR-compliant?

WordPress chapter meetups are part of Meetup.com’s “Meetup Pro” network. When people join a WordPress meetup via Meetup.com, they agree to their privacy policy which states that, “Members who administer a Meetup Pro network, known as ‘network administrators’ have access to the content within their groups, including information about group participants.” (see 3.2 Group Networks). Meetup.com also makes it possible for WordPress chapter group members to share their email address with the network administrators of the Meetup Pro account.

The Community Team has been sending monthly newsletters to WordPress chapter group organizers since 2018. The reasons behind the suggestion that the quality of those newsletters could be improved if they were sent via a dedicated email newsletter platform are outlined in this blog post.

According to privacy consultants (in this case, people who oversee Automattic’s various privacy policies) who gave pro bono advice on this question, GDPR and other privacy laws do not require an organization to seek data subject consent (consent from subscribers) to change email platforms. It is not a legal or GDPR requirement to obtain consent for which platform is used to send emails, just as an individual is not required to obtain permission for which email platform they use to send emails to their friends, family, and other contacts.

Thus, it was clear to us that there are no privacy issues with changing the newsletter vendor. Hence, the list of meetup organizers, who had already given permission for meetup.com to share their email addresses with WordPress chapter network administrators, was exported to Mailchimp. Ongoing email newsletter preferences will be managed there.  

What is the privacy policy of Mailchimp?

One of the concerns raised was that Mailchimp could potentially use the contacts we upload for their marketing purposes. As mentioned in the Privacy for contacts section, Mailchimp support confirms that contacts will not be used for marketing purposes. Their usage is restricted to the following cases:

  • To enforce their terms
  • To protect the rights and safety of Members
  • To do anything required to protect itself legally and to fulfill its legal obligations
  • To provide support and improve the service
  • For internal data analysis purposes
  • To fulfill other business obligations

However, as mentioned in the privacy policy, Mailchimp may use data collected from those community deputies, who use the community Mailchimp account to send newsletters to the community, for marketing purposes. This is common with many third party services and it does not pose privacy risks to the larger community.

Furthermore, if any community member does not want to have their contact information being used for the internal data analysis purposes of Mailchimp or wants to get their personal information erased, they can get this done by submitting a Data Subject Access Request.

How does someone know that an email from WordPress Community Support is being sent through Mailchimp?

All newsletters sent through Mailchimp will have a notification included in the footer of the email. The footer for all future Mailchimp emails will contain the following information: 

This email was sent to you via Mailchimp. You are receiving this email because you opted in at our website: https://central.wordcamp.org or through https://meetup.com/pro/wordpress

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit the following URLs:

https://wordpress.org/about/privacy/
https://central.wordcamp.org/
https://make.wordpress.org/community

What emails will be sent using Mailchimp?

The WordPress Community Team sends email newsletters to meetup organizers every month. The newsletter contains news, updates, and essential information for WordPress community organizers all over the world. As outlined in an earlier post, Meetup.com was being used to send these emails previously, so there is no change in the number and types of emails that will be sent now that Mailchimp is being used. Each month, Mailchimp will be used to send the meetup organizer newsletter to approximately 1,600 meetup organizers (out of 2,000+ organizers) who have subscribed to emails from Meetup.com. Please note: only people who have subscribed to Meetup.com emails will be contacted via Mailchimp. That’s a total of one email per month (typically sent on every second Friday of the month), which amounts to 12 emails per year.

It would also be ideal to use Mailchimp to send the annual meetup organizer and member surveys (aimed at meetup organizers and meetup group members respectively), as well as any critical announcements that are relevant to the entire community.

What is the benefit of using a different platform, such as Mailchimp, for sending newsletters?

Meetup.com has been an unreliable platform for sending newsletters with several pain-points like non-delivery of emails, lack of formatting options, inability to reach out to specific meetup groups, lack of data on engagement, and lack of separate email lists, to name a few. Many organizers complained to us about missing the newsletter emails. During the recent meetup group inventory, many organizers did not receive the emails that were sent to them via Meetup.com. Using a dedicated email newsletter vendor, we can communicate with meetup group members more reliably about the program and convey any urgent and time-sensitive information without worrying about organizers missing our emails. We can also make those messages easier and more enjoyable to read. 

Can I unsubscribe to emails from Mailchimp?
Yes, you can always unsubscribe by following this link, or by clicking the “unsubscribe” link in the footer of any email received via Mailchimp. The team will be implementing a 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. on make.wordpress.org/community that will make it easier for community members to subscribe  and unsubscribe from emails. 

Additionally, community members can also submit a Data Subject Access Request if they wish to prevent their data from being used for internal data analysis or if they want their personal data to be erased from MailChimp servers.

Will Mailchimp be used for marketing emails to organizers?

No. This list will only be used for emails that support the legitimate interests of the global community team: to help people learn to use and contribute to WordPress. Community organizers and meetup members will only receive messages that support this mission. 

What if I want to revisit the email newsletter vendor discussion, and suggest a different approach? 

One of the reasons why Mailchimp was chosen as a newsletter service was because it offered a Pay as you go plan that allows us to effectively ‘test’ the service without lock-ins. We have only spent $150 with them for 5000 emails. We can always choose to cancel our plans of using Mailchimp and move to a different service, if there are better options. 

If you feel that there is a different newsletter service that the team can use, please feel free to share more about them in the comments on this post. Feel free to refer to the past discussion in the Make/Community blog on newsletter services, and the list of shortlisted services for reference.

The Community team remains committed to protecting the privacy of our event attendees and group members, and it’s great that the members of the WordPress community  help hold us accountable on this. 

Are there any concerns about this project that you would like to see addressed? Do you have any feedback on the project to share? Share your thoughts and concerns in the comments. 

This post was prepared jointly by @hlashbrooke and I.

The following people contributed to this post: @adityakane @andreamiddleton @bph @camikaos @courtneypk @francina @kcristiano @rmarks and @sippis

#newsletter #newsletter-service #newsletter-service-selection