jillbinder 8:57 pm on March 3, 2021
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Meetup Organizers: Got diverse speakers? Got any speakers?

Hello 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. organizers!

How are you doing with getting speakers for your events these days? Has it been tough?

If you _are_ getting speakers, have you had trouble getting women and people from other marginalized and underrepresented groups (in terms of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, or age, etc.) to speak at your meetups?

We are holding two proven, effective workshops for you and your underrepresented communities in March 2021.

They are the same content. One is for the global community and the other is for the Great Lakes area (Hamilton, Buffalo, Rochester, Niagara, Toronto, Mississauga, London, Kingston, Durham, etc.).

How would it feel to have a diverse speaker roster excited to speak at *your* meetup? Or if you’re not holding a meetup right now, giving your meetup community talk to attend at nearby meetups online?

We would like to invite you (yes you, the organizer, if you can) to attend the workshop along with underrepresented members of your community.

You’ll be able to support the participants to create great content that your meetup members would want to hear! (You’ll also be invited to do the exercises yourself, which will help everyone feel more comfortable participating, and also help you in your own speaker journey.)

All you need to do is send the message below to your meetup announcements. And also, if you can, to attend yourself.

(Even if you don’t think that there are underrepresented members in your community, a message like this will appeal to the people who have not been attending and you are likely to see new faces.)

Event for the Great Lakes area (Hamilton, Buffalo, Rochester, Niagara, Toronto, Mississauga, London Kingston, Durham, etc.):
March 4, 2021 @ 7:00pm – 8:30pm ET: How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WP Events #Diversity&Inclusion

Event for the global community:
Thursday, March 18, 2021 @ 5:30pm – 7:30pm UTC: How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events #WPDiversity

If you can attend, sign up now. Either way, please send the following message to your meetup announcements:

Continue reading →

#wpdiversity, #wpdiversityworkshops

Christina Workman 1:25 am on March 3, 2021
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Contributor Working Group Agenda | March 3, 2021

Here is the Agenda for our meeting on Wednesday March 3, 2021 at 20:00 UTC in the #community-team channel 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/.. As always, you can add comments to the meeting afterwards, and/or add comments to the recap post.

Agenda

  1. Team check-in
  2. Group check-ins
  3. Any blockers?
  4. Next steps

#WPContributors

Kevin Cristiano 1:07 pm on March 2, 2021
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Tuesday Trainings: Do I need a sponsor for my meetup?

This is a question deputies hear quite a bit. As with so many things, the quick answer to this question is usually “That depends, let’s talk about why you might need or want one”.

For meetups that happen in-person, the potential costs are far more than virtual meetups. I’ll talk about that in a bit, but for now I’ll focus on the more common virtual meetups.

In a virtual 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., what costs need to be covered? WordPress Community Support covers the meetup fees. This allows access to meetup.com which can be used to communicate with your members and take registrations. The meetup itself will need to be hosted on a service such as Zoom, or Google Meet. You can see a full list of possible tools in the handbook. Some of these services may incur costs. Many meetups are fortunate to have someone donate a paid Zoom account, but what if they don’t have one?

The Community Team has Zoom accounts available for meetups. You can see the application on this page. This can be very helpful, especially if the meetup has more than 100 attendees as these accounts allow up to 300 attendees. Because Meetups share these accounts, organizers do need to apply for a Zoom account each time, and the logins and links will change.

Beyond the virtual meeting tool, are there other costs involved that a sponsor would help with? If there are, ask the Community Team so that deputies can discuss and help you determine what to do.

With in-person meetups, there are more costs. There may be venue costs. Many meetups like a ‘snack’ and since attendees are not charged for meetups, this cost must be covered from somewhere. Some meetups get donated space from a sponsor and others have them sponsor the ‘snacks’. Both of these are wonderful opportunities to engage a sponsor to help out.

Are covering costs the only reason to have a sponsor? No. A good relationship between a meetup and a sponsor goes beyond money. A sponsor can add value to a meetup and let’s look at that.

Aside from covering venue costs and snacks (or pizza) for in person meetups, sponsors can and have offered their virtual meeting tools to local meetups. This allows others to use the Zoom accounts that the Community Team has. Many of our program sponsors are hosting companies, and they have offered hosting to meetups that want to have their own community website.

I’ve been focusing on what meetups need from sponsors, but an equally important question is: what value will sponsors receive from sponsoring a meetup?

In any sponsor relationship, both sides have to give and receive something the other wants. Sponsors will mostly get exposure and their name out to all the meetup attendees. Sponsors can also be a great resource to meetup organizers. Sponsors can help out with topic ideas and possibly provide speakers, as long as speakers also follow the five good faith rules.

This year all meetups have sponsors via the Global Sponsorship program. While the benefits are limited (see this post for the details), meetup organizers should make use of their valuable resources.

How have you involved sponsors in your meetup? Do you have additional questions around meetup sponsors that you’d like to discuss?

Thanks to @angelasjin @camikaos @liamdempsey for their contributions.

#meetups, #tuesdaytrainings

Christina Workman 12:33 am on March 1, 2021
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Recap of Contributor Working Group on Feb. 17, 2021

In attendance: @amethystanswers, @tacoverdo, @annezazu, @paaljoachim, @geektutor

Meeting start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1613591439277500
Agenda: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2021/02/17/contributor-working-group-agenda-february-17-2021/

Daylight Saving Time

Our meeting time will switch to 19:00 UTC after March 14, 2021. Meetings will still be the first and third Wednesdays of each month. Calendar invites should show your correct local time. Please let Christina Workman (@amethystanswers) know if you aren’t on the calendar invite and want to be. Also, the Agenda will always have a time converter link.

General Updates

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. India and Yoast had Contributor events where users were setting up local environments with Windows. @paaljoachim will be using notes from those experiences to improve documentation.

The PR around a welcome comment on GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ to push people to slack/be friendly was merged (@annezazu)

@annezazu did an update to the outreach page that should ideally help new people get up to speed with more wide ranging resources (https://developer.wordpress.org/block-editor/handbook/outreach/)

@daisyo participated at WordCamp India and plans to connect with them about how their Contributor event was

Group Goals

Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. Handbook

Goal: Look at how other OSS structure what they have for Contributor Events, compare it and use that to draw lessons and next goals. Start with Drupal, Joomla and TYPO3.
Target Date: April 1

Next Steps

Work towards goals

Next Meeting: Wednesday March 3, 2021 at 20:00 UTC

#WPContributors

Cami Kaos 9:32 pm on February 25, 2021  

Proposal to improve the organizing experience for online WordCamps

Over the past year WordPress event organizers around the globe have learned so much about the process of organizing WordCamps, meetups, and other events online because we had to do that to keep going. Now that we’ve had a year to come together in this new way several of us have seen common obstacles. Timi and I met earlier this week to discuss those obstacles and how we might make organizing online WordCamps a better experience for all.

Getting through the obstacles 

Though there are a variety of obstacles that stand in the way of ideal online event organization there seem to be three things that are prominent for many 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.

Tools

We are spoiled for choice when it comes to online streaming tools. Because of this, organizers are using the tools that appeal most to them and their organizing team. This is great for personal choice, but makes it difficult to document the technical process to make the recording, broadcasting, and communicating part of the conference less time intensive so organizers can focus on what matters: content.

Documentation

The Community Team has spent years creating a handbook, training, and documentation for organizing our in-person events, but after a year of the WordPress community organizing exclusively online events, we haven’t created a lot of methodology or documentation to guide organizers through the specifics of all it takes to organize an online event. This knowledge gap, combined with not recommending specific tools has made this process harder to build extensive documentation for. 

Money

Organizing an online event is a lot of work. Technical work that many of us don’t have the experience to carry out. In the beginning of the pandemic, we solved the technical hurdle by hiring live streaming professionals to do the technical work for our events while organizers were able to focus on content. Since we’re not charging for registration with online events, it left sponsorship as our singular funding source. It’s not financially responsible, or in the long term possible, for WordCamps to continue paying for professional streaming producers and still maintain the values and expectations of the program.

The proposal

What we’re proposing is that we (community organizers, deputies, and members of the community team) select a small number of tools for both pre-recording speaker sessions and live presentation of speaker sessions, as well as select any ancillary editing and communication tools so we can document more completely the event process. While doing so we’d increase the knowledge base of our organizers and volunteers, decrease our dependence on paid production, and reduce the amount of fundraising needed to sustain this program while it continues in its online-only state. At this time we are not proposing the specific tools to be used. We would like to hear from the organizers of all of our online events throughout 2020 to see which tools were most successful for them, while keeping in mind accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) and cost. 

What’s missing?

I’m a big fan of acknowledging that I don’t know what I don’t know. Is there more that should go into this proposal? If there are additional considerations, please share those in the comments.

How can you help?

If you were part of an organizing team for an online WordCamp, please share with us what worked, and just as importantly, what didn’t work for you in the comments below. If you have online event organizing experience outside of WordCamps we’d love for you to share that as well, but please let us know what type of event your recommendations are based on when you share them.

Who is making this proposal?

This is a joint proposal from @sippis and @camikaos with additional support from @courtneypk and @kcristiano.

jillbinder 7:32 pm on February 24, 2021
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Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on February 24, 2021

Attending: @jillbinder @tantienhime @oneal @katiejrichards

Summary:

  • The Interactive, Transformational Watch party last week seemed to be was a great format for our Learn WordPress workshops.
  • What was missing was having more time for participants to discuss pitches. We came up with a few solutions and would love your feedback on which one
  • We need to make the messaging to 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./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 about our workshops much simpler. Even create a very simple “package” that is easy to copy/paste to their communities. We will try this out for the Great Lakes workshop next week and our next global workshop on March 18 (or March 17 and 18).
Continue reading →

#wpdiversity

Cami Kaos 7:03 pm on February 23, 2021
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Tuesday Trainings: When can we start having meetups in person again?

This year we’ve changed the format of Tuesday Trainings to reflect questions that are frequently asked of those of us in the Deputy program, or to clear up confusion that we see in everyday planning and discussion. If there’s a question you’d like to see answered please share it in the comments or email me at [email protected] with the subject line Tuesday Trainings. Now onto this week’s topic.

When can we start having meetups in person again?

I know that many communities are anxious to get things back to normal. Or at least as back to normal as can be found in these trying times. But we can only get back to seeing one another in person when it is safe for us to do so.

There have been a lot of conversations around this and what stands out most strongly to me is that everyone is sharing the answer that they feel is right. When so many people have such heightened feelings on a topic it is often more challenging for an entire community to come together and agree. I’m seeing and hearing a lot of frustration around this topic, and that is understandable. But mostly I am seeing people assuming good intent and working together to find what’s right for our community at large, and that is wonderful. 

Because there are some countries, states, cities, or areas where  Covid-19 risk is very low, we see that there is an opportunity for those communities to gather together in a safe way. So while I can’t answer for all meetups in this post, I can tell you that we’re on our way to seeing one another in person once again. But only in locations in which it is allowed by local public health rules and that meet the program expectations shared in this Community Handbook page on returning to in person meetups.

If you’re curious if your group qualifies you can go through the in-person meetup decision checklist to learn if your group is eligible. If you feel that you are eligible you’re required to submit your form before you move forward with organizing. If you don’t meet the criteria there’s no need for you to submit the form.

We qualify to proceed (with caution!!) to organize an in person 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.. Does that mean we HAVE TO?

Nope. It absolutely doesn’t mean you have to. This option is available because there are a few pockets of the world that seem to really have this thing under control with nearly no new infections. If groups in those areas would like to meet in a permitted, safe and cautious way we don’t want to stop them. But no one is required to switch back to in person meetups.

If your local conditions do qualify for in person meetups, please make sure you fill out the checklist form before you proceed, and keep all of the expectations and precautions shared in mind.

My meetup doesn’t qualify but that’s okay, the meetup group two cities away is hosting an event. I’ll go to that.

For everyone’s safety, I’m going to have to ask you to refrain from attending any meetup event that is outside of your immediate, local meetup. The expectations we’ve put into place do not account for people traveling from other areas to attend events. We ask that for the time being you only attend events in your own area. 

I’m so excited about seeing people! Does this mean we can have a 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. in real life too?

I’m excited to see people again too, but we’re not there yet. Meetups are traditionally much smaller and on an event by event basis, much easier to organize. They also present little financial risk if they must be cancelled. At this time we’re not approving any in-person WordCamps, contributor days, or other larger format events. Just the Meetups that fall into the expectations we’ve shared with communities that would like to meet in person.

But how was this all decided?

I’m so glad you asked. A lot of time, effort, and conversation went into this decision. And all the while we kept in mind a need to be morally, legally, and financially responsible about any decisions made for the future of the program. The conversation started with a post from current Community 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. @sippis back in July of 2020. You can read his post here, and will also be able to find links to continuing posts in the comments.

I have another question!

I always love another question. If there’s something you don’t feel was covered here or in the linked handbook or discussion threads please ask in comments so we can start a conversation about it.

What’s coming next with Tuesday Trainings?

I’m taking a couple of weeks off to unwind, but I didn’t want to leave you all without something to learn on upcoming Tuesdays. Please be sure to join us the next three for Tuesday trainings posts from @kcristiano and a Tuesday Training discussion on March 16 with @harishanker! I can’t wait to see what they’ve shared when I return!

#meetups-2, #tuesdaytrainings

Christina Workman 2:47 am on February 17, 2021  

Contributor Working Group Agenda | February 17 2021

Here is the Agenda for our meeting on Wednesday, February 17, 2021 at 20:00 UTC in the #community-team channel 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/.. As always, you can add comments to the meeting afterwards, and/or add comments to the recap post.

Agenda

  1. Team check-in
  2. Upcoming Daylight Saving Time
  3. Group check-ins
  4. Any blockers?
  5. Goal discussion for Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. Handbook group (final goal may be decided async)
  6. Next steps

#WPContributors

Hari Shanker R 5:23 pm on February 13, 2021
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Meetup Organizer Newsletter: February 2021

Hello friends,

Welcome to the February 2021 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 are off to a great start in 2021, and we have a lot of exciting news to share with you. Read on to find out more!

Newsletter contents:

  • Meetup organizer resources
  • Online event updates
  • Tuesday Trainings
  • News from the WordPress world

Meetup organizer resources

Online event updates

Ongoing WordPress events 
WordCamp India 2021 (online) is wrapping up on February 14 and 15 (Saturday and Sunday), with speaker sessions. The event features speakers including Matt Mullenweg and Josepha Haden, amongst other noteworthy speakers from the WordPress world. Free tickets for the event are still available if you would like to join the event.

Upcoming WordPress events 
Check out these upcoming WordCamps that are coming up later this year. Visit their websites to learn more. 

do_action charity hackathons and open-source workshops in 2021
Following the impact of online do_action charity hackathons and open-source workshops last year, the WordPress Foundation has published its plans for online do_action charity hackathons and Open-source workshops in 2021. Meetup organizers can now apply for an online do_action event or organize an introduction to open-source workshop. 


Diverse speaker training group: Interactive, Transformational Watch Party!|
The Diverse Speaker Training Group (#WPDiversity) is organizing an Interactive, Transformational Watch Party on the topic: How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events. This workshop is for Meetup and WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. organizers and your marginalized and underrepresented community members.
Date: February 18th, 2021 (Thursday) from 5.30 PM to 7.00 PM UTC.
Don’t forget to sign up for the event right now!

Checklist for safe, in-person WordPress events
Close on the heels of last month’s post on bringing back in-person meetups, the Community team has published an update explaining the process of using a checklist to ensure safe, in-person meetups later in 2021. Please note: WordPress events will continue to be online until the team has made a final decision on this topic.

Tuesday Trainings

Through Tuesday Trainings (#TuesdayTrainings), the Community team publishes a different topic on the WordPress Community Blog to help organizers and interested community members learn a variety of skills while also adding additional training documentation to our handbooks. Check our latest Tuesday Training posts: 

News from the WordPress world

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!

#meetup-organizers-newsletter #newsletter

The following people contributed to this edition of the Meetup newsletter: @_dorsvenabili, @meher, @nalininonstopnewsuk @webcommsat

jillbinder 7:54 pm on February 10, 2021
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Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on February 10, 2021

Summary:

  • Looking for more volunteer and participant signups for the “How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events #WPDiversity: An Interactive, Transformational Watch Party” on February 18th.
  • Shanta is looking for help from our team with promoting the “Great Lakes area: How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events” live workshop on March 4.
  • Our “Creating a Welcoming and Diverse Space” workshop videos are up on Learn. Oneal and Katie are working on items for it.
  • Our team will be holding a work party for people working on items for our group Thurs, Feb 11, 2021 @ 4-5pm Pacific (Friday 12-1am UTC)!
Continue reading →

#diversity, #marketing, #wpdiversity