Hari Shanker R 5:23 pm on May 14, 2021
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Meetup Organizer Newsletter: May 2021

Hello friends,

Welcome to the May 2021 edition of 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. Organizer newsletter! You will find the latest updates from the WordPress world and resources for meetup organizers in this edition. 

Newsletter contents:

  • Proposals on returning to in-person WordPress events
  • Full Site Editing updates for Meetup Groups
  • Online event updates
  • Tuesday Trainings
  • News from the WordPress world

Proposals on returning to in-person WordPress events

The Community Team has opened up a discussion on the path to in-person WordCamps and requests community members to share feedback. We have also published a separate proposal on adding vaccination status to the in-person meetup checklist as a criterion to organize in-person WordPress meetups. All meetup organizers are invited to share their thoughts on these proposals in the comments. Please note: These proposals are still being discussed. WordPress meetups in most regions and all WordCamps will continue to be held online until further notice.

Full Site Editing updates for Meetup Groups

The sixth call for testing as part of the Full Site Editing (FSE) outreach program is out! Check out the testing call and join the #fse-outreach-experiment 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 to participate. Deadline for testing: 26 May 2021. Here is how your local meetup group can contribute:

👉 Organize a dedicated testing sprint meetup. At the event, ask all the attendees to test FSE following the testing instructions and share your feedback with the FSE team!
👉 Encourage individual community members to test FSE. Amplify the latest FSE Testing call amongst your local community, and encourage folks to try the feature.
👉 BONUS: Help test the widgets editor on WordPress 5.8!

Check out this blog post on FSE to know more. You can also find answers to the most common FSE questions now!

Online event updates

Don’t forget to catch up with online meetups across the world! If you’re organizing an online WordPress event, use the hashtag #OnlineWPMeetup for social media promotions. The WordPress Marketing team can help promote your online meetup – if you wish to avail of their assistance, reach out to them in the #marketing Slack channel for more information.

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. Europe 2021!
One of the most exciting WordPress events, WordCamp Europe 2021, will be held online on June 7-9, 2021! Free tickets for the event are out, and their call for sponsors is still open. Sign up for email updates and follow #WCEU on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to stay updated! 

Past WordPress Events
Catch recordings of these past WordCamps by visiting their websites. 

Upcoming WordPress events 
Check out these upcoming WordCamps that are coming up later this year. 

Diverse speaker training group workshop for Philippines and South East Asia

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 marginalized and underrepresented folks (based on gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, age, etc.) in the Philippines and South East Asia. Meetup and WordCamp organizers are also invited to attend. Date: Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 3pm-4:30pm Philippines time (7:00 – 8.30 AM UTC). Read more about the workshop and register now!

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 various skills. Meetup organizers will find our Tuesday Training on: “How can I keep my meetups interesting and fun” extremely useful! The post shares some helpful tips that organizers can use to spice up their online meetings. Don’t forget to check out our other Tuesday Training posts this month:

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!

The following folks contributed to the Meetup Organizer Newsletter this month: @chaion07 and @jillbinder

#meetup-organizer-newsletter

#newsletter

jillbinder 7:36 pm on May 12, 2021
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Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on May 12, 2021

Attending: @jillbinder @onealtr @tantienhime @katiejrichards @ashiquzzaman

Start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1620838958453000

  • We thanked @oneal for the great job leading our last meeting
  • We talked about two upcoming workshops (we would love your help in promoting them too, WordPress community):
    Philippines on May 15: https://twitter.com/jillbinder/status/1392273538577534978
    Black WordPress on June 5 & 12: https://twitter.com/wpengine/status/1364576083681673219
  • We invited more group members to facilitate workshops this summer
  • We invited more group members to facilitate our 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/. meetings
  • We asked who is attending 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. Europe June 7-9. @angelasjin and I are considering if this group should offer a workshop, an unformal networking event, or perhaps be a part of one. It would be nice to have friendly #WPDiversity group member faces in the crowd.

End: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1620842519000300

jillbinder 12:12 am on May 12, 2021
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This weekend: #WPDiversity Workshop for the Philippines and APAC

Workshop: How to Own Your Expertise & Start Speaking at WordPress Events PH/APAC

You spoke and we heard you. Our monthly-ish Diverse Speaker workshops over the last year have been available to AMER/EMEA time only. We love you too, Asia. @onealtr is holding a workshop for you in Philippines and APAC!

Saturday, May 15, 2021 at 3pm-4:30pm Philippines time

Facilitated by: @onealtr

Does the thought of speaking at one of our meetups or WordCamps intrigue you? Do you identify as a person from a marginalized and underrepresented group (in terms of gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, age, etc.) who is thinking about speaking at a 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. or 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.? Do you think you don’t know or have anything worth speaking about?

Or are you a meetup or WordCamp event organizer and want to improve the diversity of your speaker lineups? Would you like to meet potential speakers and help them create great talks that your community would love to hear at your event?

Come to our 1.5 hour “Interactive, Transformational Watch Party” workshop this weekend!

Read more about our free workshop this weekend and register

Please help us spread the word! Send this post to your WordPress friends in PH/APAC.

#wpdiversity, #wpdiversityworkshops

Cami Kaos 6:44 pm on May 11, 2021
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Tuesday Trainings: What do you want to know?

This year we’ve changed the format of Tuesday Trainings to better get directly at the issues that seem to be on the minds of folks in our community. How are we doing that? Great question. We’re either seeking to answer commonly asked questions or address commonly heard complaints, concerns, and confusions.

And this week, well this week what you all want to know is exactly what I would like to focus on. It’s been a while since we’ve received a topic request. I very much want this series to be of benefit to community members like you. Yes YOU!

Rather than having the same few people come up with ideas or answer questions that came in ages ago I wanted to take this week as an opportunity to truly open the Tuesday Training doors up for questions.

What kind of questions?

Well that’s up to you. I want to know what you all want to know. But I also don’t want to leave it all on you. If there’s anything you’re wondering about in WordPress community right now please share it in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer it, or find a person more appropriate to answer it. You can leave it as a comment on this post or send the question in to [email protected] with the subject: Tuesday Trainings.

Still don’t have a question?

Sometimes coming up with ideas out of nowhere is challenging. And we don’t know what we don’t know so I also thought I would share a list of ideas we have waiting in the wings. If there’s one you would particularly like to see answered please let me know in the comments.

What are the best ways to keep up to date on happenings in the WordPress world, that I can share with my members?
Best practices in community building
Recruiting volunteers/organizers for my 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.
Different online meetup formats
What topics are popular in WordPress meetups? (maybe try to glean this from meetup.com reports? or a survey?)
How do DEI efforts help my local community and WordPress?
How can I recruit new organizers in my local community?
What do community deputies do?
Financial updates and how to put together 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. budget
Marketing my meetup

#tuesdaytrainings

Hari Shanker R 2:45 pm on May 11, 2021
Tags: , documentation-sprint   

Proposal: A documentation editing sprint for the Community team

I won’t mince words here – several pages in the Make/Community handbook are outdated and need to be updated. With recent changes to our program – especially with the shift to online events, some documents have become redundant. Many other documents that are still relevant, have not been updated to incorporate the latest changes. In this background, our docs could benefit from a structured, pro-active approach to make sure that they stay current and accurate.

To achieve this goal, I propose a documentation editing sprint for the Community team!

What is a documentation editing sprint?

Community contributors and deputies work together to audit, and edit outdated documents in the Community team handbooks and any related documentation pages, so that they provide accurate and up-to-date information for our community members.

What are the documents that we will be editing?

We should audit, review, and edit the following documents in our Community team handbook:

Since the community team actively works on the Learn WordPress project, it would help to review and make changes to the Learn WordPress handbook as well – if we have the bandwidth.

When do we do it?

I propose that we test this out by organizing an initial sprint exactly two weeks later on May 25th – which is also known as the Towel Day (no points for guessing – I’m a Douglas Adams fan! 🙈). If the initial sprint goes well, we can consider organizing multiple sprints throughout the rest of the year. Community members can work on editing the documentation pages at their own convenience throughout the course of the day.

Who can participate/Who edits the docs?

This initiative is open to all! Many Community deputies have edit access to the Make/Community site, they can perhaps edit the documents directly. Other community already members can propose changes in a shared Google doc which can later be merged with the main document.

How do we do it?

It would help to keep track of all the documents and their changes in spreadsheets, or using collaboration tools such as 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.. Perhaps, before the sprint day, a few deputies can do a pre-event sweep to identify the docs that need to be edited, and encourage contributors to work on those selected documents? Contributors can use a shared Google sheet to update the status of the edits they made and the work they did. We can use 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 to coordinate the efforts. The efforts can be spread out throughout the day so that folks can work at their own pace.

Following the event, we publish a recap post to share about the changes that were made during the sprint. If it is successful, we can probably repeat the event later and perhaps even consider organizing regular documentation editing sprints (either once per quarter or once every month).

Request for feedback

  • First of all, what do you think about this idea and the proposed format? Is this something the community team should carry out?
  • Do you know of any specific documents from our handbook that need edits? If so, please share them in the comments.
  • The biggest question: How do we track progress – both contributions from individual community members and changes made to the documents?

Please share your feedback by May 20th (Thursday).

#documentation-sprint #community-team

Timi Wahalahti 8:09 am on May 6, 2021
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Community Team Meeting agenda for 2021-05-06

The Community Team bi-weekly meeting is happening today. The meeting is meant for all contributors on the team and everyone who is interested in taking part in some of the things our team does. Feel free to join us, even if you are not currently active in the team!

Asia-Pacific / EMEA friendly meeting: 2021-05-06 12:00
Americas friendly meeting: 2021-05-06 21:00

Below is a preliminary agenda for the meeting. If you wish to add things you’d like bring to into discussion, comment below or reach out to team reps @sippis or @kcristiano. It does not need to be a blog post yet, the topic can be discussed during the meeting nevertheless. We use the same agenda for both meetings.

Preliminary agenda

Deputy / Mentor / Contributor check-ins

What have you been doing and how is it going? What you got accomplished after the last meeting? Are there any blockers? Can other team members help you in some way?

Highlights

Youth Working Group
Youth Working Group works together to provide resources to event organizers of kids based events. They are always welcoming new contributors! Join the group in their next meeting on Tuesday, May 11, 2021, at 1400 UTC in #community-team channel.

Contributor Working Group
This group is working towards creating a comprehensive, centralized location for all Contributor information that will help encourage all Contributors and Contributor Event Planners. This group also welcomes all new contributors who want to help! Follow #wpcontributors tag in our blog to hear about upcoming meetings.

Diverse Speaker Training Working Group
This group supports meetups and WordPress events to run a workshop that will help increase the number of speaker applications from people from marginalized and underrepresented groups. This group as well is welcoming new contributors. Follow #wpdiversity tag in our blog to hear about upcoming meetings.

New and ongoing discussions

Discussing the path to in-person WordCamps
Throughout the pandemic, the team has maintained the safety and health of the community as the highest priority, and this has not changed. To that end, and knowing that this is a complex discussion, the Community team invites you to share your thoughts on how the WordPress community can safely move back to in-person WordCamps.

Discussion: Companies who run competitive ads against WordPress and apply to sponsor WordCamps
Recently, 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. organizing team raised a question to Community Deputies about a potential sponsor’s product, a WordPress derivative, being promoted in competition with WordPress and putting WordPress in an unflattering light. This question naturally prompted some discussion around where our expectations could be clarified to address WordPress derivatives and how they are promoted by sponsors, speakers, and organizers.

Feedback time in this discussion has ended, but we can discuss it in brief if someone has something in mind.

WordCamp Europe plans
WordCamp Europe Online is coming in a month and the team has the opportunity to host some content during the event if we’d like to. Timi will put a more detailed post out there tomorrow, but here are the basics so everyone can start to think of possible ideas for the content.

We can host a workshop or two during the event days if we’d like to, to showcase or help related to our team. We can submit the workshop applications until Friday next week. Another opportunity we’ll have during the WCEU days is to have a few zoom session, which can be more unformal. For example to help onboard new contributors, have kind of office hours hosted by deputies to answer all questions related to events… we can do anything really if we’d like to!

Open floor

Opportunity to bring things into discussions that weren’t on the meeting agenda and if anyone has something they would like to share with the team. If you have a topic in mind before the meeting, please add it into the comments of this post.

Hope to see you on Thursday, either on Asia-Pacific / EMEA or Americas friendly version of the meeting!

#meeting-agenda, #team-chat, #team-meeting

Angela Jin 4:55 pm on May 4, 2021
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Tuesday Trainings: All About Community Deputies

This year we’ve changed the format of Tuesday Trainings to better get directly at the issues that seem to be on the minds of folks in our community. How are we doing that? Great question. We’re either seeking to answer commonly asked questions or address commonly heard complaints, concerns, and confusions.

If there’s a question you’d like to see answered or a topic you’d like to see discussed, please share it in the comments or email me at [email protected] with the subject line Tuesday Trainings. Now onto this week’s topic.

The WordPress Community Team is well known for hosting WordPress events around the world. Whether in-person or online, since 2006, volunteer organizers have hosted incredible events that connect WordPress enthusiasts to each other, inspire them to do more with WordPress, and encourage people to contribute back to the project.

Community organizing, however, is a multi-faceted world of wonders. Beyond the logistics of organizing an event, community organization involves excellent leadership skills, as well as knowledge of marketing, project and program management, and much, much more. 

So how is it possible that the WordPress Community team regularly welcomes new event organizers, many who may not have any previous experience?

It’s in large, large part thanks to the amazing people we call Community Deputies: WordPress 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. and/or 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 who enjoyed organizing so much, they wanted to help others around the world! 

Who are the Community Deputies?

Community deputies are organizers themselves, and many continue to be very active in their local communities. They participate in extra training around best 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. community building practices, and how the Community Team brings that to WordPress. This training, combined with their familiarity with the WordCamp and/or meetup chapter program, allows them to become experts in how to bring WordPress enthusiasts together.

Community deputies are, unsurprisingly, people-oriented. From everyday decisions to complex situations, deputies are guided by what is in the best interests of the WordPress community. Deputies frequently reflect on what would make things easier for contributors, and how to better support them.

Ok, but what exactly do Community Deputies do?

Community Deputies Deputies are charged with three areas of responsibility:

  1. Tackling an ongoing, regular list of tasks.
  2. Training, guiding, and mentoring WordPress communities and organizers
  3. Advising on direction and future of the Community team

The Community Team has a range of routine tasks that help keep everything moving slowly. This includes things like vetting applications for meetup groups and WordCamps, or sending Zoom accounts to meetup organizers. There are a number of queues that deputies maintain daily. For a full list of tasks, check out our deputy handbook.

In addition to welcoming and orienting Meetup and WordCamp organizers, Deputies are also around to help answer any and all questions from organizers around the world. There are a number of common questions (check out other Tuesday Trainings to see some of those questions and answers), and deputies leverage their training and experience to give the best answers! Deputies routinely help with topics like how to sustainably expand an organizing team, how to diversify a speaker line up, or simply how to start a local community.

Sometimes, those questions can get pretty tricky, for example, questions around how help a potential sponsor change their licence to be 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.-friendly. In many of these cases, deputies will work together to discuss and to provide the strongest community-driven responses. 

Supporting a global community allows deputies to have a broader view of the Community team and how programs are functioning. When deputies see areas for improvement, they’ll suggest them! Deputies will also bring up, discuss, and help decide bigger, whole program decisions. A great example of this is our work with exploring how to move back to in-person events. 

Of course, deputies rely on lots of collaboration and feedback organizers, WordCamp mentors, event sponsors, volunteers, and attendees to do all of this incredible work! Across discussions and projects, deputies regularly invite participation from any WordPress community member. 

Can I be a Community Deputy? 

Any WordPress organizer with experience and who is in good standing with the program can be a Community Deputy. To learn more about being a Community Deputy, check out the handbook. When you’re ready, submit an application! We’ll get back to you as soon as possible. 

Want to learn more? Come join us in the #community-events or #community-team channels in the Making WP 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/.! We’re super friendly people, so come say hi.  

Thank you @hlashbrooke, @sippis, @kcristiano for helping to write this week’s Tuesday Training.

#tuesdaytrainings

klipari 7:24 pm on May 3, 2021  

Recap of Youth Working Group | Tuesday, April 27, 2021.

Attending: @klipari, @chaion07, @ashiquzzaman, @oneal

Start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1619539724199100

Agenda

  1. Updates from the year
  2. Goals for this year
  3. Needs of the Group
  4. Open Floor Discussion

You can see the Agenda post we referenced here. It had not changed from our previous meeting.

Summary

We are still in need of volunteers to participate in helping create content for educators and adults who want to hold Kids Camps. We have all of the documentation, we just need ready and able individuals capable of turning those into a lesson plan or slideshow for narration.

No experience needed for this or the other activities we need assistance with:

  • Research – laws surrounding minors at events globally
  • Writing – arts and crafts documentation, WordPress basics documentation, Parental Resources Documents
  • Video Creation – how-to videos for parents to get involved with their kids, Encouraging Videos for organizers, and videos for educators
  • Editing – grammar, spell check, and general flow proofreaders/editors

We also need anyone who has experience with a Kids Camp to help evaluate our Handbook and offer improvements and edits.

Volunteer Update

We had three volunteers during the meeting and one committed to evaluating the documentation and working on a Google Doc to start the process of organizing the “How to prepare for a Kids Camp” information into a teachable format.

Please feel free to reach out directly if you feel called to assist in expanding the youth education content.

Next Meeting

Next Meeting is Tuesday May 11, 2021, 1400 UTC/ 10am EST. This chat will occur in the Make WordPress 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.

#kids-events, #youth-events

jillbinder 11:46 pm on April 30, 2021
Tags:   

Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on April 28, 2021

Lead by: @onealtr

Attending: @onealtr @angelasjin @drewgarcia @wpfangirl @nalininonstopnewsuk

Start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1619629202227100

  • We reviewed the status of the team’s current projects.
  • The first APAC region Diverse Speaker workshop for 2021 will be held in the Philippines, on May 15 1500H GMT+8. The team talked about what is needed on it, especially talking about getting the word out (marketing / promotions).

End: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1619632744256000

#wpdiversity

Christina Workman 12:40 am on April 21, 2021  

Contributor Working Group Agenda | April 21 2021

Here is the Agenda for our meeting on Wednesday, April 21, 2021 at 19:00 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

Hope to you see you there!

#WPContributors