Office Hours

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most WordPress events are online. Please refer to our online events handbook.

For communities where COVID-19 has been more effectively contained or have easy access to COVID-19 vaccination and/or testing, returning to hosting an in-person meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. event is possible, with caution, using the resources provided. If you plan to move forward with an in-person meetup, you must use the provided checklist .

While many organizer questions can be answered via email, synchronous communication 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/. can be quicker, more efficient, and friendlier. We started organizing office hoursOffice Hours Defined times when the Global Community Team are in the #community-events Slack channel. If there is anything you would like to discuss – you do not need to inform them in advance.You are very welcome to drop into any of the Community Team Slack channels at any time. in order to solve the problem of deputiesDeputy Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about deputies in our Community Deputy Handbook. working constantly in instant-reaction mode, and thus making mistakes due to constant multi-tasking.

While some questions that crop up in office hours can only be answered by a specific person, most can be answered by deputies or fellow organizers who are familiar with the organizer handbooks or our team workflow.

How to Host Office Hours

Post in the #community-events channel at the beginning of the hour that office hours are beginning, and then review the back scroll of the channel to see if anyone asked a question that went unanswered since the last office hour. Reply to that person, notifying them in the reply, as best you can. If you can’t answer their question, you can notify the person who you think might know the answer in your response or suggest that the person email [email protected] with their question. It’s okay to not know everything! Studies show that nearly no one does.

Whenever possible, we prefer to direct someone to the handbook page where their question can be answered, in addition to giving them a quick answer.

While it’s fun to chat with other deputies in the channel during office hours — you’re all “there” after all — sometimes this can discourage people who want to ask questions, because they might not want to interrupt. So while it’s fine to joke around and be friendly in office hours, it’s also best to keep those social interactions short so that other people have the “space” to ask their questions.

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