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Hari Shanker R 3:21 pm on March 17, 2022
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Discussion: Revisiting In-person Regional WordCamps

The Community Team is seeing a renewed interest in in-person regional WordCamps in the light of a slow but steady return of in-person WordCamps. This post aims to take another look at our existing guidelines for regional WordCamps and to explore whether the process for organizing an in-person 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. could be improved or simplified. 

Context

Traditionally, WordCamps have been local, city-based events that had active local 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. groups, with the exception of flagship camps such as WordCamp US and WordCamp Europe. In pre-pandemic times, several local communities expressed interest in organizing regional events, which helped our team prepare guidelines for regional WordCamps. Established communities with experienced organizers could organize a regional camp by submitting a formal proposal, which would be reviewed by 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. before proceeding further. WordCamp Nordic (which was held successfully in 2019) and WordCamp Asia are two camps that were born out of these guidelines. Our team also discussed the possibility of organizing micro-regional WordCamps where multiple cities could come together to organize a single camp. As a result of these conversations, our enthusiastic Dutch community organizers paved way for the return of WordCamp Netherlands in 2020, which was later canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Online Regional In-Person Events

In 2020, the Community team relaxed the pathway to regional online WordCamps, allowing communities to organize regional events without a lot of hassle. This resulted in a bunch of online regional WordCamps in Centroamerica, Greece, Finland, India, Italy, Japan, Spain, and Taiwan, among others. These events were quite successful in bringing together local communities even despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Approaching In-Person Regional Events in 2022

WordCamp Netherlands (which was originally approved in 2019) is back on the schedule for 2022 as an in-person event. Some local communities have also approached 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., expressing their interest in organizing regional events. At this time, our organizers are still encouraged to plan smaller city-based WordCamps over larger regional events (especially in the light of COVID restrictions that are still in place in many regions). However, I strongly feel that the Community Team should revisit the existing guidelines for regional events due to a renewed interest in the same. I would like to listen to your feedback on how, as a community, we can proceed with in-person regional events, going forward. 

  1. What guidelines should a community meet to organize a regional event?
  2. How can the team better define micro-regional WordCamps, and can we do anything to simplify their process? For example, would a relatively smaller region – such as a state or a group of cities in countries like the USA or Canada, OR a country in Europe such as the Netherlands or Italy – qualify as a micro-regional WordCamp? Additionally, should we even have micro-regional WordCamps – can we just define regional camps using a uniform language and uniform guidelines?
  3. Is there anything that should be changed or simplified about the application process for regional WordCamps? (For example, are proposals still required for a regional guidelines, or can these guidelines still be enforced in orientations?)
  4. Are there any learnings from online regional events in 2020 and 2021 that can be applied to in-person regional events going forward? 

Please share your thoughts in the comments by April 4, 2022 (Monday). Based on your feedback, our team will explore the possibility of revamping guidelines for regional WordCamps and will share the next steps shortly. 

The following folks contributed to this post: @angelasjin @devinmaeztri @peiraisotta @juliarosia and @nao

#regional-wordcamps #discussion

Anjana Vasan 2:00 pm on March 14, 2022
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Meetup Organizer Newsletter: March 2022

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the March 2022 edition of the 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. Organizer Newsletter. We sincerely hope all our community members in Ukraine are safe and sound. WordPress Co-Founder Matt Mullenweg shared his thoughts on Ukraine, community and WordPress in the 26th episode of WP Briefing.

To learn about the latest news and resources from the WordPress community, keep reading this month’s edition and don’t forget to share the updates with your local meetup groups! For more news from the WordPress community, check out the latest Month in WordPress.

Here’s what’s inside this issue:

  • WordPress 6.0
  • Contribute to WordPress
  • A blog for developers
  • WordPress events

🎷 WordPress 6.0 set to release on May 24, 2022

The release schedule for WordPress 6.0, the second major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality. of 2022, has been published. As an iteration over the Go/No Go demos, WordPress leads will host a live-streamed walkthrough of features slated for the release on April 5, 2022. Follow the schedule to keep up with key dates in the next major WordPress release, and keep your local community in the loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop.!

While you’re waiting for WordPress 6.0, check out the WordPress 5.9.2 maintenance release which was released last week!

🤝 Contribute to WordPress

If you’re looking for new ways to get involved in the WordPress community, the following opportunities are a great way to get started. 

📷 WordPress Photo Directory gets a new Make team

The WordPress Photo Directory has a new Make team! There is currently a poll to vote for team reps and the collaboration is happening at the new #photos channel of the 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/.. If you’re interested, join the conversation or contribute by submitting your photos.

🏳️‍🌈 Join the #WPDiversity working group

The #WPDiversity working group is looking for volunteers, and it’s not too late to sign up. Check out this recap of the latest volunteers meeting to see the available roles. Spread the word in your local community, and if you’re interested in joining the group yourself, go ahead and apply! 

Interested in widening your pool of 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. speakers from underrepresented groups? Join the #diverse-speaker-support channel on the Make WordPress Slack.

 💻 Proposal for a new blog for developers

Birgit Pauli-Haack published a proposal to start a blog on developer.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/ to share news and updates relevant to developers. Read the proposal and share your thoughts and ideas for improvements by March 18, 2022.

🌍 What’s happening with WordPress events?

We’d like to thank our global community sponsors for 2022 who make WordPress events possible! 2022 has many exciting WordPress events, both in person and online. As always, we strongly urge you to follow the mandatory safety guidelines and also learn about the legal protections available to you for in-person events. 

🎪 WordCamps on the horizon

We have plenty of WordCamps taking place this year. Below are some of the WordCamps coming up soon—feel free to attend or share them with your meetup groups!

💛 Upcoming WordPress meetupsMeetup 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.

Check out the WordPress meetups coming up in March:

📚 Support the Learn WordPress initiative

Help make Learn WordPress the official resource on WordPress! Share your knowledge with others by organizing a social learning space based on any of the Learn WordPress workshops. Alternately, use lesson plans on Learn WordPress to organize WordPress meetups in your community! See the Tuesday Training for Meetup Organizers for an overview on how to use lesson plans.

✏️ Check out the latest lesson plans:

🤝 Sign-up for free to the upcoming WordPress Social Learning Spaces:

And that’s a wrap!

If you have any questions, Community Team 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. are here to help. Please email us at [email protected] or join the #community-events Slack channel. Thanks for everything you do to grow and support the WordPress community—let’s keep sharing knowledge and inspiring each other with our contributions!

See you online soon!

#meetup-organizer-newsletter #newsletter

The following people contributed to this edition of the Meetup newsletter: @rmartinezduque, @eidolonnight, @harishanker, @mysweetcate, @webcommsat, @lmurillom.

#community-team, #wordcamps

jillbinder 6:52 pm on March 10, 2022
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Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on March 9, 2022

Attending: @jillbinder, @alliennimmons, @anjanavasan, @jasonnickerson, @juliarosiarosia, @katiejrichards, @kcrockett, @kimberlylipari, @mysweetcate, @nalininonstopnewsuk, @onealtr, @peiraisotta, @sc0ttkclark, @planningwrite, @webcommsat, @wpfangirl

Start: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1646845281691279

Summary

Now with more people responsible for more areas of our work, we tried out a “pass the mic” style of meeting. Each person gave an update and we all had many great discussions and ideas.

  1. Check-ins
  2. Marketing (@anjanavasan)
  3. Workshops (Speaker & Allyship) (@jillbinder)
  4. Diverse Speaker Support channel (@kcrockett & @juliarosia)
  5. Translations (@devinmaeztri)
  6. APAC (@devinmaeztri & @onealtr)
  7. WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. (@devinmaeztri & @juliarosia)
  8. Other Updates
  9. New Ideas and open floor
  10. How was this meeting format?

End: https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/C037W5S7X/p1646848994931559

#wpdiversity

Isotta 10:29 am on March 8, 2022
Tags: ,   

Community Team Meeting Recap – March 3, 2022

On March 3 the Community Team met 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/. to share wins and struggles, updates from contributors, and discuss team members’ latest highlights.

As usual, two sessions were held on the same day to enable participation across time zones.

Below is a synopsis of the two discussions.

Diversity and Inclusion

Challenges

  • The WordPress community should strive for age diversity and inclusion for both older and younger people.
  • Additionally, we must consider financial diversity. Cost is a significant barrier to 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. attendance.
  • The pandemic has caused us to quickly backtrack around diversity and community engagement. It’s harder to find organizers, volunteers, and speakers at this time. This challenge adds an extra level of stress for teams, who may in turn overlook and deprioritize diversity efforts. As community contributors, we must continue working hard and remain committed to diversity and inclusion.

Suggestions

  1. Update the Community Inclusion Initiatives page

Consider updating the Community Inclusion Initiatives WordCamp Handbook page to include “commercial” diversity initiatives (such as the Yoast Diversity Fund, which aims to increase the diversity of speaker lineups at tech conferences; and Underrepresented in Tech, which highlights speakers from underrepresented groups). In so doing, clearly indicate which are Make Community Team initiatives and which are external diversity initiatives. For any external initiatives, 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. could conduct light vetting to ensure that they align with our community programs and expectations. It would be beneficial to establish a clear process to add resources in the future.

This discussion concluded with the following proposal:

  • Organize the Community Inclusion Initiatives page for greater clarity and to be more user friendly;
  • Create a very light form to submit commercial diversity initiatives for inclusion on the page (link, point of contact, purpose of the initiative, description of how it’s operated). Only list free resources or things that people can apply to (like the Yoast Diversity Fund).
  1. Make #WPDiversity training mandatory for WordPress event organizers

There is significant opportunity to increase new and returning WordPress event organizers’ awareness of and engagement with #WPDiversity offerings (Allyship training, Diverse Speaker training, and Diverse Speaker Support Program). Some meeting participants suggested that diversity training should be mandatory for event organizers.

Participants raised the following considerations:

  • When it was created in 2017, the #WPDiversity program’s original aim was to raise awareness and provide training to those who seek it. But the WordPress community has changed and matured in the five years since then, and there is value in providing diversity and inclusion training for event organizers who wouldn’t actively seek it.
  • If the WordPress community decides to make #WPDiversity training mandatory for organizers, this will require logistical thinking to accommodate increased training frequency and audience-sizes.
  • This could be done in partnership with the Learn team.
  • There is great opportunity to harness the momentum of the community’s current diversity discussions. Start with what we can do now, and then work towards a full vision at a later stage: “Something now is better than perfect later.”
  • During onboarding, Community 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. read through sections of the community handbook and then take short tests. We could similarly integrate #WPDiversity into event organizer training, with high-level subject matter that directs organizers to additional resources to learn more.
  • A quick starting point could be to add to this course: https://wordpress.org/contributor-training/course/wordcamp-organizer-training/
  • Next steps: @JuliaRosia will share a proposal on this topic in the coming weeks and post it to the Make Community blog for feedback.

Proposal: Refurbishing Camera Kits

We all appreciate and support the idea, and here below are a few thoughts about it:

  • Audiovisual professionals in the community could help us to understand what’s needed and which kit could best serve our scope.
  • It would be useful to have a step-by-step tutorial on how to use the kit so organizers feel more comfortable.
  • We could add the above-mentioned tutorial to the DeputyDeputy 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. and MentorMentor Someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. training so they feel comfortable in assisting event organizers.

Global Sponsorship

  • Many 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. organizers don’t know that they can reach out to global sponsors and ask for in-kind donations. We should find a way to better communicate this.
  • Community members often have a hard time understanding the distinction between WordPress.comWordPress.com An online implementation of WordPress code that lets you immediately access a new WordPress environment to publish your content. WordPress.com is a private company owned by Automattic that hosts the largest multisite in the world. This is arguably the best place to start blogging if you have never touched WordPress before. https://wordpress.com/ and 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/. Having WordPress.com as a 2022 Global Sponsor could further add to this confusion.

This recap has been written thanks to @juliarosia

Thank you to all the attendees: @peiraisotta, @sippis, @no249a002, @unintended8, @kdrewien, @jillbinder, @juliarosia, @mysweetcate, @tacoverdo, @angelasjin


Want to participate in the next Community Team Meeting? Join us in the #community-team channel on Slack!

Sam Suresh 4:22 am on March 3, 2022  

Community Team Meeting Agenda 3 March 2022

The Community Team chat is taking place on the first week Thursday every month. 

As you know, 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: 2022/03/03 12:00 UTC

Americas friendly meeting: Thursday, 2022/03/03 21:00 UTC

You will find a preliminary agenda for the meeting below. If you wish to add points to discuss, comment on this post or reach out to one of the team reps: @harishanker or @samsuresh. 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.

DeputyDeputy 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. / MentorMentor Someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. / Contributor check-ins

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

Highlights

2022 Community Team Goals Summary

Several community members offered excellent goals for our team to consider. After a few Zoom sessions, The Community team has finalized its goals for 2022. 

Discussion: Diversity in WordPress Events

The Community team values and prioritizes diversity, as the more diverse our community, is, the stronger, more innovative, and more resilient it becomes.

Proposal

Proposal: Refurbishing Camera Kits

@sippis proposed refurbishment of the Camera Kits for WordCamps in the EU region. The Community Team has been discussing our Camera Kit program for years and decided that the program should be continued and the equipment updated.

Announcements / Newsletters

Open floor

Here is your chance to bring things into discussions that weren’t on the meeting agenda. You can also use this opportunity to share anything that you want with the team. If you have a topic in mind before the meeting, please add it to the comments of this post, we will update the agenda accordingly.

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

#meeting-agenda, #team-meeting

#team-chat

Hari Shanker R 3:56 am on March 3, 2022
Tags: community-team-goals, community-team-goals-2022,   

2022 Community Team Goals Summary

In November 2021, the WordPress Global Community TeamGlobal Community Team A group of community organizers and contributors who collaborate on local events about WordPress — monthly WordPress meetups and/or annual conferences called WordCamps. requested suggestions for Community team goals for 2022.

Several community members offered excellent goals for our team to consider. Since our team is relatively low on bandwidth in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, our goal was to filterFilter Filters are one of the two types of Hooks https://codex.wordpress.org/Plugin_API/Hooks. They provide a way for functions to modify data of other functions. They are the counterpart to Actions. Unlike Actions, filters are meant to work in an isolated manner, and should never have side effects such as affecting global variables and output. through the list of submitted goals and finalize a short list of achievable but impactful goals in 2022.

In order to get there, the team discussed these goals in community team chats and also conducted some face-to-face open discussion sessions over zoom. I would like to thank everyone who participated in these discussions and helped us finalize some goals for our team!

From amongst all the suggestions we received, we have finalized a list of five overarching goals for the team to pursue this year.

Unlike previous years, we decided to go slow with our goals. Our objective is to focus on goals that are both achievable and impactful, especially at a period where our team is slowly coming back in action organizing in-person events.

Our 2022 Goals:

  1. Support the return of in-person events
  2. Check-in and reactivate WordPress 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. Chapters worldwide
  3. Increase training and support for 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. and MentorsMentor Someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.
  4. Work on efforts to improve diversity and inclusion within our community
  5. Create more opportunities for community members to interact with each other

How You Can Help!

Interested in helping us out this year? Awesome! Take one, or all, of these next steps:

  1. Read on to learn more about our 2022 goals. 
  2. Share in the comments below the top three items you are interested in contributing to.
  3. Participate in upcoming Community Team meetings on Thursdays at 12:00 UTC and 21:00 UTC in the #community-team channel on Slack to connect with other contributors working on similar goals. 

If you would like to see more context for these goals, please visit the public Trello board. 

Willing to Lead?

The Community Team will also need contributors to coordinate and organize efforts! If you have the time to take on this role, please share in the comments which goals you would like to help lead. 

Read on to learn all about our 2022 goals in more detail!

Continue reading →

#community-team-goals, #community-team-goals-2022, #goals

Courtney Robertson 8:20 pm on February 28, 2022
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X-post: What’s new on LearnWP in February 2022

X-comment from +make.wordpress.org/updates: Comment on What's new on LearnWP in February 2022

jillbinder 11:25 pm on February 24, 2022
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Recap of the Diverse Speaker Training group (#WPDiversity) on February 23, 2022

Attending: @jillbinder, @alliennimmons, @anjanavasan, @chrisford, @donreid, @eidolonnight, @firoz2456, @heyyearl, @jasonnickerson, @katiejrichards, @kcrockett, @kimberlylipari, @mmcwilliams, @mysweetcate, @nouman27, @onealtr, @peiraisotta, @planningwrite, @sc0ttkclark, @volkswagenchick, @webcommsat, @wpfangirl

Summary

This meeting was held over Zoom.

For the first half, @jillbinder presented these slides:

  • Our group’s birth and impact

  • Our current 3 programs

  • Roles available (interested? descriptions in slides above ^ )

    • Diverse Speaker Workshops:
      • Workshop volunteer — background support
      • Workshop volunteer — front-end
      • Workshop facilitator
      • Workshop coordinators team
      • Translator

    • Diverse Speaker Support program:
      • Speaker MentorMentor Someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues.
      • Speaker Mentor Coordinator

    • Allyship for WordPress Event Organizers program:
      • Workshop volunteer — background support
      • Workshop volunteer — front-end
      • Workshop facilitator

    • General:
      • WP Events Coordination Team
      • New volunteer greeter
      • Workshop facilitator
      • Document editor
      • Meeting Attendees

    • Specialty
      • APAC team
      • 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 reps

  • Interest form

In the second half, we had an open discussion where people expressed interest in roles and shared ideas:

  • An offer to start translating into Italian
  • An offer to be part of our WCEUWCEU WordCamp Europe. The European flagship WordCamp event. reps
  • An offer of project management, getting our team onto Asana
  • Interest in having workshops for a member’s local WP community in the US
  • Pointing out that the workshops are a way for people of underrepresented groups in local communities to network
  • Folks interested in being part of the group without a specific role (yes!)

#wpdiversity

Isotta 10:54 am on February 21, 2022
Tags: ,   

2022 Global Sponsors: Announcement

I am excited to announce the Global Community Sponsors for 2022! Thank you to all the sponsors that support the WordPress community programs, including WordCamps and WordPress Chapter 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. groups.

Full details on the 2022 Global Sponsorship program and packages can be found here. Since this year’s program is available on a quarterly basis, we will announce any changes to this list every quarter.

The Global Sponsor information for event organizers page in the handbook has been updated, and we’ll be updating the rest of the handbook pages in the coming days. WordPress Chapter Meetup group pages have also recently been updated to acknowledge our global sponsors.

Please join me in giving another big thanks to all the global sponsors for their continued support!

#global-sponsors, #global-sponsorship

Timi Wahalahti 7:23 pm on February 16, 2022
Tags:   

Proposal: Refurbishing Camera Kits

The Community Team has been discussing our Camera Kit program for years and decided that the program should be continued and the equipment updated.

Back in 2019, determining what would be proper equipment for our needs proved to be more difficult than expected. Then came the pandemic, that put all in-person events to hold, and thus the pressing need to refurbish the camera kits eased out.

The break allowed me to think about the equipment, needs and purpose of camera kits to reflect where we currently are. After multiple discussions with community members, some serious thinking and multiple hours spent reading product reviews, I have a proposal about how new camera kits could be equipped.

Principles for selecting the equipment

To help you understand some choices that are made in the equipment list, here’s a list of a few objectives I set out for the new kits:

  • Good audio is a priority, video quality comes after that
  • Equipment should support easy live streaming, as the demand for streaming events has increased
  • All equipment should be really easy to use
  • but; at the same time it should enable some power-user features for organisers that do want to do more
  • All equipment should be durable, given their heavy use
  • Ideally, the cost of equipment and maintenance is kept as low as possible

Proposed equipment

After spending multiple hours finding out which cameras and accessories could fit the principles set, I’ve come up with the following basic list. In case you are interested more in the reasons behind these choices, there is a “more” tag at the bottom of the post.

Proposed composition for the kits

Currently, the Community Team has six kits in the EU region. Based on my experience with the demand for kits in the EU, I’m proposing to increase the number of kits to eight. It is also likely that the trend in the future is to have more hybrid events, and we need to be prepared to support organisers to meet that demand.

Half of the kits would contain just the basic equipment and the other half accompanied by a video mixer. That would mean four basic kits and four with a video mixer.

Kits are shipped in pairs of two per track/stage, in case equipment is damaged or malfunctioning in the other kit. In the future, each track/stage would get the basic kit and kit with a video mixer. The usage of the latter one can be “downgraded” to basic kit level, just by leaving the video mixer part of it unused.

Costs

With current prices, the total cost for refurbishing EU camera kits would be around a total of 10 000 euros for eight kits including new pelicases and other various smaller accessories for each kit. The breakdown of the costs per kit basis can be found in this spreadsheet.

What about other regions than EU?

As you might have noticed, I hinted earlier that the Camera Kit equipment refurbish would happen only for EU Camera Kits. This is the current plan, as the total cost of refurbishing the kits is in five digits and the community still needs to be cautious on spending due to the impacts of COVID on our programs financials.

Refurbishing the kits in one area first also allows us to get experiences and knowledge about the equipment, and whether those are suitable for our use at the end. If and after we get positive feedback about the contents of the kits, my hope is to also refurbish US kits and in future extend the program to Asia and Africa as well.

Open for discussion

Do you have any questions about the proposed equipment? Are there parts of it that could be replaced with something that suits the community needs better? Please share your thoughts, questions and concerns before 2022-03-02!

Thanks to @angelasjin for proofreading this proposal and @harmonyromo for giving financial viewpoints during the process.

Continue reading →

#camera-kits