Next-Gen Events: Technical Check-in

In May, @angelasjin shared an exciting update about a new initiative for communities to embrace innovative formats to host WordPress events.

This post highlights some of the technical changes and new features that we’ve added to support this pilot program.

Completed

New URLURL A specific web address of a website or web page on the Internet, such as a website’s URL www.wordpress.org Format

Breaking away from the traditional //{city}.wordcamp.org/{year} URL format, we updated the WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. network to support the URL structure discussed in “Proposal: Next Generation Event URL“. This allows us to experiment on an isolated network so we can move quickly while limiting side effects to traditional WordCamps. The URL format for Next-Gen events is `events.wordpress.org/city(or country)/year/event-type`.

We opted to not create a new post type and reused the wordcamp post type. We currently differentiate WordCamps and Next-Gen events strictly based on it’s site URL.

• WordCamps = //{city}.wordcamp.org/{year}
• Next-Gen events = //events.wordpress.org/city(or country)/year/event-type

Eventually, we want to support recurring events and it still isn’t clear how this URL will support that. Tracking issue for recurring events.

Automated Attendee Surveys

We implemented an automated survey that is sent to attendees 2 days after an event completes. The survey will help the community team adjust the program appropriately.

How does it work?

We dynamically create a survey and a post on every Next-Gen event site. Two days after the event, we publish the page and send out emails to all attendees with the link (events.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//{…}/attendee-survey) to the survey. Two weeks later we close the survey by unpublishing the page.

The survey results are made available to WordCamp/Next-Gen moderators via the central.wordcamp.org dashboard. You can click through on the number under “Total Responses” to view the feedback.

At this moment the event needs to use Camptix because we rely on it for the attendee list. If an event does not use Camptix, we won’t send an automated survey.

We should follow up with an export feature so we can categorize issues to improve the feedback 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.. See the issue tracking that feature.

Automated Organizer Surveys

We also implemented a similar system to send out a survey to event organizers. Two days after the event is completed, we’ll send an email to whomever is listed as the event’s organizer.

Retrieving form results is done via the JetPack “Feedback” form response page.

We’ve only recently launched both survey features, should the results prove useful, we’ll look to improve ways to access the surveys consistently.

In Progress:

New Events landing page on WordPress.org

@_dorsvenabili posted a call for ideas for a events landing page. We are currently waiting on some design guidance although we have data and filtering already in place. Check it out at https://events.wordpress.org/?preview. If you want to suggest ideas you can add them to the tracking issue or join discussion in the #meta-wordcamp-experiments channel.

What’s next?

We need to complete the landing page. More events are being added as we speak. Having a logical place to market the events and help users find them is really important. @juliarosia created a live program landing page with updates on new events and other important news that will serve as a temporary entry point. The community events page also lists Next-Gen events.

Along with a better event homepage, I am sourcing help to upgrade the base theme for Next-Gen events. Read more.

Questions

Do we want to turn on the attendee/organizer surveys for all WordCamps?

When the surveys were first requested, they were specific to Next-Gen events. Do we want to turn them on for all WordCamps? The question was mentioned by @devinmaeztri in this slack thread.

Looking past the events homepage, what are we thinking for next steps?

We are committed to making deeper improvements to WordCamp infrastructure. Are there particular experiences that we should look to improve first? Feel free to drop ideas/feedback in the thread or open tickets in the GitHub repository.