Posted about upcoming WordCamps on wordpress.org blog at http://wordpress.org/news/2013/10/upcoming-wordcamps-4/ and included call to action for organizers of WCs and meetups, and the new subtitling stuff.
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Jen Mylo
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Jen Mylo
New Meetups
I made a page with a meetup interest form using a Jetpack form for now so people have a way to ask for a group on meetup.com. At some point in the future we’ll switch over to supportpress like WordCamps, but we need some filtering features built in first so we don’t need to set up a dozen different supportpress instances.
For now, I’ll set up groups on meetup.com. I could use a few volunteers to help with monitoring the incoming requests. Volunteers should be people with steady meetup groups of their own. In addition, I’d like to get a group together to work on creating a Meetup Starter Pack. There was some previous interest in this but I think it flickered out, so if anyone is interested in working on it now, leave a comment to that effect. Thanks!
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lisa@getcws.com
Hi Jen, we started our meetup at the beginning of the year and now have almost 50 members. We’re still really new, but if you can use a volunteer, I’d love to help any way I can.
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andreamiddleton
Licking the WordCamp Cookie
For about a year now, WordCamps have been asked to start planning no more than six months in advance. Based on feedback from some WordCamp organizers, it’s time to re-examine that practice and discuss what we could do differently.
The Problem(s):
In 2011, nearly every time a WordCamp was approved for pre-planning more than about 6 months before their target event date — with some exceptions outside the US — the WordCamp organizing team failed to organize a WordCamp.
Worse, by the time the organizing team was willing to admit they weren’t getting anywhere and maybe weren’t really focused on WordCamp organizing, other people in the community who had been interested in organizing a WordCamp had moved on to other projects.
This was particularly harmful for communities that had never had a WordCamp before – I can think of 9-10 cities that are still WordCamp-less, years after an organizing team ”licked the cookie” and then abandoned WordCamp planning.
The Challenge:
Keeping volunteers engaged is hard. No one gets paid to organize a WordCamp, and when life gets busy and/or major transitions come our way, it’s easy to lose volunteers. Since WordCamps are volunteer-organized, maintaining momentum among members of the organizing team is key… and few things are as motivating as watching a deadline hurtling toward you.
That being said, there are indeed stable WordCamp organizing teams with large communities and/or complex events who want to have more than 6 months to get all their ducks in a row, or who need to book a great, cheap venue a year in advance. It’s important to accommodate communities that need more than six months for one reason or another, but still maintain planning momentum across all organizing teams.
Proposal:
- Three months after approval for pre-planning, if a WordCamp organizing team has made zero progress toward finding a venue, that city/region will come off the WordCamp Central planning list. The field will then be open for other community members to join and help activate the stalled team, or apply to organize a WordCamp with a new team, with heavy preference given to the former.
- If a WordCamp organizing team sets a date and books a venue but then fails to update/interact with the community for more than a month during the planning period, then WordCamp Central will contact that team and try to help them get back on track. If the organizing team can’t make progress in the next month, the team will be asked to either add more organizers who can help correct the course or postpone/reschedule their event.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts and suggestions in a comment.
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Chris Daley
Solid plan. Like the direction of recognizing and accepting the differences between WordCamps and organizing teams. Nice work!
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nofearinc
From my perspective 6 months might not be enough to prepare everything for several reasons:
- Finding a venue
- Getting quality international speakers on board (most people plan ahead according to other events, product launch dates, holidays, and also need some 1-2 months to buy affordable plane tickets)
- Cope with everything from the long list of TODOs for organization
Additionally, even though there are already so many WordCamps across the world, organizers will probably try to pick a date that doesn’t overlap or is a week away from: WordCamp San Francisco, WordCamp Europe, PressNomics, Automattic’s annual meetup, Community Summit. Dedicated community members try to be ready (time-wise and financially) to hit some of these events or want to invite members who are about to attend them.
I know it’s hard to plan different dates in different countries, but occasionally it’s quite cheap to travel across the States to different states or in Europe with low-cost companies, so same date collisions cause troubles. The easiest way to prevent that is to plan and book a venue 5-8 months ahead. I remember discussing the venue issue over the San Francisco organizers’ meetup where people were negotiating the venue just weeks after a WordCamp, to get the best pricing and dates.
The proposals sound good to me, I’m just trying to outline several reasons why planning more than 6 months is a normal move overall
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David Bisset
With the number of cities having WordCamps, overlap is inevitable (unless you plan something in late December or early January it seems). Even if you are able to book in advance, that’s no guarantee someone will book the same date. All comes down to choice and when you can book your venue. I would think if you are running an official WordCamp that you would hope to avoid San Francisco – but that didn’t happen this year (there was another WordCamp happening at the same time).
But yes, I personally think everyone should think more than 6 months out. Especially if you are a city hosting a WordCamp for the first time.
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Scott Offord
I wouldn’t worry about quality international speakers… I think it should be more about the local community anyways.
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nofearinc
In my opinion the majority of the local community attendees is engaged thanks to the presence of recognized community members being authorities in the field. Local members could meet each other at meetups every month or two. The date locally is rarely a problem unless you hit a major holiday (which wouldn’t make sense).
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andreamiddleton
why planning more than 6 months is a normal move overall
I’ve seen great WordCamps organized within 4 months from the date of booking the venue; of course they all had solid support from their established, local WP communities.
Trying to avoid booking a date that conflicts with another WP ecosystem event is going to get even more tricky as the number of our events increases; I think the most compelling reason to book a venue really early is to get a great price.
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Debra S
Good plan to enable organizers to nab a venue when the choices are more open, or to be able to re-new a venue after a successful WordCamp. People will appreciate this.
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alexpatin
This is a great plan. I am always looking forward to going to WordCamps in other cities, but have sometimes been disappointed because the volunteer team not able to plan accordingly. I like to plan far ahead if possible, but sometimes I hear / see no updates from the organizers on their sites and end up not going, either because I didn’t have time to plan or because the camp fell through. It hasn’t happened in a while, but I think this would certainly help keep volunteer groups on track in the future.
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David Bisset
As a WordCamp organizer, you know that statement “it’s all about the venue” is undeniably true. Until you have that in your pocket you can’t (or don’t feel safe) organizing much else.
I think this plan works if some MUST book a venue in advance – beyond six months. The take-away here is that progress must be seen to be made, then i think that works.
I’m curious to see how community members might be able to step in if a WordCamp is showing signs that it can’t secure a venue. It’s not easy for someone local, let alone someone who doesn’t know the area.
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andreamiddleton
Well, since WordCamps are organized by locals, then no one non-local would be joining the organizing team or approved to organize a new event.
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Andy
Agree 110% with David. We (Toronto organizers) had this discussion last night. The venue is the most important thing to lock down. Everything else — your attendee numbers, scheduling, session tracks, etc… — will depend on it.
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Scott Offord
I think it really depends on the type of feeling you want attendees to walk away with. What kind of experience do you want them to have. Venue is the most important, because it dictates the date. Once that is taken care of… everything is subjective…. if the organizers just want to have a single track or an un-conference style weekend, or a 4 track power event… it’s totally up to the organizers at that point.
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Andy
Good point.
I was thinking more about what the venue offers facility wise. e.g.) the acoustics of running multiple tracks in a large common space are pretty bad, versus having multiple rooms. Or you can’t have a single keynote if there’s no common space at all. That sort of stuff depends on how you make use of the venue. But you’re right, it’s ultimately up to the organizers to decide how the event will flow.
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Marko Heijnen
Personally I would go a step further. Currently you aspect that the WordCamp organization is open in the things they do. Most of the time they only say a date in public when they got the venue. I think WordCamp central should be more open to all submitted WordCamp proposals. Now you only see approved WordCamps what is a step to late since the team is created before that.
Part of the reason why I’m saying this is that WordCamp Netherlands did had a date this year but in the end if was cancelled. The data was know by a few people outside the organization and not to everyone. What is wrong and it’s then also hard for the community to jump in and help out to make the WordCamp real.
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andreamiddleton
It’s a best practice for WordCamps to only publish a date once you’ve booked a venue, so you don’t need to change the date if the venue falls through.
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Marko Heijnen
I know that but it should be clear that before there is a venue that only the organization can know the date. It’s weird to see tweets outside the organization that they already know the date.
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Jen Mylo
No organizer should be tweeting a date without a venue nailed down… the whole reason we require a venue to be secured before we’ll put a WordCamp on the official list is that it’s happened more than once that organizers publicized a date and then couldn’t get a venue, so wound up postponing or canceling.
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Scott Offord
I think regularly checking in with WordCamp organizers is important, so they know how far behind schedule they are or not. Many organizers are simply not event planners, they are web developers, perhaps, who just want to plan a fun event. They need a lot of help just to feel comfortable in knowing they are doing the right thing.
Following a checklist would be helpful for people like this. But, making sure organizers are well-aware of the checklist is an educational challenge.
What system is in place to ensure that all planners know where to find a planning checklist and who is responsible for following up with them to see if they are following the checklist?
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andreamiddleton
There is no system for this.
There’s a weekly WordCamp website review project (say that 5 times fast) staffed by volunteers, and that helps me, personally, keep track of which WordCamps are on track and which aren’t, but there isn’t really any formal system in place to ensure everyone doing everything on a set schedule.-
andreamiddleton
(say that 5 times fast)
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Jen Mylo
That said, making public checklists for this has been on the to-do list for no less than 2 years. If there’s a volunteer that would like to help turn this into a reality, step forward.
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Siobhan
I have a checklist that I’m actively working on for WordCamp London which covers everything that’s come up in WC Europe and WCLDN.
It’s currently on the 2013 London Budget as a tab. Once WC London is out of the way it should be 100% complete and we can make it into something public. It should take minimal effort as when I started it I thought other people might find it useful in the future. I’d be happy to volunteer to do that.
Related to this – I’m not sure if this is something that every WC does, but something that Ze encouraged for WCEU and that I’ve replicated for WC London has been keeping everything in the one budget spreadsheet – this includes scheduling, lists of volunteers, sponsor information, task lists, etc etc. This serves the double purpose of a) keeping everything in one place, and b) anyone from the organisation committee can look at the spreadsheet and see the progress.
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AMEEKER
It would be helpful for us to be able to book our venue almost immediately after our camp. OSU asked us literally within days of our camp what dates we wanted to renew for 2014, and showed us their calendar, noting that many of the weekends around the similar date were already booked. All I could say was “We can’t even start planning for another six months).
I also think it would be helpful to be able to see the dates other camps are planning. Would hate to have to move our camp because another, close by or not, is planned on top of ours. We can plan around camps if we know about them.
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Scott Offord
Right… Other day can be found on the wordcamp central site, but not until they are only 6 months out.
It would be nice to know what’s on the docket for 9-12 months out… events that are still in the planning phase, but not solidified or “approved”.-
Andy
Something simple, even a page or post on this Make Community P2, could be used to keep all organizers — and would-be organizers — in the loop. (Kind of like the “behind the scenes” discussions that happen on Make Core.)
It’ll give folks an idea of what’s being considered ,but it’s not official until it’s finalized and up on the WordCamp Central site.
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Scott Offord
Ya, how does that work? How do we add sections/pages, etc to this site to link to resources?
We should try to make sure that each organizer gets invited to a weekly or monthly online meeting / coaching.
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andreamiddleton
Would a bbpress installation address this, do you think?
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Andy
@andreamiddleton – I think a bbPress installation would be fantastic for this. Much easier to skim/track conversations across multiple threads.
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Jen Mylo
The Pending list on the schedule page is meant to cover that.
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Jen Mylo
That situation was the impetus for this. When I was at WC Buffalo, they had the same situation, which is why we want to give existing teams more leeway to “lick the cookie,” because they’ve shown their reliability already.
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Andy
Six months is doable, but sometimes it isn’t enough lead time. We actually spent something closer to 8 months this year on planning. There were some bumps along the way since it was mostly a new team, and I don’t want to think about what would’ve happened if we had started later.
I also feel that the 6 month requirement kills momentum for more experienced WordCamp teams who have successfully gone through the process already. e.g. Our venue was thrilled to have us there this year and they voiced their support for us to be back again in 2014. If we wait half a year, we might lose the venue; they may lose interest; etc…
So, an idea there:
- Change the requirements depending on the experience of the organizing team.
- If the team has organized one or more WordCamps in the past, give them the freedom to start planning further in advance.
- If they’re a new team with no prior experience and we’re worried about them not following through, give them the 6 month window.
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Heather Acton
I agree, Andy. My guess is that the biggest risk is with a new team, not with one that’s organized before.
Maybe Andrea can confirm?
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andreamiddleton
Yes, the instances I have personally observed in which WordCamp planning was abandoned AND there hasn’t been a WordCamp in that city since were all cases of new organizing teams.
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Sam Sidler
I want to hop on here as I agree with Andy.
I don’t think the 6 month requirement should be removed entirely. I think it should apply to new teams and/or new WordCamps (that is, if the city has yet to host a WordCamp). In fact, I’d argue that the city/team should have hosted at least two WordCamps before removing the 6 month requirement.
For more experienced cities/teams, the 6 month requirement isn’t necessary and the proposal above makes sense.
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Heather Acton
Thinking about the likely root causes…
1) The new team may be overwhelmed at how much it takes to run a successful WordCamp.
2) We, as past organizers, didn’t provide enough support to the new organizing team for them to be set up for success.If a new team is approved to organize, I do think that setting them up with a mentor that will keep in close touch with them, especially early in the process, will help. This mentor should share with them the materials available to help them organize, ensure they have the team in place to take care of everything that’s needed, ask them how progress is, and also evaluate whether the new team is on track to have a successful camp on their date. This experienced mentor will be able to recognize the shortcomings much earlier in the planning process than a new organizing team will.
Also just curuious – do we have anything with a checklist in the form of – “6 months prior to your WC date you should have these things done; 3 months prior these things; and so on”? I know these milestones will vary by location and size of camp, but having a laundry list like this, with milestones, could be helpful. I didn’t see this on plan.wordcamp.org (I can create if this would be helpful).
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Scott Offord
Heather, I’ve asked about the checklist in the past too.
I’ve been sent over to http://plan.wordcamp.org/planning-details/ and it’s useful, but what I’m looking for is a literal checklist that I can check items off as “complete” so I can see exactly where I’m at in the planning process.
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andreamiddleton
That’s a good idea, Scott. I wonder if we could get a small group of volunteers to write one up.
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Heather Acton
I’m in for this. Scott – this may also relate to this Chiwaukee Meetup idea that’s been thrown around. This would be more of a developer/organizer centric meetup where we could work on things like this, improving other docs, the Codex, etc.
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Dustin Filippini
I think you found one of the first things for our Chiwaukee Meetup. We do have a good group of organizers with me, you, Scott, Aaron, and Michelle. I think it’s something we could take on. I like the idea of other improvements and maybe even digging into core patches too for our group.
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Andy
Amen. We were discussing this last night, actually, as something to do for ourselves heading into 2014. I believe at least a few of our team would be up for getting involved. A simplified task list with deadlines and whatnot. We used something similar for 2013 — albeit later than we should’ve — and it was very handy.
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Mn84evR
I’m up for helping to put this together. As Andy said, we were talking about this last night, and we certainly didn’t take advantage of it early on, which would have been a huge help.
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David Laietta
I’d be for working on something like this. I’m mainly interested in finding a way to keep all organizers equally (or close to) involved in the outcome of the camp.
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AMEEKER
Of course I’m going to be overly ambitious one (but only because I’m starting to think about it this weekend for our Camp… looking at plugins or Podio to handle it… but really putting it into a plugin that is a project managment solution would be best. CollabPress would be fine – if we could get it populated with the most important Milestones and tasks of a WordCamp, then organizers could use that over and over on their WC sites. (I bet you can import into CollabPress – then indiv. camps could add to their own info if they needed to. I know some camps use their own PM like Basecamp or whatever but for those who wanted it this could be an option.
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AMEEKER
Sorry I didn’t flesh that out enough. Each WC site could have an install of CollabPress. WCCentral could provide to each camp when they start a fresh install complete with the milestones/tasks, etc… generic for each camp.
Wasn’t trying to imply one giant install of CollabPress for ALL WordCamps.
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Andy
What if we start out with something a bit more open, e.g. just a spreadsheet? Keeps the focus on tasks and prioritization rather than the details of implementing in one tool vs. another. It could also be repurposed for different PM tools with little fuss.
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AMEEKER
There is one:
http://plan.wordcamp.org/helpful-documents-and-templates/
WordCamp Planning Milestones
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andreamiddleton
Providing project management software doesn’t fix the problem of a team that can’t work together or isn’t motivated. Organizers are, hopefully, organized, and are comfortable with the tools they’re accustomed to using. I know camps that use P2, email, Basecamp, and a variety of other methods to stay on schedule and in communication. But if there is no sense of urgency, a great tool will not create one.
That said, I’d like to provide o2 on WordCamp.org when it’s released. It’s a plugin that provides the same features as the p2 theme, but because it’s a plugin, you can run it on a page instead of using it throughout the site. If we used o2 on WordCamp sites, then planning discussion/decisions would be archived for future organizing teams, which I think would be SUPER helpful. It also has great-looking checklists.
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Andy
Providing an organizer communication “portal” as part of the WordCamp site would be fantastic. I like that it neutralizes ownership, so you’re not tied to any individual’s domain or service account.
Could also open it up to getting speakers and volunteers — not just organizers — involved in the conversation.
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Rafael Poveda - RaveN
I want to give you another point of view here too. I’m from Sevilla (Spain). We have a small WP community, and we are in touch every day through internet, and once every two months in person. We have been thinking in organizing our WordCamp for 9 months (to be honest, since the end of the last one), but we have waited to ask WordCamp Central to include us until we had the venue, the dates, and the time of all volunteers and organizers in schedule to guarantee a nice WordCamp.
First, I think that it’s a good idea for new WordCamps, but I don’t know if it is a good idea for recurring WordCamps. Let’s make an assumption. I want to organize a new WordCamp in October 2014. Then, in January, I ask for pre-planning. I’m on track in WordCamp Central, and I’m in contact with the organization. There are more than 300 WordCamps a year right now, and from WordCamp Central are making efforts to be in contact with us all the time, maybe when new teams need the attention more than us, and we can drop an email whenever we need something.
There is a second problem here. As I want to have a WordCamp annually, I’m going to ask for pre-planning, but without knowing if I’m going to be able to achieve it. Here, some venues don’t confirm you the space until two or three months prior de date. Maybe it’s much more interesting to be in track only when we have the certainty that we are going to be able to have a WordCamp.
Finally, we need guidelines from WordCamp Central, as they evolve with time. And within this guidelines I think that recurring teams organizing WordCamps need to have some flexibility taking in account their particular needs.
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andreamiddleton
There are more than 300 WordCamps a year right now
Wow, I WISH!
There are more like 70 WordCamps a year, now. There were 67 in 2012 and 52 in 2011.-
Rafa Poveda
I thought that we were more
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Dustin Filippini
Good discussion happening. I agree that there does need to be some relaxing of the 6-month limit for proven organizers or different circumstances. In fact, I am starting much earlier right now trying to pick out a venue.
But, maybe we should try to figure out why so many have failed when planning out so far in advance. Maybe with planning that far out, people aren’t sure what will come about in their lives at that time. Also, there is not sense of urgency or excitement built up when you know it’s 9 or 10 months away. That urgency and excitement amongst the organizers is what drives the planning. When it actually gets close to their proposed event time, it feels overwhelming since they feel they have been putting things off for so long now.
What could help these people? Probably a mix of things that were discussed here, planning, tools, checklists, and mentors. Also, I would be sure that every proposed organizer has a good team behind them. Nobody can take it all on by themselves. I’d look for at least one other person who can lead and make decisions for the head organizer and a few others who can be counted on to help with things. Also, a regular check-in with a mentor and central through the process could help. I know discussing things with Andrea and Cami last year helped a lot. Sometimes it’s just good to have someone to run things by.
Also, be sure that all organizers know there is no shame in handing off the event to someone else. Some may feel, even though life events have changed things, they still have to do this because they said they would. Let them know they need to get a good group involved so others can step up when needed. Even if it’s the main organizer(s) taking a back seat for new ones due to circumstances. Let them know they can still be involved in smaller ways if someone can take the reigns as the main organizer.
I’ll be willing to help plan out some of the tools, checklists, tasks, and mentorships. I like to see more good WordCamps!
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Naoko Takano
What could help these people? Probably a mix of things that were discussed here, planning, tools, checklists, and mentors. [...] Also, a regular check-in with a mentor and central through the process could help.
That’s how I feel too.
One of the reasons why there wasn’t any concealed Japanese WordCamp in the past was that past organizers and staff were able to mentor other teams through online communication. I think having a mentor who has similar cultural/geographical background would be really helpful.plan.wordcamp.org has been really helpful for me. Whenever other organizers had questions that I couldn’t answer, I always referred to the official documentation (especially stuff around the GPL license). I’d love to help make it even better.
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David Laietta
I know that any decisions to be made would still partly be on a camp-by-camp basis, but I do get that some can’t get dates that they want for a good venue six months out. Our venue was booked up with all of our top weekend choices six months in advance, and we settled for a weekend that was a month earlier (dropping us to five months planning), and later overlapped with another WordCamp, reducing the number of traveling attendees.
I agree with Mario Peshev and David Bisset, that it would be useful to have time to gather out of town speakers. While I understand camps can be regional, I don’t think that limiting them locally is always the best. Many people would attend the events based on the notoriety of speakers, and may not go if it’s headlined solely with unknowns. We hold regular meetups for the local community, and have a mix of locals and travelers, knowns and unknowns, which seems to suit us well.
The biggest thing that I would suggest is some repository for documents for future organizers. I don’t want to be the main organizer past my welcome here, and it took me two camps to gather existing accounts for our camp (not all of which I have yet). I’ve put them into a document shared with the other organizers, so that everyone can have autonomy to work if they choose. I’m perfectly willing to put together a document of notes for future organizers in our area, to give them a head start on who to call, where to go, etc.
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grantlandram
Thank you Andrea! I really appreciate this sort of reflection and experimentation from the Foundation that serves to help individual communities with different needs. *runs off to book the venue for 2014*
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Jill Binder
I’m glad the 6 month restriction is being lifted. I think that the groups who are organized and motivated enough should be able to do their thing. The proposal seems to me like a good way to make sure that it doesn’t fall through the cracks, and if it does, it’ll be easy to spot and easy for other people to take it over.
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Jill Binder
By “restriction being lifted,” I meant to say, “restriction being reconsidered.”
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Amy Hendrix (sabreuse)
Stuff for the update?
(Yep, there will be one this week.)
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Jen Mylo
- Grace Hoper from previous week
- Starting community expectations team for real
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andreamiddleton
Since Sept 20:
- 87 WordCamp videos published at WordPress.tv
- 1051 WordCamp tickets sold
- published the date for Sao Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Paris, Lima, and Sevilla
- approved for pre-planning Charleston, Chicago, Atlanta, Mumbai, Brighton, Asheville NC
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Amy Hendrix (sabreuse)
Ooh, Asheville oughta be fun
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Jen Mylo
Last weekend we participated in the Grace Hopper Women in Computing Conference‘s Open Source Day in Minneapolis. I, Alison Barrett, and Carolyn Sonnek attended as workshop teachers for the people who signed up for the WordPress section.
Alison led the group interested in working on how to contribute to core. They went through the setup process with svn, and worked on a javascript patch that was submitted on trac. I pinged Helen and Andrew Ozz to review the ticket so the participants could get an idea for how feedback gets delivered. After lunch, Alison’s group continued to learn about wp core (they mostly had js experience, no php).
Carolyn and I each led a small group in the morning that was focused on setting up a local install and learning how to use WordPress (they mostly had no experience with it, coming from programming backgrounds rather than content management). After lunch our two groups combined and we taught them how themes work and how to build a child theme.
At the end of the day we had to get up and show a demo of what our group had worked on, so we threw together some quick posts on a test site I had (because we couldn’t have multiple people contributing to a local install simultaneously) describing some of the activity, and one of the students’ child theme was used. It won’t be representative of the class after next week, but if anyone wants to see what was shown, you can see it here until October 16, 2013 (after which I’ll remove the link and it goes back to being a test site for me).
What we learned:
- Most of the computer science majors/professionals we met had heard of WordPress but not used it, and didn’t work with PHP.
- Because of our user/developer dual audience, it’s very difficult to ensure that a targeted workshop will reach the right audience without fairly strict pre-screening. We thought our group would be all people wanting to contribute to core, but 2/3 just wanted to learn how to use WP for the first time.
- Having mamp and the most recent version of wp on a thumb drive is always very handy.
- We could have jumped right into using WP if we hadn’t needed to dither with database connection errors etc in mamp/wamp for the first 20-30 minutes. That said, with this audience, they liked setting up the development environment, even if they weren’t going to do anything hardcore.
- The workshop was the day after the conference proper ended, so some people had to leave after lunch because they were checking out of hotels, catching flights, etc. This is something we see when we do tack-ons after WordCamps also.
- We really really need to kick it into gear with building curriculums and getting them online so we can start doing trainings of all stripes.
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Deborah Edwards-Onoro
Wonderful to hear about the workshop at Open Source Day. How many people attended the joint workshop after lunch?
Your comment about dealing with database connection errors, etc. reminded me of the WordCamp Phoenix 2012 workshop where I volunteered to help attendees. Full-day workshop with similar issues in the morning: troubleshooting setup issues consumed much of the time. I believe there were over a dozen volunteers on hand for ~100 people who attended.
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Jen Mylo
I think we had 10 left after lunch? They weren’t big groups, since they were capped at 200 for total participants and there were quite a few projects represented.
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Amy Hendrix (sabreuse)
Eric (@sewmyheadon) from the Docs team asked me to help spread the word about monthly documentation sprints they’ve been doing at the Seattle Meetup group: http://make.wordpress.org/docs/2013/09/30/wordpress-docs-sprints/
They’ve also put together a great set of guidelines for other local meetups to create their own events: http://make.wordpress.org/docs/2013/09/18/roll-your-own-docs-improvement-meetup/
This looks to me like it would be a great option for any meetup, student group, contrib day, etc.
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Eric Amundson
Thanks for posting this, Amy!
We have a lot of fun, learn a bunch, and are able to contribute a bit back at every Docs Sprint.
We need help with everything from writing and editing, content inventory, taking screenshots, making code samples, and even good old copy and paste.
courtneydawn
I have added pages to our Training blog. FYI, for those of you who suggested changes to the original topics/curriculum, i have not yet made them, BUT I WILL!! Also if you are interested in volunteering, now is the time! For those of you that volunteered already, you should hear from me soon if you haven’t already.
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Marko Heijnen
I’ve signed up as a volunteer through the training blog but till now I didn’t heard anything yet.
Jen Mylo
Community Expectations
Anyone who’s paid attention to other open source projects over the past year or two has seen the development of codes of conduct for almost every project/conference series that didn’t already have one. We’re behind here, for several reasons.
- Our project tends to mostly be filled with respectful, kind people, so many people don’t feel we need a code of conduct.
- Some people feel a code of conduct sets up the notion that we expect people to be inappropriate jerks, and that will make people not want to join us.
- We have lots of libertarians that don’t like centralized rules and policies.
For these reasons we have tended toward generalities rather than stating behavioral rules in specific detail.
We’re outgrowing this.
WordCamps, meetups, forums, irc, trac tickets, blog comments, and more all have the potential to be home to conduct unbecoming a WordPress community member. But how is anyone supposed to know what we expect without having been around?
And even if they have been around, the people who’ve been around longer have inside jokes and know each other well enough that they might say things tongue-in-cheek that newcomers think are being said seriously and take in a way other than intended. Without any evil intentions, people who’ve never thought about what it’s like to be a member of a minority or anything other than able-bodied/financially-stable/caucasian/American/male/heterosexual/bearded/whatever-the-majority-is might not realize how unwelcoming some language or imagery may be to those who are different.
To that end, I want us to have a page on wordpress.org that lays out our Community Expectations. A little less harsh-sounding than Code of Conduct, the Community Expectations should lay out what kinds of behavior are welcome/encouraged/expected in the project/at events, and provide a way for people to let us know if we fail to live up to these expectations so that we can continually improve our ability to welcome new contributors.
This is part of the diversity initiative. I’d like to assemble a small team of folks to work together on creating a draft of this document that we can then share with the broader contributor community for comment. To ensure that we are sensitive to language affecting multiple groups of people, I’d like this small team to itself be diverse. If you’re interested in helping draft this document, please leave a comment on this post and I’ll be in touch next week.
If you don’t want to be on the team that works on the document but you’d like to make sure we take something or other into account while we draft it, feel free to leave suggestions in the comments as well.
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Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)
At the risk of stretching myself too thin, I really do want to help as much as I can on this. Not that I don’t think Jen would think of everything I might think of, but I promise to leave my LART at home while discussing
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Jen Mylo
Without specifying all your demographic categories, I think you’d be a good person to have involved.
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mrwweb
Bravo! I’m very happy to see this initiative.
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Kat Hagan
*cheers*
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Aaron Jorbin
I really like that this is being worded as community expectations. I think it also leads to the statement having a clear and simple opening statement along the lines of “We, The WordPress community, expect our members to treat each other with respect and avoid making anyone feel unwelcome.”
Also, are beards really the majority now?
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Jen Mylo
Would like to stick with positive rather than negative language as much as possible, so would amend that to: “We, The WordPress community, expect our members to treat each other with respect and make everyone feel welcome.”
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Tracy Levesque
I would be happy to help. I’ve got a few demographics going on
Also, as someone new to contributing to the WP community, I could look at it through the eyes of a relative outsider. -
Carrie Dils
I’d love to help with this.
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BandonRandon
I think this sounds like a great idea. Count me in!
Amy Hendrix (sabreuse)
No IRC meetings this week or next because Jen and Andrea are both tied up with the Automattic meetup. So we’re shifting updates to async mode — if you’ve got anything for tomorrow’s post, add it in comments!
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Scott Offord
Will there be an irc chat on Thursday Oct 17th?
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Amy Hendrix (sabreuse)
Yep — We’ll be there Thursday at 1800UTC. Look forward to seeing you there!
Jen Mylo
Resurrecting the http://make.wordpress.org/training/ site so there’s a place for the active working group to collaborate now that there is starting to be one. Yay! @courtneydawn is heading this up.
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nofearinc
That’s literally awesome. Let me know if there is a free slot for volunteering there.
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Jen Mylo
Yes, many. @courtneydawn can loop you in.
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courtneydawn
As Jen said – many slots! I will be contacting you this week
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