Have you taken the WordPress 2016 Survey yet?

WordPress.org

Make WordPress Community

Welcome to the official blog of the community/outreach team for the WordPress open source project!

This team oversees official events, mentorship programs, diversity initiatives, contributor outreach, and other ways of growing our community.

If you love WordPress and want to help us do these things, join in!

Getting Involved

We use this blog for status reports, project announcements, and the occasional policy debate. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to comment on posts and join the discussion.

You can learn about our current activities on the Team Projects page. There projects are suitable for everyone from newcomers to WordPress community elders.

You can use our contact form to volunteer for one of our projects.

Communication

In addition to discussions on this blog, we have Office Hours four times a week in the #community-events channel on Slack for real-time communication. Office hours for the next week are scheduled for Monday 22:00 UTC 2016, Tuesday 13:00 UTC 2016, Wednesday 22:00 UTC 2016, and Thursday 13:00 UTC 2016 in the #community-events channel on Slack.

Recent Updates Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Bernhard Kau 10:08 am on October 25, 2016 Permalink |  
    Categories: WordCamps ( 153 )

    Feature Request: Add a custom taxonomy for teams to the WordCamp organizers post type 

    The organizing team for larger WordCamps such as Europe and U.S. have been getting bigger every year. We would like to be able to structure the page showing the organizers better. Having the ability to categorize those organizers into teams and then print them separately using a new attribute on the [organizers] shortcode would help a lot with this.

    I’ve already created a ticket with a patch to add this new custom taxonomy, but was asked to propose this feature request here, so the community team can discuss about this idea. So I would kindly invite you to share your thoughts on this idea.

     

  • Carl Alberto 8:06 pm on October 24, 2016 Permalink |  
    Categories: WordCamps ( 153 )

    2 WordCamp site features that might help new organizers 

    Hello Community Team!

    As we prepare for our upcoming WordCamp in Manila, we encountered 2 challenges along the way, hopefully our feedback can help new organizers:

    1. Theme developer roles

    We assigned a volunteer developer/designer which is not part of the organizing team to modify the theme in our WordCamp site. The only way for us to do that is assign them an Admin role, which will also give them full access to the site. We then realized that it might be a security risk later on if that accessed is abused. We changed their role to Editor access but limits them to only edit post and pages. We tried utilizing the remote css tool and hosted the css file in a public repo, it was a great help, but still they need Administrator role help from time to time in changing background and logo images in the theme’s customizer.

    Would it be helpful if there is custom user role for a “theme developer” between an Editor and Administrator which has capabilities on edit_theme_options and update_themes? In that way, organizers are confident that the theme developer can have full control in the aesthetics of the site without any worries.

    2. Simple Mailer from the WordCamp site

    It has been pointed out to me that it has been a long ongoing issue where WordCamp organizers should be given access to outgoing mails using city@wordcamp.org. From our perspective,  as first time event organizers, as well as from our country where WordCamp is just emerging, most key person that we approach for sponsorship and venue request asked us for an official letter of request. This ends us up without any reply when using our own personal email. It took us 3 months to secure a venue after actively attending tech events.

    Would it be a good idea to have a simple emailing plugin directly from the WC site that can utilize wp_mail? An input box for recipient, subject and message would be sufficient enough for us to send a formal request letter using an email coming from the wordcamp.org

     

    Would you also think improving these 2 areas can greatly help out lessening the load for new WordCamp organizers? Thank you for giving me a chance to suggest ideas!

     

    • thabotswana 8:13 pm on October 24, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I do agree with you, Carl, about our official email address. I was wondering if there was a way to use our city@wordcamp.org address to send emails. It does look more professional and carries more weight, especially when approaching potential sponsors.

    • Wes Linda 11:22 pm on October 24, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Both points are valid. On the email front, we’ve setup a GMail account to send for our Camp but it might not be a bad idea to be able to send from the city@ address.

      On the email front, I’d love to see some sort of general “list” become available. I’d love to bring all of the past attendees forward into a single list each year so we can send out announcements and not have to log into a past year to blast out to past attendees.

      I know we can export the data and pull into Mailchimp or something but I believe that’s frowned upon. An enhanced email / subscription option for past attendees would be awesome.

    • Rocio Valdivia 11:55 am on October 25, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Hi Carl and all WC organizers! You’ve already can send emails from your email address city@wordcamp.org since May this year. Here are the quick instructions and reference 🙂
      https://make.wordpress.org/community/2016/04/07/wordcamps-working-with-email/#comment-22131

    • Andrea Middleton 10:29 pm on October 26, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Would it be helpful if there is custom user role for a “theme developer” between an Editor and Administrator which has capabilities on edit_theme_options and update_themes? In that way, organizers are confident that the theme developer can have full control in the aesthetics of the site without any worries.

      Since wordcamp.org is so security-conscious anyway, the number of things one can do when customizing a theme on a WordCamp site is already pretty limited to custom CSS (which is sanitized). If someone is worried about a volunteer who’s been invited to help design the event site doing something bad, I would just setup Remote CSS, since that wouldn’t require the dev having access to the site. But generally speaking, we prefer to just recruit trustworthy people, and trust them. 🙂

      • Carl Alberto 7:33 am on October 27, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Hi Andrea,

        The remote css and github is a good tool and works fine for us, we skipped that part in the Organizer Handbook so it was late for us to know how to set it up properly.

        Anyway, thanks to the community team that is always ready to guides us 🙂

  • Francesca Marano 10:37 am on October 24, 2016 Permalink |
    Tags:   
    Categories: Official Websites ( 47 )

    A/V Release Form 

    Hello!
    The last two WordCamps I had the pleasure to visit asked speakers to sign the A/V release form on a pdf file. This means having a printer and a scanner (or if you are more tech savvy and you have a Mac use Preview, but I don’t assume everyone knows that – I didn’t up until a few days ago!).

    For WordCamp Torino we pasted the text of the A/V release form in a page and added a form with:

    • Name
    • Date
    • Checkbox (redundant, cause if you didn’t send the form for us it meant you didn’t sign the form, but we felt it reinforced the importance of explicitly approve the rules).
    • Send

    I feel that this would make the process easier for speakers.

    Do you think we could create this page for all WordCamp.org installations?
    Thanks!

     

    • Jon (Kenshino) 10:44 am on October 24, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Does a non-signed digital release actually constitute any legal agreement?

      Without a signature – anyone could submit that form.

      Would digital signatures make more sense?

      • Francesca Marano 10:47 am on October 24, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Hmm, the point is that lots of speakers also send the form with their name typed in (this is one of the things you could do with Preview), so I am not sure those are legally valid anyway.

        • Jon (Kenshino) 3:51 am on October 25, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          Yes, and that would be sent via their emails, so you have 2 points of verification that it’s the correct person. When legal disputes do happen, I expect that to come in handy.

      • Mikel King 1:23 pm on October 24, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        I don’t see how it would be any less legal than signing up for a newsletter.

    • Randy Hicks 12:50 pm on October 24, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      In the short term, is it possible to have them digitally confirm then physically sign at the camp just before their talk? Have the AV forms at the podium for them to sign.

      This consolidates the printing and removes the load from the speakers. Once the planning team has the signed papers they can take a pic and upload to the designated location.

      A digital signature would make more sense, maybe a long term goal?

      • Melinda Helt 1:14 pm on October 24, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        This is what we did for WC Pittsburgh. We had it as part of the speaker application form as mentioned above and had speakers sign hard copies at registration. Later we scanned the hard copies into one PDF and stored in the media library of our site (so that they could be easily found by anyone in the future).

    • Ben Hansen (ubernaut) 3:39 pm on October 24, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      sorry, if this has been asked and answered before but why do we even need releases for these speakers given the fact that these videos are noncommercial and informational in nature and therefore covered by fair use at least in the us. Does it have something to do with the fact we are releasing these as creative commons?

      • Andrea Middleton 3:40 pm on October 26, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        The releases are important to make sure the WordPress Foundation has all of the rights it needs to make and distribute the videos (including releasing them under Creative Commons Licenses). It’s true that all of our videos are for non-commercial purposes, but people who appear in the videos still have rights to control how their images, voices, photos, are used, even if you’re not making money off of them. This is the reason why a political campaign (non commercial) would need to get your permission to use your photo in a campaign ad. Fair use might apply to something like news reporting of the events of WordCamp (showing a short clip of speakers on the evening news), but these are pretty limited exceptions to the general rule. For full length videos of camp talks, we think it’s both courteous to the speakers, and legally correct, to get a release signed.

    • Bernhard Kau 7:59 pm on October 24, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I was an organizer for multiple camps in Berlin as well as a speaker on many camps. I have to admit, that I am also one of those speakers who sometimes has troubles with finding a printer (or mine is out of ink) to print the A/V form in time.

      For legal reasons, a hand written signature is mandatory in my opinion. But it doesn’t necessarily means, that you have to print and sign it.

      For the WordCamp Milano I “signed” the form by using the “Signature Feature” from the Adobe Reader. So I signed a piece of paper, scanned it, and then placed the signature.

      Some could argue that this is not enough, but I think it should be fine. Usually a speaker is willing to sign it and just want’s to have less hassle sending it in. So why not providing them a small manual on how to sign it.

      P.S. Some speaker who didn’t had a scanner also just took a photo of the printed A/V form and sent it to me. I think that is also fine.

    • Francesca Marano 2:30 pm on October 26, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Uhm, so the problem is legal? I wonder how many Camps *really* get legally binding signatures. Also, it might vary from country to country? I see now it’s a much larger issue than making a form 😉

    • KMGMusic 3:37 pm on October 28, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Totally agree. I’m actually the founder of ApproveMe (legally binding UETA/ESIGN compliant signatures for WordPress hosted websites). I’d be happy to help solve this problem. Our software out of the box is compliant with the US esignature laws… and with a couple workflow tweaks it can also be compliant with the EU directive.

  • Mayo Moriyama 4:23 am on October 24, 2016 Permalink |
    Tags: Asia/Pacific   
    Categories: Meetups ( 42 )

    Call for Asia/Pacific region meetup organizers to make video relay 

    Hello everyone!
    WordCamp Denpasar accepted my talk about organizing local meetups! So I’m planning to make video relay of local meetup in Asia/Pacific region.

    This is my session description:

    Organizing Meetup in your city

    As you know WordPress is global, but I’d like to focus on Asia/Pacific region in this video because Europe and US communities already have a great online presence.

    The video requires:
    1. Get together with all attendee (except who don’t want to show their faces).
    2. Say something all together. For example “We love WordPress” or “Hello from *city name*”.
    3. Smartphone is enough.
    4. I expect 3-10 second length.
    5. Send me until 14 November by Slack mayuko or email to hello atmark mayuko.me.

    If you have any question please ask me. I also wrote blog post about it:
    http://blog.mayuko.me/en/wordcamp-denpasar-asian-pacific-meetup-group-video/

     

  • WordCamp.org 4:00 am on October 24, 2016 Permalink |  

    Hello to all our Deputies, WordCamp organizers, Meetup wranglers, and WordPress Community builders! You were probably hard at work this weekend. Tell us what you got accomplished in our #weekly-update!

    Have you run into a roadblock with the stuff you’re working on? Head over to #community-events or #community-team in Slack and ask for help!

     

  • WordCamp.org 4:00 am on October 17, 2016 Permalink |  

    Hello to all our Deputies, WordCamp organizers, Meetup wranglers, and WordPress Community builders! You were probably hard at work this weekend. Tell us what you got accomplished in our #weekly-update!

    Have you run into a roadblock with the stuff you’re working on? Head over to #community-events or #community-team in Slack and ask for help!

     

    • Cami Kaos 11:00 pm on October 18, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Tuesday:

      • WordCamp NYC orientation, sent organizer agreement, set email forward
      • WordCamp Austin orientation, sent organizer agreement, set email forward, created site

    • sheriebeth 4:45 pm on October 19, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Hosted the first Summerville Area meetup with @YayCheryl as part of the WordPress Charleston User Group on Monday night (after a week’s delay due to Hurricane Matthew)! We had a good crowd of about 20 people out of the 30+ that RSVP’d. Everyone seemed to have a great time connecting and talking about plans for future meetups! Working on planning November now with hopefully a speaker this time! 🙂

    • Francesca Marano 12:05 pm on October 21, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Friday October 14: Community table at WordCamp Netherlands

      • Talked with lovely people that want to start new Meetups in the Netherlands and Belgium

      Friday October 21: Community table at WordCamp Milano

      • Talked to a bunch of Meetup organisers that are interested in organising a WordCamp in their cities 🎉
      • Did the Meetup orientation with Antonio from Brindisi

    • Guga Alves 12:02 am on October 22, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      • WP Baixada Rio is a new meetup group at Rio de Janeiro state, I’m mentoring (talking everyday with the organizers) and help to add them adding an Existing Meetup.com Group to WordPress profile
      • WP Rio is an existing meetup group since 2011 that I helped to create and it was added to WordPress profile on meetup.com too
      • Talking with some guys from Niterio, Rio de Janeiro, maybe they’ll start the third meetup group in Rio de Janeiro state but it’s not confirmed yet.

      Thanks @courtneypk for helping on it!

    • Mayo Moriyama 4:55 am on October 24, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Thursday:

      • Meetup orentation with Davao, Hong Kong, Nha Trang.

  • Josepha 6:42 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink |  
    Categories: Global ( 4 ), WordCamps ( 153 )

    Paid Ads for WordCamps 

    Over the years, we’ve seen a lot of discussion about the use of online advertising to promote WordCamps. Since 2011, we’ve requested that it not be an allowed expense in WordCamp budgets and have asked all deputies to help share that expectation. However, it seems like more and more WordCamps are wanting the option to include paid ads in their budget.

    So let’s talk about how we could change that rule to better suit everyone. I thought it would be good to get some background and discuss a few of the main ideas that will affect this. If possible, I’d love to focus on the idea of these updates, rather than how we will make it work. If we end up adjusting anything, we’ll all have a lot of things to figure out in the way of “How Things Work” that will merit it’s own post. 😀

    The Background

    Online advertising has previously not been considered part of our WordCamp budgets for a few specific reasons:

    1. We believe that if you have a well-established community (i.e. a local user group that meets in-person regularly to talk about WordPress); those people will have a high interest in your WordCamp and won’t need a paid ad.
    2. Online advertising has a wide reach and can bring in people who don’t already know WordPress or what to expect from a WordCamp; WordCamps rarely provide content for people who do not already know about WordPress.
    3. WordPress on its own is a great online marketing platform; paid clicks might not be as effective as a good content marketing plan – publish often and share it everywhere.

    In our monthly chat, there were a few pros and cons raised that I’ve listed below:

    Pros

    • It will increase awareness; WordPress freelancers may not always know about the community.
    • Paid ads will help be more visible in a competitive tech event space.
    • It would add to diversity.

    Cons

    • Tracking is an issue overall.
    • Knowing how to define success would be different from area to area.

    Implementation Concerns

    • Tracking on ticket sales would be needed for measuring conversion.
      • Tried Bitly tracking without success
      • Jetpack stats/Google Tag Manager

    The Big Question

    If we consider the basic idea that WordCamps are about quality content (both on the site and from the speakers), does it then make sense to add in the work of an online advertising campaign as well? Knowing that volunteer time is scarce and extremely valuable, should we redirect their attention to paid ads rather than better content, fundraising, or all the other work that organizing an event requires?

     

    • Jon Brown 7:16 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I think part of the goal of WordCamps is (or should be) to expand the local audience, that requires at least a little extra outreach.

      I think paid ads would be _very_ helpful, as long as they were highly targeted. The reality is that it’s hard to reach a broader audience without doing a little paid advertising. It’s easy to reach our meetup group, but there are a _lot_ of friends of friends that would be interested in a WordCamp but don’t pay close enough attention to be reached that way. They can be reached via targeted facebook or google ads though.

      Maybe just to test the waters it could be started with a _prescribed_ advertising plan. I’m thinking something like $100-250 budget for FB and $100-250 for Google with specific targeting criteria. Maybe an additional dollar or percentage amount for offline media buying. While It’s often possible to get free offline media coverage for an event like WordCamps via local radio/newspapers, I think most organizers need some guidance on how/where/when/who to approach for that sort of thing.

      I wouldn’t start off by burdening people with lots of analytics, goals and reporting though. It’s hard, causes worry and WordCamps are already burdened with a lot of reporting.

    • CharlieLivingston 7:32 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I don’t see the need for paid ads. If people are interested in WordPress enough that they want to attend a WordCamp, they’ll find about them naturally by reading blogs, following WordPress people on Twitter etc.

      Also, a budget of a few hundred dollars wouldn’t be enough to have any kind of measurable impact. I mean, with that kind of budget you’d only be able to reach a few hundred people, and out of those reached how many are actually going to buy a ticket? A very low number, I’d expect, if any.

      Put the money into improving the event (better venue, more lunch options etc). Paid ads would be a waste.

    • skarjune 8:38 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Second to @jb510‘s proposal to consider a prescribed advertising plan option. In addition to a dollar/percentage cap, there could be limits on the types of marketing activities used to promote tracking outcomes and to avoid budget waste or conflicts.

      Background 2: WordCamps DO provide content for beginners; and WordCamps, Meetups, and partnered Training events serve newcomers who seek to level up on the web.

      Pros: Make the community more transparent, think ‘marketing not ‘ads,’ yes to diversity. Another challenge is upstreaming as WordPress moves up into corporate.

      Cons: Outreach can be measured with social media & online marketing. Conversions are trickier, but event surveys could capture some outcomes for tracking.

      Implementation Concerns: Besides the tracking challenge, there’s a potential for conflict-of-interest problems with media and print advertising. Rules needed, as with WordCamp sponsorship.

      • Andrea Middleton 9:16 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Background 2: WordCamps DO provide content for beginners

        Depending on what you mean by “beginners,” that’s not entirely accurate. 🙂 Lots of WordCamps include content that isn’t specifically for developers and designers, but most don’t include straight up new user training or getting-started-with-WordPress programming.

        That’s not necessarily a barrier to broadening the scope of our publicity/marketing/outreach, but it does probably mean that we’ll need to be really clear and careful about either how we target ads or how we describe/explain the event. 🙂

        • skarjune 8:53 pm on October 14, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          Understood that most may not offer Getting Started training, but I’m referring to the use of “Beginner” tracks and tags used in WordCamp schedules.

          Still, some WordCamps do offer Getting Started training sessions and days. Also, the Training Team has tested the Tier 1 set of lesson plans suitable for “WP 101” workshops that is available for WordCamp trainers to use.

          Yes, let’s be clear about why one might attend WordCamp. Expanded outreach can broaden the community, invite non-programmers who might be hesitant, and promote options to level-up on how WordPress does the web.

    • Alex Vasquez 9:34 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I’m a fan of this idea, especially if it helps us expand local community reach to folks who might not be active within the WordPress community. Targeting can help us target specific communities as well who may not necessarily connect with WP’s larger community. I think that’s a good thing.

      I think volunteer time could be put on this and many camps probably have someone who could expertly setup these campaigns. But a lot would need to be done to describe what kinds of ads are acceptable.

    • David Bisset 12:13 am on October 14, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      This all, of course, depends on the event. Some events – especially smaller ones, but not necessarily, don’t need to use paid advertisements. When you “only” have to fill 100-200 and already established a good local presence… there might not be a need to pay for ads (remember there is a way to advertise and not pay – go through meetups, advertise another meetup in exchange for them spreading the word about you, etc.)

      That being said, he’s the top three reasons for me personally:

      1. It saves time and manpower. The right ad in a market you can’t reach will be faster then you attempting to find contacts you don’t have that later you will eventually make.

      2. Many times it’s cheap. Facebook ads can be extremely inexpensive for niche markets. I don’t think we’re talking about print advertisement, unless it’s via a college or school paper.

      3. Reaching new people.

      Most marketing rarely makes a big impact for your buck, so it’s logical for resistance to spending WordCamp funds for this purpose. Paid marketing should be, IMO, an attempt to spread awareness… not fill seats.

      The best marketing is word of mouth – and most camps after their first year usually have this. I would certainly explore partnering with local community groups/meetups to the mutual benefit of both parties, where it makes sense.

      For what is reasonable, depends on the event and scenario. Personally I would think something below $300 would be something for an event like WordCamp Miami (this equals an ad in a newsletter that targets the market plus some FB marketing).

      A volunteer – one that actually has experience in this marketing – would be assigned to monitor and report effectiveness. That should be a line-item in the WordCamp budget/spreadsheet which brings needed analytics and info to the Foundation and other organizers.

    • Amit Kumar Singh 4:45 am on October 14, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Aim of organizing WordCamp should not be to fill attendees or Increase count of attendees. Once this aim is clear then Paid advertising of any kind does not make sense.

      • skarjune 9:01 pm on October 14, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Not sure what the aim is by your comment, as you only indicated it should not be to fill attendees. In my experience working on WordCamps the past four years, there is a need and there is work to attract not only attendees, but also sponsors and volunteers. Without all those participants, WordCamps can fail. There’s also the concern of attracting new local speakers, not just relying upon speakers who travel the circuit.

      • Pieter 9:39 pm on October 20, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        The aim of WordCamps is to share ideas and knowledge, and get to know more people. By putting up ads you just might get to know a few more people and get to know more a couple of more things.. It shouldn’t be overdone, but it might just be beneficial for some WordCamps.

    • Saurabh Shukla 4:49 am on October 14, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Just a thought, if paid ads should be used, wouldn’t it make more sense to advertise the local meetup group where there can be more focus on beginners and newbies than can be at a WordCamp?

    • sonziv 6:00 am on October 14, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Local meetup group should always focus on building the community in organic way and keep arranging quality meetups and sessions. Also few casual meetups to discuss the ongoing changes in WordPress ecosystem.

      But a WordCamp happens once a year per city and if you have budget generated through sponsorship, I don’t think one should hesitate in utilizing a small amount in paid ads to make more people aware about the event. To arrange a WordCamp, organizers and volunteers spend a lot of time and effort, and if more people (of course the targeted ones who are somehow related to WordPress) from the local city or nearby will attend the event, that will be great. As @jb510 proposed, one should run targeted campaign so that a small budget will have better conversion. There should not be any harm in utilizing 1 – 3% of complete fund for online ads to reach more people who we missed through local meetups.

      Using Paid Ads to get more attendees doesn’t mean we are compromising with the quality. Focus should always be to get people who are interested in WordPress or using this awesome platform in their daily life. Paid ads will help us reach more people whom we missed while building the local community.

    • Aditya Kane 7:38 am on October 14, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      When we had our first WordCamp in Mumbai, a friend offered to run some ads for us free on Facebook. He was actually working in Facebook so he had free credit. The ads did help in a city like Mumbai to raise awareness. That said, last year we sold more tickets than ever and did not do any sort of ads.

      The global community is actually not global. It is made up of very diverse and different communities. The solution for one mostly doesnt fit another. The solutions also vary in very different terms.

      Looking through that lens, here are some issues I have with ads.

      • How does this get regulated? Every community works differently. Facebook ads might work in some places, other places billboards and posters might be useful. So how do we regulate which type of ads can be used and by which community.
      • How do you actually decide what is targeted for a particular community and what is not?

      Let’s be honest, I think considering the work load – any line item called Ad Expenses – will not end up getting well regulated or even observed by limited time everyone has at WordCamp Central. So I think somewhere this will become like an “let’s not really look this up much as long as its 5% of budget or $300 per event” kind of expenditure.

      I have different solution which might not be exactly very well thought out or elegant for that matter.

      I think we all agree that majority of the outreach and getting people to attend or awareness should be done through content and meetups. Why not have a certain amount that Central might spend on ads locally – (possibly as most seem to be welcoming this idea) be dedicated to building better community tools that are specific to local meetups and community.

      Allowing WordCamp websites to be more like living yearly dairy of sorts for the local community and not just the “WordCamp event”

      • Having local registrations to newsletters (through jetpack would be just fine)
      • A CPT to handle local meetups with local organisers and more.
      • Some useful tools to work around conducting workshops etc. I know a lot of companies or universities would be happy to get a mention on WordCamp website for free meetup or workshop venue than being featured on WordCamp website.
      • Cross posting from meetup.com – (I am not a fan of meetup.com)

      It might take long to build up outreach locally and globally with such tools but it might be more sustainable than any money spent on ads.

    • bridgetwillard 4:35 pm on October 19, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Hi. I was chatting with Andrea Middleton at WCCINCY this weekend.

      If the goal is to create a thriving WordPress meetup community who celebrates with a WordCamp, I’d suggest that the WordPress Main Meetup Account pulse Facebook geo-targeted ad in one of two ways:

      1. Pulse ads for two weeks after Labor Day or after New Years Day because that is when people start new habits. These geo-targeted ads can be managed and paid for by the Foundation’s Main Meetup Account as a mass push to attend your local meetup. Just be aware that Facebook requires 1200×630 image with less than 20% text.

      OR

      2. If a WordCamp is happening in March of 2017, pulse ads for the meetup now (geo-targeted within 60 miles of said meetup or whatever logical distance makes sense) to encourage people to attend the meetup. Once people attend the meetup, they will know about the WordCamp.

      Love,
      Bridget

    • Larry Swanson 10:24 pm on October 21, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I think it’s a worthwhile experiment to run, but I my hunch is that organic promotion via community outreach makes more sense. Not sure how you could compare ROI of scarce volunteer time and energy on paid vs organic promo activities, but that might be worth exploring, too.

    • Karissa Skirmont 2:17 pm on October 27, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I am in favor of individual WordCamps being able to budget in FB ads. While our Meetup group is large with over 1300 members, I don’t feel that we had the turn out we should have despite our extensive email/messaging campaign.
      Our city is large and there is a LOT more WordPress people in it that might not even KNOW about the Meetup group and thus WordCamp.

      On a related topic that brought me back to post my thoughts now, was a Sponsored post on FB for WordCamp US introducing the speakers… Ironic much?

  • Andrea Middleton 11:29 pm on October 11, 2016 Permalink |
    Tags:   
    Categories: Community Management ( 183 )

    Let's talk about the 2017 Global Sponsorship Program 

    It’s time (past time!) to start drafting a Global Sponsorship program for 2017, yay! This week I sent a survey to current global sponsors to find out what they love and what they don’t love from the 2016 program. Apart from sponsor feedback, though, it’s worth discussing what, if anything, we think isn’t working in the 2016 program, including benefits, levels, and to some extent, execution.

    As a reminder, we don’t have unlimited time to work on this, since we want to get a 2017 program to our current and prospective sponsors this month. I’m not aware of anything in our benefits packages that is specifically not working, but people don’t always tell me things directly, so. Here is your chance to tell us directly: what do you as event organizers love about the global sponsorship program? And what do you not love so much? 🙂

     

    • David Bisset 4:18 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      I think overall the program works for me, as an event organizer.

      I could use a reminder for contacts (email) for each of these global sponsors though. First thing I do when WordCamp Miami is approved is send an email and make personal contact, and not wait until the event gets close or wait for them to reach out to me. 🙂

      • Andrea Middleton 4:34 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        We send a “meet your global sponsors!” email to the lead organizer and sponsor wrangler when the WordCamp is added to the schedule; do you think that scheduling another email for a month or two before the event as a reminder (“Make sure you reach out to your global sponsors!” or similar) would be good too? I don’t want to send too many emails, but if another auto-email would help, well, we have the technology. 🙂

        (Also thanks for helping spread the word and for your feedback!) <3

        • David Bisset 7:23 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          Forgot about that email! I would think it’s up to the organizers to follow up and if they don’t get a response, then ping the Foundation.

          Even with this email, it seems from my talks w/ organizers (both whom i mentor and do not) that reaching out to sponsors isn’t as common as it should be. Personally a reminder email doesn’t bother me since i already am dealing with many, many emails anyways. 🙂

        • Larry Swanson 10:08 pm on October 21, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          I had a similar issue when I came on board as sponsor wrangler for WordCamp Seattle. It took me a while to ferret out the names and contact info from that email you had sent earlier. Wondering if there’s an onboarding document anywhere for folks new to the role about where that kind of info is – apologies if there is and I’ve missed it.

    • Jessica Estes 4:50 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      For us, as a first-time WordCamp (OKC) it was a bit confusing/discouraging to not hear back from the global sponsors when we emailed them a thank you/notification of the event and asked if they would be using their tickets, sending swag, or needing a table.

      We had plenty of space for any who wanted to have a table and several of the global sponsors didn’t reply at all. If the Handbook had told us that it was normal to not hear back it would have relieved some stress that comes with being new organizers.

      We just didn’t know what to expect, but had attended WordCamps that had several sponsors present so kind of had that expectation and didn’t quite know what to think about silence back from them. We understood that they’d really already made a significant contribution with their funds and likely already had travel plans made prior to notification of our event, but having some instruction to organizers would have been helpful.

      • David Bisset 7:25 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        In the past, i’ve had troubles reaching out to a few sponsors early. I would like maybe a “recommended date to get information to us” to us (X weeks or days prior to the conference). Some sponsors like waiting until the last minute to say “we are sending down all our stuff, can you pick it up and take it to the venue” or just “we are coming, can confirm tickets” and by then you already have t-shirt, food, and other numbers… sure, you pad things to cover them, that’s not a problem but would be nice to cover things for smaller camps. Just my $0.02.

      • Andrea Middleton 9:00 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        We could probably improve our communication with organizers around what to expect from global community sponsors. A lot of global sponsors participate in the global program because they’re short on staff (so they can’t correspond with individual camps very often) but still want to support all the WordCamps they can. So yeah, I can see where setting expectations for organizers would be a good idea. 🙂 Thanks Jessica!

  • WordCamp.org 4:00 am on October 10, 2016 Permalink |  

    Hello to all our Deputies, WordCamp organizers, Meetup wranglers, and WordPress Community builders! You were probably hard at work this weekend. Tell us what you got accomplished in our #weekly-update!

    Have you run into a roadblock with the stuff you’re working on? Head over to #community-events or #community-team in Slack and ask for help!

     

    • Cami Kaos 11:27 pm on October 11, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Tuesday 10/11
      WordCamp Birmingham checkin – advised them to publish speakers and schedule, encouraged them to offer ticket discounts/ scholarships to students, ask speakers to promote their event, put a post up on WordCamp Central News, and to hurry up and get their swag orders in and payment requests submitted.

      Reviewed and declined WordCamp Manila application – explained guidelines about not profiting from the event and asked them to reapply if interested in organizing within guidelines. Also sent information about bringing their meetup program into the chapter account.

      Reviewed and approved WordCamp Twin Cities application, but changed to Minneapolis – requested an orientation be scheduled.

      Reviewed and approved WordCamp Asheville application – requested an orientation be scheduled

      Reviewed and approved WordCamp NYC application – Interview orientation will discuss the diversity of the team, how they can go about working in the open camps system, that contributor day and the after party need to be separate events. Requested an interview/ orientation be scheduled.

      Reviewed and approved WordCamp London application – asked applicant to schedule an interview/ orientation

      Reviewed and approved WordCamp Boston application for interview- asked applicant to schedule interview/orientation

      Emailed three applicants for WordCamp Vienna – asked them to select one person to list as lead organizer before we move forward with the WordCamp process. After receiving a response, declined the two additional WordCamp Vienna applications.

    • Mayo Moriyama 11:46 pm on October 12, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Wednesday 10/12

      Bangkok and Coimbatore meetup oriantation with @_dorsvenabili (Coimbatore applicant couldn’t finish the orientation)

      WordCamp Bangkok orientation with @_dorsvenabili

      • Mayo Moriyama 11:31 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Friday 10/14

        Sent meetup orientation scheduling to Hong Kong & Coimbatore.
        Sent reminder to meetup in Davao applicant.

  • Francesca Marano 9:08 am on October 7, 2016 Permalink |
    Tags: , , , ,   
    Categories: Events ( 14 )

    Global Translation Day 2 

    Hello hello!
    As some of you might know, last April the Polyglots team hosted the first Global Translation Day with 24 hours of streamed sessions and live events around the world. It was an incredible experience: we translated thousands of strings, on-boarded hundreds of new contributors and ate tons of cake (oh well, that might have been only in Torino). If you wanna read some really impressive statistics, head over to the recap post:

    Global WordPress Translation Day – recap & results

    It was such an incredible experience that we decided to have another one on November 12 and we would like to get *even* more people excited from all over the world.

    I have been involved with Polyglots and Community for a while now and I think it would be very helpful to have the support from the Community team to do some outreach.

    I will get in touch with WordCamps that have Contributor Days coming up to announce the event, and I think it would be super cool and effective if we could send a message to all Meetups organizers in the chapter: @chanthaboune do you think it would be possible?

    We have a ton of materials from last WGTD to help Meetups organise a local event if they want to, even if they never contributed to Polyglots before.

    Here is the website for the upcoming event: https://wptranslationday.org/
    Here are all the videos recorded last time, I think they make an incredible resource for Meetups: http://wordpress.tv/event/global-wordpress-translation-day-2016/

    Can you think of other ways to get local communities involved? I am all ears! We can brainstorm here or chat on Slack, I am @francina.

    Ciao for now!

     

    • Josepha 6:51 pm on October 13, 2016 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      1. Sorry I didn’t respond to this sooner.
      2. Totally. Email was sent and details dispersed. 🙂

← Older posts

c
compose new post
j
next post/next comment
k
previous post/previous comment
r
reply
e
edit
o
show/hide comments
t
go to top
l
go to login
h
show/hide help
shift + esc
cancel
Skip to toolbar