A similar message to this post was sent to all WordPress Chapter Meetup Organizers via meetup.com, but we are also sharing below.
If you are a Meetup Organizer, please feel free to share the survey link with your co-organizers.
Hello Meetup Organizers!
It’s time for the annual meetup organizer survey, and we have a bunch of other stuff to tell you about, too!
Organizer Survey
The annual survey is how we track progress in the meetup program. If your meetup group has multiple organizers, each organizer should fill in the survey, but please decide among your group who will be the main point of contact with WordPress Community Support in 2020 — we ask for that information in the survey. Here’s your organizer survey:
In order for your feedback to be included in the results, please complete the survey by 15 March, 2020!
Member Survey
We’ve recently shared the annual meetup program survey with all members. We’ve revised the questions and edited it down to a shorter survey that takes less than 3 minutes to complete. It would be great if you could mention it at your next event and encourage people to respond! In the email to members, we’ve reminded them that all meetup group members are encouraged to plan events that interest them so that there are more things happening in each group without the primary organizers having to do more work. If members of your group offer to organize events, we hope you will encourage them and make sure they feel welcome on the organizing team!
Organizing Team
Speaking of the organizing team, it’s time for a round of clean-up on your meetup.com leadership team. If there are any organizers on your team who haven’t planned an event in 2019, please communicate with them about changing their role to Member so that people can see who is active and can help answer questions.
WordPress Global Community Sponsors for 2019
A big thank you to our 2019 global sponsors! Their generous support keeps the meetup program free for the whole community and helps to make sure ticket prices for WordCamps stay affordable.
- Jetpack *
- WooCommerce *
- Bluehost *
- Liquid Web
- GoDaddy *
- HubSpot *
- GreenGeeks
- DreamHost
* These sponsors support WordPress events worldwide.
Meetup Sponsorship
- If a venue is donating space, it is appropriate to list them as the venue sponsor.
- It is not appropriate to list any company as contributing to the meetup.com dues, since we pay those through the central account.
- Companies providing refreshments or financial support to cover the cost of refreshments are appropriate to thank, but should be recognized on an even level with their support. Paying for snacks all year? Sidebar recognition is great. One-time sponsor? Leaving them listed as a sponsor all year doesn’t quite match; it’s better to thank them in the event listing for the event they are sponsoring.
- Organizers of the meetup group and its events are volunteers, and should not be listing their businesses as sponsors unless they are providing a venue or financial support/refreshments like an outside company.
Venue Rental Costs
We encourage organizers to get free or donated space, but if your venue charges a fee, you can submit a request for payment, which we will review and let you know if that is something we can help cover. Keep in mind that the guideline for cost is about $5 USD per person. Venue rental costs are paid from the central budget. If you’d like to submit a payment request, you can do so here by completing the Meetup Venue Approval Request form.
Event Host Designation
This is a small thing, but sometimes meetup organizers set the “WordPress” user as the event host for their meetup events. Please set the event organizer as the event host — when WordPress is the event host, people try to ask us questions about the event that we can’t answer.
Community Team Blog and Slack
Meetup organizers are considered part of the community team at WordPress.org. If you don’t stop by the community team’s blog often, please drop by every once in a while! In addition, if you haven’t joined the WordPress Slack instance, you can do so at https://chat.wordpress.org. The #community-events channel in Slack is where meetup and WordCamp organizers can chat with each other, ask questions of Community Team deputies, ask for community feedback, etc.
Thank you for your efforts in 2019, and here’s to an even better 2020!
–The WordPress Global Community Team