In November 2021, the WordPress Global Community Team requested suggestions for Community team goals for 2022.
Several community members offered excellent goals for our team to consider. Since our team is relatively low on bandwidth in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, our goal was to filter through the list of submitted goals and finalize a short list of achievable but impactful goals in 2022.
In order to get there, the team discussed these goals in community team chats and also conducted some face-to-face open discussion sessions over zoom. I would like to thank everyone who participated in these discussions and helped us finalize some goals for our team!
From amongst all the suggestions we received, we have finalized a list of five overarching goals for the team to pursue this year.
Unlike previous years, we decided to go slow with our goals. Our objective is to focus on goals that are both achievable and impactful, especially at a period where our team is slowly coming back in action organizing in-person events.
Our 2022 Goals:
- Support the return of in-person events
- Check-in and reactivate WordPress Meetup Chapters worldwide
- Increase training and support for Deputies and Mentors
- Work on efforts to improve diversity and inclusion within our community
- Create more opportunities for community members to interact with each other
How You Can Help!
Interested in helping us out this year? Awesome! Take one, or all, of these next steps:
- Read on to learn more about our 2022 goals.
- Share in the comments below the top three items you are interested in contributing to.
- Participate in upcoming Community Team meetings on Thursdays at 12:00 UTC and 21:00 UTC in the #community-team channel on Slack to connect with other contributors working on similar goals.
If you would like to see more context for these goals, please visit the public Trello board.
Willing to Lead?
The Community Team will also need contributors to coordinate and organize efforts! If you have the time to take on this role, please share in the comments which goals you would like to help lead.
Read on to learn all about our 2022 goals in more detail!
Ongoing Focus Areas
Improve content marketing for the Community Team.
The team aims to create content in the Community Team websites (WordCamp Central blog and Make/Community) that is engaging and beneficial to community members. We will largely amplify the usable content in our handbooks as well as ship updates to the handbook that make it more relevant.
We’ll also be exploring how to use our social media properties more effectively to promote our work, and collaborating with the Make/Marketing team to achieve this goal.
Make our program more diverse, accessible, and inclusive.
In addition to the contributions from the WP Diversity Group, the Community Team will also work on making our programs more accessible to underrepresented groups and will focus on inclusion and accessibility in everything that we do.
Action Items for 2022
Q1 and Q2
Meetup group reactivation and check-ins
- We will reach out to meetup groups around the world and offer support in helping them organize events.
- Deactivate and remove inactive groups from our chapter.
Increase training and support for Community leaders and organizers
- Kick-off regular training sessions for Community Deputies and Mentors.
- Organize regular Deputy and Mentor roundtables on a monthly basis with a focus on learning.
- Explore additional learning and development opportunities for Deputies.
- Finalize and launch the Code of Conduct (CoC) Training for Deputies.
- Identify gaps and start working on revamping our existing contributor training, with a goal of eventually moving them to Learn.WordPress.org
Support the return of in-person events
- Make sure that all community organizers are aware of our latest guidelines on in-person events.
- Encourage local communities to organize in-person events wherever it is safe to do so.
- Offer more mentorship and support to community organizers to support the return of in-person events.
Get more Deputies and Mentors
- Formalize the contributor path for the Community Team and make community members aware of leadership and growth opportunities.
- Encourage community organizers in different locales to apply as Mentors or Deputies.
Q3 and Q4
Plan regular Community Organizer check-ins
- Kick off a regular recurring meetup for WordCamp/Meetup organizers.
- Find ways to make sure that community organizers stay updated.
Explore new event formats
- Reactivate the Contributor Working Group and explore standalone contributor days as a format.
- Explore hybrid events and how to organize them in a cost-effective way.
- Provide training to community organizers on hybrid events.
Implement a Meetup Mentor Program
Implement mentorship for meetups and also explore different opportunities, such as the Diverse Speaker Placement program to help meetups find speakers.
Finalize the Camera Kit Program
Revamp our Camera Kits and start implementing the revised Camera Kit program in Europe.
Revisiting our Tools
While this is formally not a part of our team goals, the Community team will continue to explore how we can improve our existing set of tools and see where improvements can be made.
One of the significant suggestions discussed was to revisit the usage of meetup.com. This is a much larger project that will need help from the Make/Meta team and could take a longer time to implement, but we hope to start exploring our options this year.
Thank You to the Contributors who Helped Us Finalize these Goals
@afshanadiya @mysweetcate @devinmaeztri @no249a002 @harishanker @juliarosia @kdrewien @peiraisotta @mauteri @megabyterose @samsuresh @sunsand187 @tacoverdo and @yoga1103