Throughout 2022, the Community Team has been focused on a wide range of goals. These goals encompassed improvements to our programs and projects, creating new educational content, and improved outreach and coordination across the various sub-groups of the team.
- 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
Return of In-Person Events
Throughout 2022, the Community Team has been discussing how to safely return to in-person events. In January, the team published updated guidelines for in-person events. The WordCamp Handbook and Meetup Handbook are up-to-date with the decisions from the ongoing discussion.
We are also supporting event organizers by having open discussions about the challenges and hopes for the future with returning to in-person events.
In 2022, we had 22 in-person WordCamps, along with 3 which were online. At the moment, we have 12 WordCamps on the schedule, plus our in-person Community Summit. 16 more WordCamps are in pre-planning stages and 7 are pending review from the Community Deputies. ✨ Kudos to @peiraisotta for gathering these stats!
Meetup Chapter Reactivations
The Meetup Reactivation project has been underway since July. At the start of the reactivation project, 416 of the chapters were identified as dormant. Thanks to the help of 41 contributors:
- 126 Meetup chapters have been reactivated
- 15 additional Meetups have plans to reactivate
- 16 dormant Meetup chapters were removed
Need help to reengage your community, or assistance in finding new ideas for your Meetup events?
Reach out to the Meetup Support team at [email protected]!
Check out the latest Meetup Reactivation update shared by @juliarosia!
Community Team Training
We have had 5 Community Team Training sessions over Zoom, covering the Deputy program, Meetup/WordCamp application vetting, WordPress events organizing, WordCamp processes, and active listening.
Kudos to @samsuresh for kicking off and coordinating/facilitating the Community Team Training series (previously known as Deputy and Organizer Training). 💥
WP Diversity
Program 1: Underrepresented Voices Speaker Workshops: Increase in public speaking confidence: 54%
Program 2: How to Organize Inclusive and Welcoming WordPress Events: Increase in feeling prepared to run an inclusive event: 40%
Program 3: Speaker support and speaking opportunities (#diverse-speaker-support Slack channel): over 225 speakers, speaker mentors, event organizers, and allies in the Slack channel.
Held 15 workshops, which reached: 248 participants from 117 cities, across 32 countries.
Increased number of contributors to the team
- 2020-2021: 5 contributors
- 2021-2022: 32 contributors
Speaker workshop materials are in English, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian
Community Engagement
Community Summit
The 2023 WordPress Community Summit was announced for August 22-23 in National Harbor, DC, UAS. This event will bring together WordPress contributors, team leads, and diverse community voices to discuss the challenges and clarify the vision for WordPress in the years ahead.
Suggest a Community Summit topic by January 16, 2023! 📝
Other Activities
Another goal mentioned in our 2022 goals announcement post was to implement a revised Camera Kit program in Europe, which will be available beginning in January 2023! Shout out to @sippis for the hard work on this. 💪
With a new Contributor Handbook, a new Community Code of Conduct was introduced in 2022! In support of the new code of conduct, incident response training was made available to anyone interested in learning more. Additionally, a new cohort led by @angelasjin and @juliarosia was announced and run, creating the WordPress community’s first Incident Response team.
Looking Towards 2023
There were so many great ideas submitted for 2022 which I’d like to highlight for us to keep in mind when we move into the new year:
- Organize regular Deputy and Mentor roundtables on a monthly basis with a focus on learning.
- 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
- Formalize the contributor path for the Community Team and make community members aware of leadership and growth opportunities.
- Plan regular Community Organizer check-ins.
The following goals are ongoing and should be continued:
- Encourage community organizers in different locales to apply as Mentors or Deputies.
- Find ways to make sure that community organizers stay updated.
- Explore new event formats.