In April 2020, WordPress Community Support (WPCS) began offering the use of Pro accounts on Zoom for special events, such as the Diverse Speaker Training workshop, do_action charity hackathons, or Contributor Days. These accounts are also offered to WordCamps that need them.
For regular chapter meetup events, the Community Team has been recommending the use of free tools, and still recommend the use of these free tools as much as possible. However, I would like to explore the idea of offering the use of these Pro Zoom accounts to WordPress chapter meetup organizers.
When I brought this topic up in the Community Team chat last week, it sparked a lot of discussion, and I’d like to continue that conversation here!
- While the current process has been working fairly well with special events, it doesn’t seem like it will scale if it is opened up to all meetup groups. What parts of this process can be improved upon and automated?
- @brandondove asked if we can leverage the Zoom dev APIs to make this a self-service process. What do the devs amongst us think?
- When we previously discussed community Zoom accounts, a concern that came up was how to handle password management.
- I have been trying out 1Password Teams for the past month, which I think it would work well for any trusted deputy to be able to manage the passwords (and therefore not dependent on a small group of deputies). 1Password has offered us a non-profit discount after the free trial.
- @tacoverdo asked a great question: Why do we need Zoom for this? Are there free/open alternatives that don’t require password sharing tools?
- The Community Team has explored other tools, which are shared on the Organizing Virtual Meetups handbook page, including Jitsi and Google Meet. Are there any reasons why these tools would not work for WordPress Meetups?
Let’s hear what you think!
Mentioning @sippis @jenniferswisher @kcristiano @camikaos as you all participated in the discussion in Slack. But this discussion is open for everyone’s feedback! 🙂