Welcome to the April 2024 edition of your WordPress Meetup Organizer Newsletter! The newsletter aims to inspire and empower WordPress meetup organizers worldwide to host engaging, impactful meetup events. Do you have ideas for topics to feature in a future edition of the newsletter? Please email your suggestions to [email protected].
Elevate Your Meetups With WordPress Playground!
Hosting or planning your next WordPress meetup? Make it unforgettable with WordPress Playground! This innovative tool transforms learning and interaction by allowing you and your attendees to run WordPress directly in your browser. Playground is the ultimate learning, teaching, and testing tool – perfect for demonstrations, hands-on learning, and exploring new WordPress features without the hassle of installations. Dive into WordPress Playground and bring your meetups to life: https://wordpress.org/playground/
Explore WordPress 6.5 Highlights
WordPress 6.5 “Regina” was recently released! This major release brings exciting features like the new Font Library, enhanced drag-and-drop functionality, and over 110 performance updates, making the Post Editor and Site Editor 2x faster than before. Notable improvements include AVIF image support, 65 accessibility enhancements, and developer-friendly features like the Interactivity API. With contributions from 700 individuals across 57 countries, including 150 first-time contributors, WordPress 6.5 reflects a global effort to empower users with a smoother, more efficient experience. Following closely, the maintenance and security release of WordPress 6.5.2 addresses crucial bug fixes and security enhancements, ensuring the WordPress experience remains top-notch.
How Your Meetup Can Explore WordPress 6.5 Together
- Group Learning Sessions: Kick off with the WordPress 6.5 video tutorial on Learn WordPress. Then, dive into WordPress Playground for a live, interactive exploration of 6.5’s new features.
- Interactive Workshops: Host workshops focused on 6.5’s innovations, like creating custom fonts with the new Font Library.
- Show and Tell: Inspire your community by showcasing real-world applications of 6.5 features. Encourage members to share their projects and learn from each other.
Share Your Feedback with Meetup.com
Earlier this year, Meetup.com was acquired by Bending Spoons, an Italian-based tech company with an ambitious vision for Meetup’s future. Bending Spoons acquired Meetup because they believe in the mission to foster human connections. Over the next few years, this new parent company intends to invest nearly $50 million to improve the product and grow membership. In particular, the team plans to improve event discoverability and reduce the friction for organizers to create events and engage with their communities.
Meetup.com would love to hear from the WordPress community! To do so, they created a dedicated form to collect your feedback. Please use it to share how they can improve the Meetup platform. Read more on the WordPress Community Team blog.
Harness WordCamp Europe 2024 for your Meetup Group!
WordCamp Europe 2024 has unveiled its schedule and speaker lineup! From talks on WordPress’s future to hands-on workshops, there’s something for everyone. WordCamp Europe talks are live-streamed and recorded, so you can bring together your meetup group to watch and discuss the sessions. It’s the next best thing to being there!
Celebrating Success: WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program
The WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program’s second cohort has just wrapped up, boasting 52 mentees guided by 28 mentors over six weeks. A heartfelt congratulations to all mentees – including six recipients of the LGBTQ+Press Empowerment Grant – for their outstanding contributions to WordPress.
Introducing our newest WordPress Meetup groups
Let’s welcome the new Meetup groups recently added to our chapter! Do support them in organizing both local (in-person) and global (online) meetup events, and let’s learn from their experiences and experiments along the way.
Meetups of the Month
This month, we celebrate the WordPress Meetup groups of Cebu (Philippines), Managua (Nicaragua), Sofia (Bulgaria), and Malappuram (India)!
Meetup Organizers, we want to feature you!
We’d love to publish pictures from Meetups all around the world in each newsletter. Do you want your Meetup to be featured? Share 1 picture with the Community team! Rename your picture as “Meetup-name_event-date” and upload it to this folder. The formats supported are jpg and png. Please remember, always ask for permission from your group members before taking the picture and sharing it with us!
A special thank you to our Global Sponsors: Bluehost, GoDaddy, Automattic, WPBeginner, and Woo!
If you have any questions, Community Team Supporters are here to help. Please email us at [email protected] or join the #community-events Slack channel. Thanks for everything you do to grow and support the WordPress community. Let’s keep sharing knowledge and inspiring each other with our contributions!
See you online soon!
The following people contributed to this edition of the Meetup newsletter: @hellosatya, @juliarosia, @_dorsvenabili @bjmcsherry