Hi! I’ve first sent the following lines to support[at]wordcamp.org as I wasn’t sure this blog was a good place to share about this project. Thanks to @adityakane ’s reply, I’m feeling more confident in doing so now!
In April 24, 2019, the WordCamp Paris hosted its very first contributor day. As the WordCamp Paris primary organizer and more globally as a WordPress contributor this was a meeting I absolutely wanted to put together. One of my hope was to take this opportunity to achieve these goals:
- build a french documentation about how to get started about contributing to WordPress,
- write about how to organize this specific type of WordPress events,
- inspire other WordCamp cities in France to also organize contributor days during their events.
During the making of the WordCamp Paris 2019, the contributor day co-organizers and I took some time to organize 6 contributor meetups:
- Development environment setup(VVV) and contributing to the Polyglots team
- Contributing to WordPress Beta Testing
- Doing Theme reviews
- Discovering the Plugin API
- Contributing to documentation
- a11y in themes
We also worked on points 1 & 2 from a GitHub repository. But there is still a lot to do into the documentation area.
The first WordCamp Paris contributor day was great and gathered 76 contributors. But I believe we have not accomplished 100% of what I was planning to do. In particular when we consider the 3rd goal (Inspire other french WordCamps), I guess we still have to find ways to progress on it.
I am convinced, as part of the french community, we need to promote a lot more these contributor meetings and I must say what have accomplished the italian community about it is very inspiring.
A few weeks ago, I’ve thrown a bottle into the Twitter sea to evaluate if I could get some interests & help from contributors and sponsors. The replies and likes the tweet got made me very enthousiastic about it and..
I’ve decided to try to put together standalone contributor meetings in France.
I’ve added an “s” to “meeting” because my project is to perform a France tour. The first stage will happen in Paris (very likely the day after the WordCamp Paris 2020). The next city stages are not scheduled yet but I have a plan to start filling the blanks.
I’ve used “contributor meetings” instead of “contributor days” because I believe it gives us more freedom about duration and format: we can do contributor mornings, afternoons, days, evenings, nights, etc.
Who is us ?
For now it’s only me, but everyone wishing to contribute to this project is very welcome. My idea is to have an online place to discuss, share & learn about this project very openly.
I think not having to register to a specific Slack to read the informations about the project will maximize our chance to get contributors & even more so new ones. By the way & anyway, Slack’s free plan does not match the needs for openness & to always be able to look back into history.
“Us” is everyone as I said and I hope it will include :
- local meetup organizers wishing to put up contributor nights,
- WordCamp organizers wanting to add a contributor day to their event,
- contributors wishing to be involved into the making of the event they registered to,
- in kind sponsors contributing by hosting the event or taking in charge the food/drinks.
Who is me ?
I’m imath. I’ve been contributing to WordPress for 10 years, I participated to my first contributor day on March 20 in 2015 (BuddyPress table at WordCamp London) and it was a really great experience. In 2017, I contributed to the WCEU contributor day organization and this was an awesome experience. In 2018 & 2019 I’ve contributed to the WordCamp Paris organization, coordinating it. I’m a BuddyPress Core developer since January 2014 and I joined the WordPress Community team in July 2019.
The main/first need
A website is the first (and probably the only) need I have. Ideally I think it would be great to have a fr.wordpress.org subsite with the o2 & handbook plugins activated. As some countries (eg: it, es, nl) have a /community area, I believe this would be nice to use this opportunity to also have it for France to :
- log the french WordCamps history,
- introduce the existing WordPress meetups,
- give a space for upcoming contributor meetings.
- translate the community handbooks so that it’s easier for Event organizers to get started/
The o2 plugin would make it possible to discuss publicly about any french community topics and using categories would allow us to manage the contributor meetings by cities (It would require some hooks as it’s not native in o2, but I’ve already have it working on a P2 Breathe child theme).
Contributing areas ?
I believe we have the opportunity to do many great things all together:
- Meet more regularly, everywhere it’s possible !
- Contribute to one or more “Make” areas (Polyglots, Core, Meta…).
- Contribute to the french translation of the WordCamp/Meetup/Contributor events handbooks hosted on the Make/Community site. That’s why the handbook plugin is needed.
- Contribute to the content of the
/communitysubsite offr.wordpress.org(introduce the existing official WordPress events). - Strenghthen the ties into the French community.
Having the website on WordPress.org would be a real benefit and very convenient as we need a WordPress.org user account to contribute, but it’s not a blocker: if it’s not possible I’ll use an external site (I first thought of WordPress.com, but it lacks the handbook plugin).
Thanks a lot for your time and happy to read your feedbacks, advice, and thoughts about this project.