Author: WordCamp US

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WCUS 2017 Contributor Day Recap

Contributor Day at WordPress US was a huge success. Contributor Days are a collaborative community outreach with amazing opportunities to get involved in Making WordPress. Contributor Days happen at camps both large and small. We’d like to encourage you with an update that will inspire your community as well.

This year’s Contributor Day for WordCamp US was held on Sunday, December 3 and was well-attended and productive.

ACCESSIBILITY

Team leads: Rian Rietveld (@rianrietveld on Slack), Andrea Fercia (@afercia on Slack), and Joe Dolson (@joedolson on Slack)

The a11y group provides accessibility expertise across the project. They make sure that WordPress core and all of WordPress’ resources are accessible. Learn more about the Accessibility team.

As always, we had a few different tasks. We gave info on how to test for accessibility and reviewed and discussed work from developers and designers. We also tested Gutenberg, on-boarded new developers in the team, and talked to the other teams about common issues.

Full recap: Contributor day at WordCamp US 2017

COMMUNITY

Team lead: Andrea Middleton (@andreamiddleton on Slack)

If you’re interested in organizing a meetup or a WordCamp, the community blog is a great place to get started. There are groups working to support events, to create outreach and training programs, and generally support the community. Learn more about Community.

At WordCamp US contributor day, we did a lot! Here’s a tidy list:

  • Experienced community team contributors trained newer contributors on how to order swag for WordCamps and meetups.
  • We held a couple of in-person meetup and WordCamp orientations.
  • Brand new contributors reviewed our meetup organizers handbook for clarity.
  • A group of experienced organizers worked on some new documentation on how to review speaker applications.
  • 23 people attended a discussion of recruiting diverse speakers and 8 attended a workshop on a new initiative to train people who are underrepresented in tech how to develop, propose, and give conference sessions
  • New and experienced contributors took part in an application vetting sprint.

CORE

Team lead: Adam Silverstein (@adamsilverstein on Slack)

The core team makes WordPress. Whether you’re a seasoned PHP or JavaScript developer or are just learning to code, we’d love to have you on board. You can write code, fix bugs, debate decisions, and help with development. Learn more about the Core team.

The core team helped onboard numerous new contributors and huddled around focuses including the REST API, JavaScript, and Gutenberg. Several commits landed and contributors submitted patches to core or tested existing patches. The JavaScript group brainstormed about how to structure core JavaScript to maintain backwards compatibility while also enabling merging and building features like Gutenberg. We managed to break and then fix our build and we updated our recommended PHP version to 7.2.

DESIGN

Team lead: Mark Uraine (@mapk on Slack)

The design group explores solutions for various problems throughout the WordPress open source project. It’s a home for designers and design-lovers alike. Regular design discussions span UI & UX, information architecture, and computation design with emphasis toward user testing and inclusion. Learn more about the Design team.

The Design Team talked about the importance of contributing to WordPress and the opportunity designers have right now to influence the direction of this open source project. We explored what design meant in the world of WordPress, and how design can be contributed in many different ways; Documentation, Core, Meta, etc. After lunch, some broke out to help other teams while others learned more details on Trac, tickets, and the contributing process.

DOCUMENTATION

Team lead: Jon Ang (@kenshino on Slack)

Good documentation lets people help themselves when they get stuck. The docs team is responsible for creating inline documentation for core, as well as content for the theme and plugin development handbooks, and more recently, HelpHub. Learn more about the Documentation team.

The documentation team worked on the following

  • Listing out tasks that have low entry barriers (maybe things that can be completed in 15 mins by volunteers). This way more people can contribute to Documentation without having to onboard onto a complicated setup.
  • We created at least 5 trac tickets
  • Worked on Helphub
  • Continued work on Migration of Codex to DevHub
  • Fixed styling on DevHub
  • Had various discussions on PHPdocs standards – perhaps to suggest the actual PHP PSR standards to adopt what we’ve created
  • Had a chat with Matias about Gutenberg documentation – of which we’ll follow up closely
  • A total of 15 people contributed and half of them were new
  • We’re almost done with the Docs Roadmap we created 4 years ago!

Lastly, we had a great chat about possibly participating in WriteTheDocs event in Prague where we will work with other project ‘documentators’, learn from them and have a retreat for our team to create a new roadmap for the next 5 years.

MARKETING

Team lead: Bridget Willard (@gidgey on Slack)

The Marketing team focuses on making WordPress marketable in all sorts of contexts, from the WordPress.org side all the way to core and the wider community. Learn more the about Marketing team.

Our vision for the Marketing Team is to be the go-to resource for strategy and content for other WordPress teams.

We were excited to have a well-attended group of people who were enthusiastic about marketing. Multiple people mentioned this was their first WordCamp and their first Contributor Day. They were so elated to be part of the community making WordPress. It was amazing to see so many people new to the community step up and become part of the new generation of Contributors.

We worked on fresh copy for the German Community called CMS Garden, which is an open source advocacy group publication encouraging developers and users to explore WordPress as their CMS of choice to meet their business goals. We’re excited to help them improve copy and have begun work on a press kit.

Another team has started work on a WordPress.tv project. They are interviewing people about their Gutenberg User Testing experiences. This marketing effort will help the Gutenberg project gain support throughout the entire WordPress community.

We use Trello to project manage and are happy to have added ten new projects to our in-progress list including Contributor Day email copy, public policy guide for governments, and promoting the donation page for the WordPress Foundation.We’re so proud to have added over 20 new contributors to the Marketing Team and look forward to a brighter future together!

META

Team lead:

The Meta team makes WordPress.org, provides support, and builds tools for use by all the contributor groups. Learn more the about Meta team.

During Contributor Day at WCUS 2017, the Meta team had 12 people working on various things. Three new people were onboarded with an overview of the tools and how to provision the development environment, two Meta Trac tickets were closed out completely with patches committed, and several other tickets received attention and made good progress.

MOBILE

Team Lead: Cate (@cate on Slack)

The mobile team builds the iOS and Android apps. Lend them your Java, Objective-C, or Swift skills. The team also needs designers, UX experts, and testers to give users a smooth experience on every device. Learn more about Mobile.

The Mobile Team at Contributor Day has decided to focus on improving accessibility within the mobile experience of WordPress. They’re going through the app using voiceover (like someone who is blind would) and reporting bugs as they go along. They’re fixing already-known issues that are marked as “accessibility”, such as changing font size based on what the OS settings. Through usability testing and design improvements, they’re working hard to make sure WordPress isn’t only responsive, but responsive AND accessible.

We were able to collaborate with the API team during Contributor Day to agree upon providing a short term solution for a simple authentication method. We onboarded two new contributors and had pull requests submitted during the day for review. A number of accessibility issues were addressed including improving adoption of Dynamic Text on iOS and resolving a TalkBack issue in Android.

PLUGINS/PLUGIN REVIEW

Team leads: Mika Epstein (@ipstenu on Slack) & Samuel Wood (@otto42 on Slack)

The Plugins team focuses on everything revolving around plugins submitted to the WordPress.org plugin repository. Learn more about the Plugins team.

The plugin team made serious headway on supporting visible pages for closed plugins, allowing users to now see if a plugin existed (and not wondering if it vanished). We also released our proposed updates to the plugin guidelines, which are open for review by anyone.

POLYGLOTS

Team lead: Remkus de Vries (@remkus on Slack)

WordPress is used all over the world and in many different languages. If you’re a polyglot, help out by translating WordPress into your own language. You can also assist with creating the tools that make translations easier. Learn more about the Polyglots team.

The polyglot team is responsible for translating WordPress into every language and locale. The team is organized into two groups: the translation team and the technical team. The technical team is in need of multilingual developers able to code at a core level.

The polyglot team is currently working to translate all WordPress sites across all language with gender neutrality.

SUPPORT

Team lead: Marius Jensen (@clorith on Slack)

Answering a question in the support forums or IRC is one of the easiest ways to start contributing. Everyone knows the answer to something! This blog is the place for discussion of issues around support. Learn more about the Support team.

The Support Team at WordCamp US Contributor Day is focusing on onboarding new volunteers. Year round, the worldwide community of volunteers on the Support Team works hard to help WordPress.org users through support forums and IRC. During Contributor Day, the team developed improved processes to help new volunteers get involved in The Support Team. They even did a test orientation and onboarding session over Slack to evaluate their new processes, with great success! Thanks to this team, people new to WordPress or seeking more advanced help can find a friendly community online.

For the support team at WCUS CD, we tested our new onboarding process via Slack to include those who couldn’t make it to the event and that we’d like to get feedback on for future online-only use. We also went through the more pressing pain points on the forums and looked at possible ideas for improving on them.

THEME REVIEW

Team lead: @thinkupthemes and @rabmalin

The Theme Review Team reviews and approves every Theme submitted to the WordPress Theme repository. Reviewing Themes sharpens your own Theme development skills. You can help out and join the discussion on the blog. Learn more about the Theme Review team.

A number of experienced theme review team members attended WordCamp US. New reviewers were introduced to the NS Theme Check plugin which is a tool that aids reviewing of themes by automating many of the checks. New reviewers were supported in the #themereview Slack channel by members of the team in addition to those in the room at WCUS. New reviewers made progress particularly with completing reviews for child themes.

TRAINING

Team leads: Beth Soderberg (@bethsoderberg on Slack), Julie Kuehl (@juliekuehl on Slack), and Melinda Helt (@melindahelt on Slack)

The training team creates downloadable lesson plans and related materials for instructors to use in a live workshop environment. If you enjoy teaching people how to use and build stuff for WordPress, immediately stop what you’re doing and join our team! Learn more about Training.

WCUS Accomplishments

  • Began to define new processes to make them more scalable
  • Set up GitHub repository
  • Audited all the lesson plans in preparation for migration, including those missing images or in need of updating
  • Brainstormed new lesson plans due to changes in WordPress
  • Started a new handbook

2018 Goals Defined

  • Create handbook based on new workflow
  • Move lesson plans into GitHub
  • Reorganizing our website
  • Fix the broken images
  • Update for 4.8/4.9/Gutenberg
  • Make workshop recommendations from existing plans
  • Accessibility workshop
  • Consider team roles

WORDPRESS TV

Team Lead: Cemal Tashan (@tashan on Slack)

The TV team reviews and approves every video submitted to WordPress.tv. They also help WordCamps with video post-production and are responsible for the captioning and subtitling of published videos. Reviewing videos is a great way to learn about WordPress and help the community: experience is not required to get involved. Learn more about TV.

Today, the TV team is captioning videos for WordPress.tv. Thanks to the library of content on WordPress.tv, WordCamp talks and meetup presentations from around world are not only documented but made available for everyone to enjoy. Captioning is a way to make these videos accessible and get them ready for caption translations. Thanks to the team behind WordPress.tv, we can all learn from the wealth of knowledge within the community.

WP-CLI

WP-CLI is the official command line tool for interacting with and managing your WordPress sites. Learn more about CLI.

Contributing – WP-CLI

Team Leads: Daniel Bachhuber (@danielbachhuber on Slack) and Alain Schlesser (@schlesseraon Slack)

  • The WP-CLI team could successfully onboard several new contributors, one of them very new even to WordPress itself. We had two successful pull requests and, while working on these, could identify a recent regression as well.
  • Finally, there were a lot of discussions about the state of the current onboarding experience for WP-CLI and how it could be further improved.

 

Note: This post was written by Bridget Willard of the Marketing Team for the Marketing Team blog and is reproduced here with permission 

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Announcing the Kim Parsell Memorial Scholarship Winner: Bianca Welds

To honor the memory of Kim Parsell, the WordPress Foundation set up a memorial scholarship to ensure that Kim’s core values would continue to be infused into the WordPress community.

Kim was very keen on seeing women participate and thrive in all aspects of the WordPress community. We think that this year’s recipient, Bianca Welds, is a woman whom Kim Parsell would have liked to have met. Keep Reading Y’all

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WCUS Needs You: Volunteer Applications Are Now Open

We are excited to announce that that our volunteer applications are open starting today. Every year, our volunteers give our event a personal touch. Their community spirit is a huge part of what makes attendees eager to come back the following year.

Without question, volunteers are the backbone of WCUS. WCUS could not happen without the myriad of people who donate their time in so many different ways to ensure that the event goes off without a hitch.

There are lots of options for people who would like to volunteer. We have flexible hours and roles. There is one thing that is certain; there is something for everyone. If you would like to volunteer, fill out our application to help us find the right role for you. No previous experience is necessary, just a willingness to lend a hand.

A big thank you in advance from everyone on the organizing team. We could not do this without you!

Apply here to volunteer

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Call for Sponsors

TL:DR The call for sponsors for WordCamp US 2017 is open! Click here to apply

Sponsoring WordCamp US is a little different than sponsoring your average tech conference or trade show. It’s different than vying for a branding opportunity at a swanky corporate party. It’s sponsoring a lot of intangibles, but those intangibles pay off. It’s supporting the WordPress Community.

It’s being a part of the WordPress Community.

So, what does your company get out of sponsoring WordCamp US? It gets the attention of attendees who are highly engaged. They tune in, listen, and observe. You have the opportunity to be a part of a community that works because everyone works together. By being a part of this event, community members and attendees get to know you and your brand on a deeper level. Your support enables attendees to have a high-quality conference at a super affordable price.

We’re more about the holistic experience than the showmanship. Sure, there will be booths, banners, and swag. A bit of glitz and glamor. Everyone loves those. But more importantly there will be connection and conversation. Engagement with the driving force of WordPress. We are people driven. Community driven. Code driven.

The WordCamp program is unique and thrives because of the sum of all its parts and when you sponsor WordCamp US 2017 you make all this possible.

We want to make sponsorship and support of our event as attainable for those who support the WordPress Community as possible. With that in mind this year WordCamp US has sponsorship opportunities available from $300 to $75,000. We hope there’s a level that will work for you and your company.

For more information or to apply to sponsor, check out our Sponsors page.

We’ll see you in December.

WordCamp US 2017 is over. Check out the next edition!