We meet weekly in IRC in #wordpress-getinvolved on Thursdays at 1900 UTC. That’s an adjustment to the UTC time of our meeting to account for the time change, but most people’s local times will stay the same.
We’ve added the time to the sidebar here and made the fix for the time change on the make.wordpress.org home page. I hope this will make the info easier for everyone to find, and that we’ll see you in IRC!
Forums are now open on plan.wordcamp.org for WordCamp organizers – new and experienced – to share ideas, knowledge, victories, and woes.
New organizers, ask questions! Experienced organizers, post your tips! Sign in with your wordpress.org credentials to contribute to the knowings.
+lots
Great!
Nice idea!
I don’t see a place to log in. ( http://scott.offord.me/SShm ) screenshot.
Thanks for pointing that out, I’ll add a link. In the meantime, you can go to http://wordcamp.org/wp-login.php manually.
Thanks Ian.
I don’t see a login link or button either.
I had to go to the http://wordpress.org/wp-admin and then back to the forums in order to be logged in to write/reply.
Great idea! Planning for wcnyc is starting to come to fruition, so this will be a great help for us, and we’d love to share our learns as well.
Really nice! It will be usefull for WordCamps in Brasil too!
That is a great idea. A forum to organize advices and knowledge about WordCamps organization is very useful.
Display bug type thingumy, Safari (not logged in obvs)t:
Since we’ve had trouble meeting in real-time in the last couple of weeks between moves and illnesses, we’re collecting updates here.
?????????
Is there a weekly hangout? I’m still a little lots about how and where to check for recurring planning/briefing meetings. Perhaps it could be put into the sidebar of this page so we all have that info right in front of us at all times?
Anyone?
According to the make.wp.org homepage, the meeting is on Thursdays at 1800 UTC. Last week, there was an issue because of the DST change in the US. I think it would be helpful to to try to stick to a weekly schedule, since that way more people can take part, like Scott and myself
Also, I believe @jenmylo was in the process of moving, so couldn’t make it at the appointed time last week.
Currently, WordCamp Central provides lanyards to all WordCamps in the US and Canada who need them, then asks the organizing team to collect the lanyards at the end of WordCamp and ship them to the next, closest WordCamp on the schedule.
This helps reduce the amount of waste that WordCamps create, which of course minimizes our combined carbon footprint, and makes us all very proud. Unfortunately, this project has faced a few challenges:
So where do we go from here? I’d like to keep providing lanyards to WordCamps, if people agree that’s valuable.
Option A is to buy WordCamps recycled PET lanyards — branded with the WordPress Foundation’s logo — in quantities high enough to get us a stellar deal. We could ship out these lanyards in the same package as WordPress swag (buttons, stickers). One advantage here would be that we could then provide lanyards to WordCamps outside the US and Canada, yay! The “yuck factor” would be neutralized, but we could not say that we were in any way reducing the amount of waste created by WordCamps.
Option B is to redouble our efforts to reuse lanyards at WordCamps, and all agree to do better at collecting them at the end of the event. This also doesn’t address the “yuck” factor, but it does reduce the number of lanyards that the WordCamp program generates. This also doesn’t address the issue of non-US and Canada events missing out on this benefit.
Do you have a preferred option, or can you suggest an Option C, D, or E to help us efficiently reduce WordCamp waste? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Option A please!
I’d also go for “A” due to the “yucky” opinion + the time to sync the transfers outside of the US.
I’d say option ‘A’, but at the same point encourage attendees to reuse the lanyards for future conferences. Bring it along with them to the next WordCamp they attend, so they can take the name tag but NOT a lanyard at their next WordCamp?
I would totally be down with this! I think I cleared out 6 lanyards from m yoffice. I had no idea I could have mailed them to Andrea.
Lots of people here work in large companies and use RFID cards for identification, they use lanyards for they cards, keys and everything, and actively using them on a daily basis. Just an observation, it’s like having several scarfs and switching them every week or so.
@andrea_r Do not, under any circumstances, mail me your lanyards. The lanyard-to-human quotient in my house is already dangerously high.
You, the foundation.. same thing, right? 
Anyway, they went to the local thrift shop.
I’m all for Option A. The yuck factor is a huge thing. How about Camps just mail back the ones that weren’t used. There are always a certain number of people who don’t show up. Those ones can totally be used by another Camp. I was thinking, what if we have badges for each year, and if you bring back a lanyard from a previous year, you just add a badge to it .. a la scouts 
That would probably cost more wouldn’t it?? Maybe there’s something we can do that’s similar to that?
A + a bottle of sanitizer at the check-in counter.
+1 to @georgestephanis.
A is the way to go. We got a lot of feedback when asking for the lanyards regarding the “yucky” factor. Actually people didn’t know that they were being reused until the end of the conference and we asked for them back. They felt somewhat betrayed.
During the conference I noticed people putting them in their mouths, getting food on them and if you have a summer conference you’re def gonna sweat on them.
I think somethings are ok to just give to the attendee and just let them keep it. I know it won’t be reducing waste but it might increase hygiene which in this case is more important.
We ended up buying our own lanyards for WordCamp Boston this year because we needed clamp lanyards for our badges, not clip lanyards. Would love to see some lanyard diversity.
That aside, I like the sound of A.
I’d like to see some standards in badges actually
I really hate the whole ‘map/schedule on the badge’ thing, to be honest. I’m always taking it off to see what’s on the badge. The schedule’s on the webpage. We all have iPhones. I don’t wanna make a hole in my precious badge!
Maybe we should put the schedule on everyone’s shirts, that way you always know what’s next and it’ll make people engage each other more
Not everyone has iPhones. Even if you assume everyone has a mobile device (which they don’t) many prefer a probably designed paper schedule. Speaking from experience and people personally thanking me for providing one.
That said, I don’t think it should be ON the badge, but capable of being carried IN the badge. In a pocket. So you don’t have take your badge off, and people lose schedules (carbon footprint talk here) less. We did this past two years with success.
I actually like the idea of printing the schedule on the badge in theory, but most events print it the “wrong way” (i.e., the same orientation as the part of the badge that other people are supposed to look at), which makes it awkward to look at while it’s hanging on your neck.
Personally, I’d rather see a badge with the attendee info printed on both sides, so that when it flips over (as they invariably do), other attendees can still see your information.
On another, and mostly off topic, point, I had a cool idea once that it’d be cool to build a badge generator into CampTix to make it easier to include things like Gravatars on them. Don’t ask me how to code it, though.
it’d be cool to build a badge generator into CampTix to make it easier to include things like Gravatars on them.
http://plan.wordcamp.org/helpful-documents-and-templates/create-wordcamp-badges-with-gravatars/
[quote]http://plan.wordcamp.org/helpful-documents-and-templates/create-wordcamp-badges-with-gravatars/ :)[/quote]
Heh, well, there’s the code, now lets get it built into CampTix! 
I was envisioning that you’d just upload a “badge background,” choose what data to print and in which order, and have CampTix spit out a printable badge. It’d save having to save, edit, import, and re-edit CSV files. Not sure how feasible it would be, but I can dream.
Anyway, I’m glad the script is posted somewhere I can remember when it comes time to print badges for our next camp. Last time, I was pinging anyone and everyone I could think of, and nobody could seem to find a copy of it.
‘clamp lanyards’? Can you attach a link to a photo please? Sounds interesting
Ahh, got it. I guess I always thought of that as a clip. 
*sigh* I want to say B. The enforced ‘NO SHIRT TILL LANYARD!!!!’ thing works (mostly) well. But that said, I bring my own company Lanyard with a handy pocket to slip the event nametag into.
Considering that retention for current B is so low, and we’re mailing them back and forth, I think I have to say that A is the best choice.
+1 for “no shirt till lanyard.”
Huge props to the Seattle community for thinking up that idea in 2012! 
+1 as well. That way you’ll get a lot more of them back and you can also make a short announcement to people at the beginning so that folks know they are being reused and thus don’t put them in their mouth (???)
To be fair recycling/reusing and reducing is done differently in different part of the world. I personally completely obsessed with reducing my CO2 footprint and keeps me up at night, but I understand that not everyone is like me me. But perhaps organizers could be encouraged to keep the lanyards and swag if they know they will have another WordCamp next year, thus reducing the need to ship them back.
I like option A as it allows folks the opportunity to continue showing their love for WordPress (and the community) when they use the lanyards elsewhere. In addition, it also serves as something additional that an attendee gets when they attend a WordPress event, adding more value to attending.
I understand the concept of recycling, especially when one is planning an event and trying to keep costs low. But event organizers have little to no control over what someone does with that lanyard during the event, and the lanyard eventually becomes a carrier of all sorts of germs and stains.
Option A. Not only does it avoid the yucky factor, but I think of lanyards and badges as collectors items/keepsakes from the different events I’ve attended. This year we went ahead and did custom lanyards for Toronto with that in mind.
On the logistics side: Our “kit” for Canadian WordCamps is getting huge. Three shotgun mics, three tripods, three cameras, three mic mounts (I bought two since the shotgun mics couldn’t mount directly on the cameras), plus the lanyards, happiness bar banner, buttons, and stickers? Gonna need a fridge box in a few years time. Keeping the lanyards out of there reduces the bulk a bit.
The happiness bar banner is a bit of an outlier, and the cameras should only go to those who don’t have another was to capture video, of course. But yes, it would be great if we could keep the “kit” as compact as possible.
Option A for those who want badges provided (not sure what the “standard” is). I’ve asked this question alot to those in the meetups, and many attendees like to keep badges as souvenirs (our badges are somewhat fancy, maybe if they were more vanilla then that would change). Any extras or those who can turn those in – organizers can decide to hold them for next year, saving some costs.
I would love the idea (already mentioned somewhere above) that frequent WordCampers have their own badge that gets tagged/stamped when they go to other WordCamps. No yuck factor, and it becomes a nice thing to wear at WordCamps (get fancy w/ bar codes and RFID thingies).
I don’t have a strong preference one way or the other. I think it’s good to reduce waste and our carbon footprint but we’re likely producing as much with either option; so option A is probably better
+1 for Option A, definitely.
Suggestion: allow registrants the ability to check an extra box and purchase a WP lanyard (for $5?), which would be a fundraiser for the Foundation. For the registrants that didn’t opt to purchase the lanyard, they could bring their own, purchase one at registration (for the same or more), or be given a piece of yarn (inexpensive) to use instead. Carbon footprint for the yarn probably isn’t any worse than the carbon footprint of mailing the package of reusable lanyards to the next group.
Option A… But why not suggest the organizers keep the lanyards for next year? That way we reduce the amount of shipping and you know we keep the germs local…
(I was joking about the local germs part btw)
The same people don’t -always- run WordCamps from year to year.
I didn’t know until the end of WCSF that they would be reused. I assumed they got washed or sanitized or something between WordCamps — you’re telling me this isn’t true??? Now I have a retroactive EWWWWW reaction. D:
Also, as much as I appreciate environmental consciousness, I was bummed I couldn’t keep mine as a souvenir.
My vote is for Option A all the way. Does “recycled PET lanyards” mean they’ll be less comfortable, though? Plasticky or something?
Does “recycled PET lanyards” mean they’ll be less comfortable, though?
No, recycled PET feels like polyester. We’d aim for the highest percentage of post-consumer PET, within financial reason of course.
Option A, but please, let’s consider having a depot of lanyards (and other WC goodies) in Europe, because shipping from the US takes too long and costs too much.
Agree with Remkus – in particular a European base for distributing material and would save money and time.
We could also get lanyards etc sourced from European companies, to avoid having to ship stuff from the US to Europe.
For anyone who can suggest some good button/sticker/lanyard sources in the EU, please email those to [email protected].
Option A. Recycled PET larnyards or not, I really hope that those larnyards were/will be properly sanitized/disinfected before reusing. Otherwise, those are health risks and can cause the transmission of skin diseases/infections or allergies.
A please.
Option A is my vote also. Though I think that encouraging attendees to reuse their own lanyard from previous years could also be encouraged.
Sounds like the “A”s are carrying the day.
As a result of this discussion, we will shoot for having WordPress Foundation-printed, eco-friendly lanyards printed in bulk and shipped to all WordCamps with swag by 2014, hopefully sooner.
We’re also in discussion with an EU-located swag printer, to see if we can shorten ship times and reduce shipping costs to locations outside North America.
Option A seems good. A minor suggestion: when people buy a ticket they could be asked if they are going to bring their own lanyard (with a box to check yes or no). This would serve two purposes – one would be to give WC organiser of how many lanyards they would need (with 10% or so contingency for people who forget).
The second thing it would do is to alert people to the fact that bringing a lanyard might be a cool thing to do. It’s only recently that I’ve thought much about lanyard costs (now that I’m an organiser) and many people wouldn’t think about it. If we can plant it in attendees minds ahead of time they might be inclined to think “oh yeah, I have a stack of lanyards at home, I could bring one”.
One consideration… Sometimes sponsors of events like to be given the option to put their own logo / message / branding on lanyards.
Is it mandatory to have name tags and lanyards at WordCamp conferences? Is it customary in all countries/cultures? Does it improve the attendee experience by having lanyards provided?
It’s certainly not mandatory to use lanyards at a WordCamp, but I’d call it a best practice to use some form of attendee identification, be that “Hello My Name Is” stickers or whatever is convenient and efficient.
Is your thought that attendees will value a lanyard printed with an event sponsor’s logo over a lanyard printed with the logo of the WordPress Foundation?
As an employee for a sponsor, I can see that creating sore points.
I rather like that the default WP lanyard says WP. I wear my company one because I can and that way I pimp my company myself. I’m not asking other people (who may not agree to do so) to do so. We can all agree that if you’re at a WC you probably at least LIKE WP Can’t say the same for all sponsors.
The Community Expectations working group had its kickoff chat today (irc log). In attendance were Mika Eptein (@ipstenu), Aaron Jorbin, Siobhan McKeown, Tracy Levesque, George Stephanis, Brooke Dukes, Carrie Dils, Kronda Adair, and me (@jenmylo). Cátia Kitahara is also on the team but couldn’t make the meeting.
The plan:
A note on creating this working group:
There were some comments on the thread that announced this project that indicated some discomfort at the idea that I wanted this working group to be diverse itself. Without getting into who’s male/female/gay/straight/disabled/etc, I want to make it clear that no one was added to this group based on some sort of diversity quota rather than merit.
As it happens, the process for creating a diverse group is pretty similar to creating a diverse speaker roster for a WordCamp, so I thought I’d share the process I used.
First, I started with the people who volunteered on the post by the time we got started. This is the same as choosing from speaker applications. You check them out and if they look good you say yes. Really very easy on the organizer, not hard work. As it happened, those people were all people known to me, and have all either written or presented on a topic related to appropriate behavior in our community, diversity, etc. on their own, so that made it easy to say yes to all of them. No one who explicitly said, “I want to help with this,” in the comments by the time we started the group was excluded.
Within these volunteers there was some diversity in sexual orientation, family makeup, religion, politics, length of time in WP community, etc, but it appeared to be all white women* from the U.S., so I wanted to broaden the perspective of the group by including some more people of different backgrounds (with a cap at 10 for logistical purposes). That meant I needed to reach out and make an effort to see if there were any qualified people that could round out the team that maybe hadn’t seen the post or had not felt comfortable volunteering.
This is the step that tends to freak people out. For WC organizers, it’s a lot of work, and if they don’t know a lot of people who are qualified then it turns into a choice-based-on-demographics, which is obviously not good for anyone. I’m lucky enough to be familiar with a lot of talented people in our community from many regions, levels of involvement, areas of expertise, etc. so that wasn’t a problem here. Everyone I reached out to met the same professional WP standards as the original volunteers, as well as having spoken or written somewhere about these issues already (including the 2 white dudes with beards ).
In the end, our group of course could be still more diverse, but within the limited number of people we do have there is a pretty broad variety of viewpoints and experiences to draw on in our drafting process, which is the goal. Not to prioritize one demographic group over another, but to be sure that more viewpoints are included in the process and have a voice.
*Remember you can’t tell much from a gravatar. Someone who looks white may be biracial, someone who looks male may be female or vice versa (remember how we all thought Mika was a man for years because of her Frank Sinatra-eque hat gravatar?), and there are all sorts of other diversity components that have nothing to do with what your face looks like, so we have to remember not to make assumptions.
Where is “the thread that announced this project”?
Hi Jen – got it – many thanks!
For your research SE policy is: http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/help/behavior
It is also worded in terms of expectations and it’s not much volume-wise, but foundational “be nice” is fantastic at setting right tone and is easy to interpret. As a moderator first thing I say when I feel situation might be going towards getting out of hand is simply that – “Be nice”.
I’ve read the IRC’s log and I’m joining Carrie, Brooke and Aaron on the front line, reviewing policies from other open source orgs, just did that, hope I’ll be able to contribute more till tomorrow.
@jenmylo I was just on the IRC #wordpress chat. I’d like to help garner a team effort to build something like https://groups.drupal.org/node/82809 that I outlined eons ago. But, never garnered the team volunteers to launch an SOP/Policies out of the box launch. The goal is to make WP a platform with bundled plugins, theme, widget and content exports that build the basic building blocks for a well organized and managed SOP and Policies intranet that could be utilized in a WP MU install for any NPO, BIZ, GOVT.
I’d dream of getting academia involved to shape best practices while building post types, roles, et al.
My other dream was posted on https://groups.drupal.org/node/78553 Both out of the box projects would illuminate WP internationally as the open source CMS “goto” for these types of crowd source projects.
Hi there! This pitch doesn’t really have anything to do with developing a code of conduct, so I’d ask that you post instead to the ideas forum at http://wordpress.org/ideas/. That would be a better place to start a discussion around something like this and get some initial feedback. As it stands, what you describe sounds more like a private venture/standalone project (we don’t currently do “distributions” the way Drupal does) than something that fits into the “democratize publishing” mission, so perhaps more description (in an ideas forum thread) would help make it clear how/why it would fit into the core project mission. Thanks!
Stuff for the update? Comment here!
Here is a spreadsheet my team put together to help Andrea hold WordCamp organizers accountable to ensuring their websites are up-to-date and meeting deadlines: http://scott.offord.me/S807
Are we missing anything?
Also, what’s the best way for my team to get informed ahead of time when there are newly approved WordCamps? I’d like to find out before they end up on the WC central website.
Scott O.
Scott, as soon as a WordCamp’s budget is approved and their venue contract is signed, they go on the schedule — so there isn’t really a faster way to learn about them than keeping an eye on the schedule. I’ve been meaning to start doing “New WordCamp Approved!” posts on the WordCamp Central blog, though, so following that blog will probably be the most efficient way to keep track.
Hi Scott. The Weekly Update that Amy posts to the other contributor group team reps blog (what this post was referring to) generally sticks to milestones that we want the other contributor groups to know about and/or weigh in on. Ongoing work from contributors on this team (like the creation of spreadsheets, etc) would normally not be included unless there was a milestone achieved, product launched, etc.
It might be helpful when you post these to include what you’ve got already from meeting notes and/or looking back at the blog posts from the week, and then we can just add anything that’s missed.
Good suggestion – I’ll do that in the future
Since meeting yesterday:
Reposting from Theme School Blog: First Module: Child Themes of course!
I have been talking this week with Tracy Levesque (@LilJimmi) who is my FAVORITE child theme trainer in the WP world. She and I have discussed her awesome curriculum that she has used to teach child themes at: Philly WPs Meetup Group, WordCamp NYC, WordCamp Montreal, Girl Develop It Philly, Web Start Women in Philly, & Philly Tech Week. I think it and she are a perfect way to build content for this.
She will be placing an outline + her content that will be fleshed out by us all into a script. I am hoping we can be in agreement and done with it in the next 2 weeks.
I also want to put a call out to anyone who remembers who were in the groups at WCSF this summer. I want to have us place all the documents worked on under the Shared Material page. If you want to contact me you can find me at courtneydawn on gChat or twitter. Thanks!!!
Imported posts from /events blog. The export/import is busted, and still busted, so author is wrong on a lot of stuff. I’ll try to go back over the next couple of days to manually change authors, but if anyone wants to help out with some no-special-expertise-required volunteer time, would be great to have some help doing this. Any volunteers?
Update: all the authors have been updated, just need to get the gravatars re-generated based on author email, will ask on /meta.
Hi, i m
Looks like your comment got cut off or submitted before you finished?
Apologies for anyone getting old update notices while we try to get the /events blog import squared away. your patience is greatly appreciated!
Anyone with a meetup group on meetup.com that wants to move onto the central account can put in a request at http://make.wordpress.org/community/meetup-interest-form/ I’ll do a batch transfer next week.
Will be going with the basic guidelines Aaron and the group discussed at http://make.wordpress.org/events/2013/03/09/proposed-meetup-guidlines/
Thank you!
Any status? Would love to have our quarterly WP Meetup Rotterdam Netherlands on meetup.com. Requested it two weeks ago I guess. Next one is in a few weeks. http://wpmeetup.nl/rotterdam/
Hello Jen!
I too have submitted the form some time ago, and have not received any news about it. Is there anything I could help with?
Cheers.
What type of notification will we get if our meetup is part of the batch transfer?
Scott Offord 9:46 pm on November 14, 2013 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Excellent! Thanks.