Standalone Contributor Days: Help make WordPress with your community

A presentation at WordCamp Nordic in March 2019 in Helsinki, Finland by Francesca Marano

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Standalone Contributor Days: Help Make WordPress with your Community

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Hi! I am Francesca

WordPress Community Manager at SiteGround, Global WordPress Community Team

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The situation in Italy before 2015

Not so great

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Only 2 meetups, not a lot of activity in any front.

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In 2015 eveything changed

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Italy Today

BOOM! What happened?

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Overall rise of WordPress usage

It’s popular! Everyone wants in

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Foundation of WordCamp Europe

2013, Leiden first edition 2015, Seville, the Italians get together and start organising themselves

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The Italian Slack

Let’s talk in our language and get to know each other.

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Standalone Contributor Day

Let’s meet for a day to learn how to contribute

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Some numbers

People from all over Italy We focused on some teams for which we had mentors to help us out.

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What is a contributor Day?

Who can attend? What do we expect? Do I need to be a developer?

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Contributor Days are for everyone

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How did we organise it

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Important steps

  • Room with WiFi
  • Refreshments (keep it simple)
  • Inform as many people as possible, we did through https://it.wordpress.org/news/ - It feeds directly into people’s dashboards
  • Find someone that has contributed before. Doesn’t need to be a super expert, but it helps if they know where to find stuff.

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Italy Today

A culture of contribution

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Support - Italy Today

Support is now integrated in https://it.wordpress.org/support/

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Polyglots - Italy Today

Over 2000 contributors. A structure in place to onboard new contributors and encourage continuity

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We came full circle

3 Italian at WordCamp Europe 2013 Not many more at WordCamp Europe 2015 Over 100 at WordCamp Europe 2017 and 2018.

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Mantra

Taking part in a Contributor Day helped us become a community and as a community we are making WordPress.

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Thanks

If you need any help with kickstarting your community, please do not hesitate to contact me Twitter: @FrancescaMarano Slack: @francina Email: francesca.marano@siteground.com