Growing the Global & Regional Communities

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  • #653146
    Siobhan
    Participant

    The various local WordPress communities in Europe and across the world are growing – the number of WordCamps increases all of the time, and there constantly have WordCamps and meetups in new cities.

    In Europe, WordCamp Europe acts as an excellent focal point, but how do we maintain those connections after the event? And how do we grow the European contributor community? How do we grow other global and regional communities in order to engage new contributors?

    In this session, I’d like to discuss these issues, and also propose that we discuss a future contributor summit in Europe, as a way of both engaging with the broader international community, to address issues specific to Europe, and to discuss internationalisation and global communities.

    • This topic was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by Siobhan.
    • This topic was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by Siobhan.
    #653158
    Jen
    Member

    +1 to all those things. This will also be something that gets discussed in more detail at the community team meetup on Tues-Wed, as we’ll have people not just from Europe but from local communities all over the world.

    #653160
    Simon Dickson
    Participant

    I totally agree there’s a need to look beyond North America. And given its de facto status as ‘the main global WordCamp’, I’d say it’s absolutely fair enough to raise this at San Fran.

    One of the reasons we (Code For The People) agreed to give up some of John Blackbourn’s time to lead the 4.1 release was precisely to point out – to both Americans and Europeans – that there are key players on this side of the Atlantic too.

    Sure, there are some ‘issues specific to Europe’, particularly on the legal front; and we’re arguably at the sharp end of other issues which affect plenty of others, like multilingual. But more importantly, we just need to develop stronger inter-community links, with Europe and within it.

    ‘There is no them, only us.’

    PS While we’re on the subject, let’s not forget the Japanese community. 20% of all downloads of 4.0 have been the Japanese version. That’s four times as many as the next most popular translation (Chinese); and twice as many as French, German and Spanish COMBINED.

    #653161
    Petya Raykovska
    Participant

    + 1

    #653170
    Dee Teal
    Participant

    We have similar conversations in Australia/NZ, and because of our community’s relative size for the size of the country, our WordCamps in various state capitals invariably turn into national events with people coming from all over. So maybe the discussion could broaden to Growing Regional Communities, not just Europe.

    In AU/NZ it’s a challenge to organise more than a couple of wC type events a year because the local communities are small and there’s pressure (that organisers put on themselves) to create big events (maybe that’s an Aussie thing.. “go big or go home”). So there’s a sense for me in which I’d like to talk about trying to reduce the pressure of having to make such big events (and as a result, less often – i.e. we only one WordCamp in AU this year, but to their credit NZ had two) and allow for smaller, grass roots events more often to actaully get more of the locals involved.

    On balance, no doubt that’s what meetups are about and we need to be ploughing more into that so, a discussion for those of us who are operating on our own national level on how to foster local groups would be great, and whether there’s scope for looking at more formal regional community organising teams to give locals a more accessible supportive local resources (rather than feeling like we’re always looking to the U.S. for support) for building their things might be good.

    Now look what you made me do! Sorry about the word vomit.. kind of thinking it through as I type.

    #653175
    Siobhan
    Participant

    I definitely agree with these points. We should broaden this out to include all global communities. Editing the title and blurb accordingly 🙂

    • This reply was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by Siobhan.
    #653196
    David Wolfpaw
    Participant

    I agree that it’s something to talk about. Even here in the US, a few people travel to multiple events in one region, and maintaining connections can be harder when you’re not exactly local, but localish.

    #653227
    ShinichiN
    Participant

    +1

    As Simon has mentioned, there’s a big number of Japanese people who use WordPress, come/volunteer to meetups and WordCamps.
    I can share the experience as an Japanese WordPress user, business owner and an organizer of WordCamp Tokyo. While Japan have many users, it’s somehow separated from the global. I want to discuss about how to make it more connected.

    I live in Bangkok, Thailand where community has just begun and am organizing WordPress meetups.
    I want to know how things are going in various countries(especially community is not yet large), what the organizers have in your mind and how people find a way of getting involved.

    #653236
    tinakesova
    Participant

    + 1

    #653237
    Dan Maby
    Participant

    +1 for a contributor summit within Europe. We have incredible talent this side of the pond as well as thriving communities, I agree with Simon there is a “need to develop stronger inter-community links”. The growth of global and regional communities can only be a good thing for WordPress.

    I’d actively support this event in whatever way I could.

    #653240
    Mayo Moriyama
    Participant

    +1

    Thank you for mention about Japan, Simon! Here is another WordCamp Tokyo’s organizer.
    I also love visiting to Asian countries.

    It would be great if I could find what I should do at our local community in Japan or another Asian country.

    #653269
    Jen
    Member

    Fwiw, I made a sincere effort to help bring people from outside the US and Europe to the event this year, including Japan, Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Brazil, and more. WordCamp and meetup organizers from all over the world will be there. 🙂

    #653279
    Jenny Wong
    Participant

    +1 This was the biggest request I got when I was at WCEU contributor day and had a mini community discussion with people.

    #653460
    David Wolfpaw
    Participant

    I can attest, Jen has been spending a lot of time on helping get people over, and I’m pumped to talk about this!

    #653472
    Japh
    Participant

    +1! I’m very interested in particular in the whole South East Asia region, and China even more specifically.

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October 25-26, 2014