In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Andrea Middleton, Dot org Wrangler at Automattic. Middleton supports WordPress community organizers by helping them plan community events that inspire people to do more with WordPress, connect the community, and contribute to the WordPress project. We discussed a variety (more…)
WordPress 4.8 Beta 1 is available for testing and has a couple of features that will likely have a big impact. New Image, Video, and Audio Widgets WordPress 4.8 has three new core widgets and adds a visual editor to the Text widget. Adding video, audio, or images to text (more…)
In 2016, WordPress meetups had the fastest growth the community has seen in five or six years with more than 62,566 people attending in 58 different countries. Meetups are the seeds of future WordCamps. These local gatherings help users further their WordPress skills and underpin the community’s growth across the (more…)
Two weeks ago, I highlighted a WordPress plugin that displays upcoming WordCamps in the Dashboard. I’ve recently discovered that the WordPress Community team is working on an official plugin that does something similar called Nearby WordPress Events. The plugin attempts to detect a user’s location and displays upcoming events within (more…)
When Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of the WordPress project, delivers his annual State of The Word presentation, he always gives props to meetup organizers and attendees. In 2016, there were 3,193 meetup events in 58 countries attended by 62,566 people. Meetups are one of the cornerstones of the community and for many (more…)
There are a variety of WordPress events that take place around the world where users learn WordPress in person. Some are WordCamps, meetups, and others are WordPress specific but don’t use the WordCamp branding. Until now, there has not been an easy way to see all WordPress events on one (more…)
DawnPatrol is a new project by Scott Basgaard and Noel Tock of HumanMade. The site is billed as a community experiment that features video clips of WordCamp participants from across the world. With non-English downloads of WordPress overtaking the number of English downloads for the first time this year, non-English (more…)
Ask twenty people why you should go to a WordCamp and you’ll likely receive 20 different answers. A recent post by Waseem Abbas, of Cloudways, is proof positive. He asked 20 different members of the WordPress community, including yours truly, why you should attend a WordCamp. He’s compiled the answers (more…)
East Meets Press is a business focused WordPress event organized by Ben Fox that will be held on September 17-21 (Wednesday to Sunday – 4 nights). Not to be outdone by BeachPress which was recently held on the West Coast of the US, East Meets Press will take place on (more…)
One of my favorites things to do every month is attend my local WordPress meetup. I’ve helped put the meeting together since 2009. Usually, we’ll have 10-25 people show up depending on the weather or if the event is on a holiday. Meetups are like a smaller version of WordCamps (more…)
The WordPress Meetup group in San Francisco recently held their first WooCommerce meetup within the new Automattic Headquarters. The meetup focused on an introduction to WooCommerce and provided time at the end for customers show and tell their WooCommerce projects. There was also an opportunity to have questions answered. As (more…)
Chris Lema has put together an interesting post that details the reasons why WordCamp speakers should be reviewed. While Chris attended WordCamp Los Angeles 2013 organized by first timers, he listened to a presenter or two that shared more about themselves rather than their content. He then thought about ways (more…)