The Indian WordPress community is set for an exciting start to 2025, with three WordCamps scheduled for January, as per WordCamp Central. India has a thriving WordPress community and according to the WordPress Meetup global trends report (January 2023 to June 2024), published by the Community Team, Indian cities Ahmedabad and Mumbai recorded the highest engagement…
Automattic-sponsored Global Community Team Programs Manager Rocio Valdivia has published a proposal to allocate a portion of the WordPress Events/WordCamp budget solely for marketing and advertising. This change aims to attract more newcomers to WordPress events. Rocio Valdivia explained, “The Community Team’s goal for upcoming events is to warmly welcome more first-time attendees. We aim…
Support Inclusion in Tech (SiNC) is now fundraising on the Open Collective (OC) Foundation’s platform. Founded and spearheaded by Winstina Hughes, SiNC assists underrepresented WordPress contributors and provides financial support to WordCamp speakers for travel and hotels. What is SiNC? SiNC was proposed by Winstina Hughes in 2022 to mitigate the financial stress of underrepresented…
In-person WordPress events are ramping up again, with in-person meetups happening all over the world and WordCamps back on the schedule. A sampling of the upcoming major events include the following: WordCamp Vienna, Austria (April 23, 2022) WordCamp Irun (May 21–22, 2022) WordCamp Europe (June 2–4, 2022) WordCamp Warsaw, Poland (June 11–12, 2022) WordCamp Montclair,…
On the podcast today we have Cate DeRosia. Cate is a familiar face in the WordPress community. Along with her husband, Topher, they run the HeroPress Network. She describes herself as a ‘serial volunteer in the community’. In early 2022 Cate was hired by Automattic to be a sponsored member of the Community Team, and…
WordPress Community Support (WPCS), the subsidiary of the WordPress Foundation that handles financial and legal support for official WordPress events, has published an overview of the program’s current finances and a summary of 2020. Harmony Romo, a financial wrangler at Automattic, reported that WPCS ended the year with approximately $1.2M of cash on hand. $293,000…
The proposal for the 2022 Global Community Sponsorship program will not include funding for WordCamps again this year, due to the unpredictability of hosting in-person events. The pandemic continues to make conditions unfavorable in many areas of the world where WordCamp and meetup organizers have opted to continue with virtual events. In the past, the…
On the podcast today we have Dan Maby. Dan has been a user of WordPress for many years. As an agency owner he’s used it to build client websites, but, as is so often the case, he came for the software and got caught up in the community. We talk about the importance of the…
Although the promise of effective COVID-19 vaccines is shining a light at the end of a long tunnel, the world remains firmly in the virus’ grip until distribution can ramp up to cover at-risk groups as well as the general populace. As pandemic-weary communities muster the discipline to ride out the next few months under…
As the world scrambles to invent and manufacture therapeutics and vaccines for COVID-19, the World Health Organization has declared the pandemic “a once-in-a-century health crisis, the effects of which will be felt for decades to come.” Outbreaks vary in severity across the globe, making it impossible to host international conferences safely for many months (and…
WordCamp US 2020, which was originally scheduled for October 27-29, was officially canceled today. In April, organizers transitioned to planning for it to be held as a virtual event, but the tenuous situation with the pandemic in the United States and the stress on the event’s large crew of volunteers has precipitated a full cancellation.…
One of the exciting things about WordCamps going virtual is the community gaining access to more events and presentations than ever before, from anywhere in the world. Even in this new online-only format, local camps still retain their unique character as they feature speakers from their respective communities. WordCamp Kent (Ohio) is one of these…
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I are joined by Michelle Schulp, an independent freelancer and Director of Technology at AIGA Minnesota. We discussed the impacts speaking at multiple WordCamps had on her business early on, why she continues to be a freelance contractor as opposed to managing her own agency, and the role…
The following is a guest post written by Jennifer Bourn. With 21 years experience as a graphic designer, 15 years experience as a web designer, 14 years as a creative agency owner, and 11 years as a blogger, Jennifer Bourn has worked with hundreds of service-based businesses to build brands and establish profitable online platforms.…
In this episode, John James Jacoby and I discuss the news of the week. We talk about the delayed release of WordPress 5.0 and which day would be a suitable release date. We share our opinions on Matt’s answers from his Q&A appearance at WordCamp in Portland, Oregon. We also talk about the changes in…