Manchester to Host Its First WordPress Contributor Day March 1st

WP Contributor Day is a new WordPress event that is coming up this weekend. It will be held Saturday, March 1st, 2014, in Manchester, England from 10:00 – 18:00. The goal is to have eight solid hours of contributors working together to improve WordPress.

Jenny Wong, the organizer of the event, regularly attends the WordPress user group in Manchester, which is led by Mike Little. Wong’s first contributor day experience happened at WordCamp London 2013. She enjoyed it so much that she spoke with Little about hosting a contributor day in Manchester. He loved idea and the event started to take shape.

WP Contributor Day will have several experts on hand to help new contributors find their niches. Mike Little will be available to help with core contributions. Graham Armfield will assist with accessibility contributions and Noel Tock will be on hand for BuddyPress. Wong hopes to add more current contributors to help lead groups for the event, ideally, those who have experience contributing in themes, plugins, support and documentation.

“My hope is to remove the fear for newcomers who want to take the plunge to contribute to the WordPress project,” Wong said, explaining her vision for the event. She hopes that the experience will help new contributors to gain confidence in contributing back to the project.

“For current contributors, I hope the event allows them to take a block of time from their busy lives and concentrate on one task,” she said. “I know from personal experience it sometimes takes an event for you to book time to do something you have been meaning to do.”

They aim to keep the first Manchester Contributor Day event simple and learn from it before planning more. Wong hopes that in the future other WordPress user groups will set up their own contributor days and she is happy to promote them all on the WP Contributor Day site.

“It would be super cool to have them on the same day / week to make it a global event similar to Start Up Weekend,” she said. “But that involves a lot of logistics. The bottom line is that this is a project which will grow organically and we’ll see where it takes us.”

If you’d like to participate in the WordPress Contributor Day event in Manchester this weekend, sign up for a free ticket on the website. Current contributors who can help lead a group are encouraged to get in touch with Jenny Wong.