Key information for WCUS 2022 Table Leads
Contributor Team Liaisons
- Christina Workman (@amethystanswers in Make Slack): Core, Design, Mobile, Themes, Plugins, Meta, Test, CLI, Hosting, Tide
- Julia Golomb (@julia in Make Slack): Community Team, A11y, Polyglots, Documentation, Training, Openverse, TV, Marketing, Photos, Support
Important Deadlines
- Starting Now: Identify your Table Lead(s), Table Onboarder, and Team Slack Rep and let us know by filling out this form. If your team has subteams, please ensure that you coordinate with them as well before filling out the form.
- July 29th: We would like to have confirmation from teams by this date.
- August 12th: Please let us know what you’ll be working on and if there are any specific times attached to those things.
Volunteers Needed from Each Contributor Team
Important: If your team has subteams, please ensure that you check with them to see if they will have a representative at Contributor Day.
- Table Leads: Table leads will be helping direct traffic – welcoming folks to the table and pointing them to various tables for projects or table onboarding. We recommend larger teams have at least two Table Leads.
- Team Onboarder (Optional): Ideally, we would like to see each table have someone who will take responsibility for onboarding new contributors. While some teams might do this at the beginning of the day, new contributors might show up later.
- Team Slack Rep (Optional): This person can be at WCUS in person or online remotely. They would be responsible for helping out folks in Slack by answering questions or helping folks who are participating remotely get started.
- Project Leads (Recommended): We recommend having project leads to cover the number of projects you have. They will be responsible for helping folks who are joining a project get up to speed. These people can be chosen on the day of the event. If your team has subteams within it, we recommend having a project lead for each subteam.
Expect to Onboard New Contributors
A major goal of WordCamps is to contribute back to the project. A significant, project-sustaining way of contributing is by onboarding new contributors. While this may not feel the most productive way to spend Contributor Day, this is just as important as working on projects. Without new contributors, the WordPress open source project cannot sustain itself.
If your team would like to share opportunities for new contributors to get onboarded before the event, please let us know, and we can post about them on the WCUS website and social media. We also recommend ensuring that your team handbooks are up-to-date prior to the event for potential contributors to self-serve onboard themselves.
Community Building is Everyone’s Responsibility
Seeing your WordPress community friends face-to-face is an exciting part of Contributor Day, and so is welcoming new people into the community! One of the consistent pieces of feedback has been that some participants felt it was hard to become a part of existing groups that already knew each other. Providing a warm, welcome, and clear instruction to new contributors will help them feel a sense of belonging, and go a long way in cultivating long-term contributors. Ensure that there’s space at the table to welcome new friends.
List of Things to Work On
Each table should plan to have a list of items to work on. If possible, we’re looking for each table to have a few different things to work on, including, but not limited to:
- Good first time contributor tasks: this can be as simple as reading the team’s handbook and giving feedback about things that aren’t clear.
- Tasks that don’t require code: a common misconception is that you have to be a coder to participate in Contributor Day. Let’s break that stigma by offering options at as many tables as possible that don’t require coding experience.
- Remote Participation Activities: Is there something that folks at home can work on? Since we have a limited number of tickets to attend in person this year, we’d like to feature remote activities on a separate page on the website.
