Kudos to WordPress.org: Community Summit 2012
After all the fuss I stirred up with the release of WordCamp San Francisco sponsorship packages a week ago, I felt compelled to take a minute to commend the WordPress leadership on today’s release of a Community Summit set for later this year, 2012.
Of the entire post my biggest take away was this:
Core code isn’t the only way to contribute to the WordPress project. We have an active theme review team, support forum volunteers, people writing documentation, plugin managers, community event organizers, translators, and more. The teams have been siloed for too long, so we’ve recently begun the process of bringing them together by having teams elect representatives to facilitate more communication between the contributor groups.
This actually makes me reflect on WordPress isn’t a community. The biggest mistake I think I made in my last post is placing too much emphasis on WordCamp organizers, when in reality, and the real value added, is in a concept of a Community Summit in which all communities are brought together.
What Now?
We help Jane and company make this a successful event.
If you are a pessimist, skeptic, or nay-sayer I beg you to take a minute to put that aside and engage. If you have strong feelings one way or another submit yourself or submit someone that you think will clearly express your concerns. I take this is a clear,”Hey, you wanted it, here it is, now engage” from the WordPress.org leadership and I personally welcome it.
The polls will only be open for a week, so starting submitting.
It will be invite-only, I can already hear the sighs and see the eyes-rolling. Get over it. If you have ever put on an event then you realize how hard it will be keeping an event like this small, and like they say, the remedy for success is to keep the size manageable such that it can be a productive session. Being part of numerous teams; development, management and organizing I can attest to that.
You can nominate by going here: http://wordpressdotorg.polldaddy.com/s/2012-community-summit-nominations
Get Involved!!
If you do what I do, scan posts, then you might have missed one very important sentence. It’s tucked into the last paragraph but carries with it significant value. For people like me, not a designer or developer, I often sit back and wonder how I can contribute, this specifically talks to that:
If you’re thinking to yourself that maybe now’s the perfect time to start contributing time to the WordPress project, good thinking!
Great follow up, Tony.
I think this is a good direction and love the concept. I also think that a lot of good is going to come of it. Very exciting to see!
I hope to be a part of it all!
Thanks, yeah only fitting to take a minute to put a cap on the mess I started and hopefully help apply focus.
Good times will be had I’m sure.
I am extremely excited to see this! Tony, I believe your last post was indicative of the current climate surrounding WordPress. The fact is, it’s getting bigger and we are all extremely passionate about the community. I loved reading Janes post and I too enjoyed the first excerpt you highlighted above. It’s exciting to see Automattic reaching out and bringing the community together. I agree with Dre, that your follow-up post had some wonderful words of encouragement and hope for the future. Thank you!
Hey Wes, agree completely. I am happy to see this and I am glad that their response is contrary to expectations. Look forward to seeing what comes of it. To be a fly on the wall, I bet that will be the thought as it approaches.
I was weary at first when I heard about the other conference going on in Phoenix this year but seeing the Foundation jumping on board and being willing to address issues from the community as a whole in an almost congress fashion makes this event feel nothing like a boys club and more of a real and serious way solution to bringing issues forward and to the forefront. I’m apart of a number of other open source events including the Ubuntu Developer Summit and I can say in announcing this they are doing exactly what a good open source community should do. Thanks for the posts by the way, I’ve been getting most of my WP community news less and less from WP Candy and more and more from Perezbox lately brother, great job…
Minor (but important) correction: Automattic is not putting on the contributor summit; rather, the WordPress Foundation is. Automattic is a commercial company that, among other things, runs the wordpress.com service. Automattic does not have a leadership role in the WordPress Foundation or in the WordPress project development. If Automattic is involved with the summit – and I hope that they are – that involvement will be as a fellow contributor entity.
Given the misunderstandings that contributed to recent discussions, I think it is very important to identify and to differentiate between relevant entities in the WordPress ecosystem.
http://novaratorino.wordpress.com