Course Category: Contributing to WordPress

WordPress is built, maintained, and supported in a highly open and collaborative environment. This open collaboration can make leaders think that absolute consensus is required to make any decisions. Consensus is a valuable goal when everyone working toward a decision shares the same resources, information, and values. However, in large organizations sometimes decisions that do not please the majority will have to be made, due to legal requirements, logistical concerns, and other factors.

This course will help you learn how decisions are made in the WordPress project and empower you to get involved in decision-making discussions in any contributor team.

WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences that focus on everything WordPress. Each WordCamp is different, reflecting the local WordPress community it represents, but usually a wide range of people from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other.

This course is required training for all new WordCamp lead organizers, as well as being useful for anyone wanting to know more about how WordCamps work.

Community Deputies are a team of people all over the world who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and generally keep things moving at WordCamp Central. You can find out more about the deputy program here.

This course is required training for anyone wanting to join the Deputy program. It is also useful for anyone wanting to know more about how the Community Team works.

WordPress is open-source software. This has many implications and affects everything about how the software is built and the community is managed.

This course will look at broad open-source principles and how they apply to WordPress – these are essential principles for any new or seasoned contributor to understand.

WordPress community teams meet regularly to connect in real time. Teams should feel free to find what works for them, but there are guidelines to how these meetings should take place that are true for all teams.

This course looks at the different type of meetings that take place across the WordPress open-source project and how they should be conducted. It is useful training for anyone facilitating or engaging in contributor meetings.

Because the WordPress community is global, it’s important to remember that everyone has different circumstances, knowledge, and levels of experience. As a general rule, all written communication should be clear and friendly, with a tone that’s on the positive side of neutral.

This course is for all contributors, especially those who are publishing posts, facilitating meetings, or otherwise writing publicly on behalf of the WordPress project.

Some disagreements come from misunderstandings, while others come from unpleasant mistakes. No matter how it happens, it is never pleasant.

This course will help you to effectively navigate these types of conflicts when working in an open-source community like WordPress.

WordCamp mentors provide structured support and guidance to new WordCamp organizers. Any previous WordCamp lead organizer can apply to become a WordCamp mentor.

This course is required training for everyone who wishes to become a mentor.

Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face or online events on a regular basis. Anything that brings together 2 or more people to share their WordPress experiences counts — there’s no minimum number of attendees or required format.

This course is required training for anyone wishing to become a WordPress meetup organizer.