WordPress Meetup Wins, Challenges and Initiatives

Devin:
All right. Hello, Dave and Arthur. So nice to meet you because we’ve been talking on Slack online all this time, and I think this is the first time that the three of us are meeting. And tonight we’re going to, well, tonight in Indonesia. I’m based in Jakarta, Indonesia. We are going to share and chat a bit about your experience and how you expect, or whatever you want to highlight about your WordPress meetup organizers experience. So I, I’m actually also a meetup organizer in Jakarta, Indonesia. So I have also my own experience, but tonight it’s all about your experience. So I’ll start asking you to introduce yourself a little bit. So first probably where you are based and the meetup group that you have been hosting, organizing, and a little bit about your group. How big is the group, how many people there, the members, how often you meet, for example, when in fact you started your group. So perhaps from Dave, you can share with us a little bit about your group.

Dave:
Hello, my name is Dave. Dave Loodts. I am the co-founder of Work WordPress Meetup Antwerp. Together with the amazing Veerle Verbert, we had a very long history already with the meetup. Antwerp. Yeah, already 10 years. Wow. So in 10 years ago we started for the first meetup in 2013, probably around the publication of this podcast. That was our10 year anniversary. But to be said, I was one year on the break also, Veerle was one year on the break, so not the full 10 years. Of course we have also the two covid years, but yeah, it’s like an artist that he says we’re 30 years on the stage.

Devin:
We’ve all been there, right.

Dave:
Yeah. But it was very, very awesome That, and the amount of meetups certainly in the first years was mostly monthly. We immediately went monthly. But after Covid years, I tried to pick it back up with two monthly, but I felt that the flame as an organizer, being an organizer was really not that much enlightened anymore. So we made the call to ask for new organizers and that’s why I got picked up by Bob and I’m here. But I want to also mention that we’re really not really, really going to stop because all the stuff we have built together with the community in Antwerp, but also the Flemish part and fail, we really not going to drop it what we have built. And if there are no new organizers coming up or showing up, we probably doing one or two WordPress cafes. So no talk, just coming together and meeting each other, but hopefully a new proactive person or group, I think a group or two would be very good. Will stand up.

Devin:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, one thing that you haven’t mentioned, how big is your group? How many people are there as a member of your group?

Dave:
I think I should perpetuated that, but I think it would be around 705 members.

Devin:
So over these 10 years, and I agree with you, there are options that we can find to reactivate your group, but closing would be the last option. And after all these hard work that you and fiddle have done, let’s hope that somebody will take over the leadership button and then we’ll continue organizing meetups. We’ll get there. But now let’s hear from Arthur. So Arthur is from Uganda. Let us know a bit about your group and your city and how you started the whole meetup group and where are you based? Arthur?

Arthur:
Hello everyone. My name is Kasiyre Arthur and I’m a meetup or I come from Kampala, Uganda. Kampala is the capital city, but I’m based in Entebbe and in another city. And that’s where my meetup is, where I’m part of the, we call them founding members for the WordPress community in Uganda. Because we started this from Kampala way back in 2017 and when the Kampala group grew, so some of us dispersed and that’s how I ended up in same city that I work in. And then I lived, so in inve I put up a up in 2018 and we’ve been growing, we are now 1064 members. So we’ve had two WordCamps in it. And we are planning another yes,.

Devin:
For this year.

Arthur:
This could be still thinking through this year or next year because what we wanted to do was to have the WordCamp to Uganda because in Uganda we have quite a number of word camps, sorry, meetups. And we wanted to do just one strong WordCamp combining all the meetups and interview would be the lead. So I’ve been discussing this with some other co-leader, other leaders for the different meetups in Uganda. And I’m yet to submit this to WordCamp central and see how we can work this up.

Devin:
You also haven’t mentioned something how often you meet in Kampala? Or Entebbe in this case.

Arthur:
We meet it on a monthly basis, but sometimes we used to meet monthly physically, and that was before Covid. So when Covid hit, we went more online and then sometimes we realized that at a point we share some members online. So when one meetup schedules a meetup event, so we can still schedule the same for the rest of the meetups and have a combined audience for all these meetups made up together online. And so it goes on. So sometimes when Kampala holds an online meetup, you find that in has also scheduled one and then we can meet up all at once. So sometimes that can even be more than once a month,

Devin:
A month if it is online. So when was the last time, Dave, you had an in-person meetup event? So I mean this question goes to both of you. Just out of curiosity, when was the last time you organized and that means you attended, you as part of the group in Antwerp had an in-person WordPress meetup event

Dave:
For Antwerp. That was 19 March, but it was organized via, which is also an alternative or a possibility for taking over the meetup group, which was someone working in an agency and said, okay, we want to organize the meetup for once, just not really as a fixed organizer but only once. And that is also a possibility that an organizer or someone in working in an agency says, okay, we have here in the office for 20, 30 people and we want to organize a meetup ourselves and it would be very good because then a lot of costs are already covered.

Devin:
So that happened in March.

Dave:
That was happened in March, which was by the way, very successful. It was also held in a very quite popular agency in Belgium. So they had quite a reach. Yeah, it was 40 attendees, so it was long time ago that a lot of people came to.

Devin:
So I’m going to go back a little bit then. How many people are there in the leadership team? So if you look at your group on meetup.com, there is actually a page on that shows who are they sitting as event organizers, assistant organizers or core organizers? And I assume you and fiddle are the core organizers. Are there anybody else in the leadership team At the moment?

Dave:
Yes and no. Yes and no in the sense of that there are a few meetup persons that, let’s imagine that we get run by a truck. They probably take over that evening, but not, I think in the sense of really being proactive in search of paying the location or organizing the things. So I think we will have meetup members that we can give them tasks or trust them some stuff. But in general it was mostly, yeah, like I said, the person that also organized via that agency, it was a proactive activity that is also verifying, but it’s around three, four or five people.

Devin:
Okay. Well I mean this is just probably Arthur, it’s probably not new to you Arthur, because you’re being active recently as a program supporters and it’s probably different from Dave who might be having a less exposure to how we update our program and our handbook. So I assume you and Firo in this case are the co-organizers and on meetup.com you can actually assign people to be event organizers or assistant organizers, but they’re not necessarily co-organizers. This is about the different access to the feature of meetup com. But basically anyone can organize meetups as long as they are meeting our expectation. So they respect the five goodrules, they respect our code of conducts and they are also meeting our expectation when it comes to no trademark violation CO’s code of conduct violation and respecting the GPL license. And they don’t have to sit as co organizers, but they can organize event with your guidance as co-organizers.

So they can be called either assistant organizer or event organizers. So for example, you have actually done that case already where somebody from this agency raised their hand said, Hey, we can help organize an event. It would be interested to find out if that event is really for the community. So it’s not talking about their product or just an opportunity for them to market their company, but anyone can actually do that. So in the case of you or fiddle are not available much to organize an event, you can still guide people and support people to be in the frontline organizing meetups. And I heard that you mentioned about paying venue. We do actually have, so it’s actually also good that you mentioned the agency offered a donated free venue for the meetup event. So that’s what we always encourage our meetup organizers to find free donated venue as long as it’s not affiliated with any religious group or political parties.
So for example, schools, library, universities, but, and we realize that some cities it’s so difficult to get free donated venues and even it’s almost impossible to find cheap venue. So you have to book a coworking space or a restaurant for example. In that case you can actually apply for a meetup venue support to what comes central. So we have that option. We do have a cap on the rate per person and it depends on your average of attendees on your meetup groups, but there’s that option. So I just wanted to mention it for the sake of our listeners so that they know the context and they can also learn, and I hope these would actually interest you to probably stay and then help to Yeah,

Dave:
But I can say that we, in 2013, I made that request because the location was 35 euros, which is really cheap.

Devin:
Did you mention 2013

Dave:
Sorry, 2023. I put in the request, but before that we also always paid it ourselves, which is really not an issue. It’s 35, only 35. But after the energy crisis, everything went a bit bigger. So went to 75 and then I said maybe we’re going to do a request to get donation. But as soon as I mentioned that there are a few stairs quick no is coming, which is kind of bizarre because we are located in the inner center, old center, which is a lot of cobblestones in the streets. So it would be in the first place really adventurous in the first place to get there on our meetup location with some stairs. But I respect that by the way. So that’s also I think why we did it two monthly, a small decision

Devin:
Every two months.

Dave:
And I think it’s also respectful as an organizer, which is my personal opinion, our location is also at the restaurant. It’s the second floor of a restaurant, which means that they can order their own drinks and pay for their own drinks. And we also at five o’clock, two hours before the start of the meetup, we have some lunch also with the presenter, the person who gives a talk and we buy their lunch. So we also pay that. And I think that’s also abnormal, but by the way, I have a good running company and that is a cost for me and you’re

Devin:
Happy to do that.

Dave:
Of course it’s a bit of a contribution back. But I must say I was a bit of disappointed that someone at the other side of the world decided that we weren’t getting funded. But I get it. I respect that by the way. But it is what what it is.

Devin:
Let’s try again. I mean if you find any other place that probably more accessible and affordable

Dave:
Because 75 still not that much of money. I think in some ways we’re also pretty, we spend a lot of time in that location around 70 editions. And the new owners are also not really that good in our opinion or that friendly.

Devin:
That means you need to look for another interesting place to have a meetup. Yeah. Well let’s hear from Arthur. When was the last time you had an in-person, WordPress meet up and how it went? Well

Arthur:
That was before our WordCamp, we had a WordCamp this year. It was the first in Africa after Covid. And it was very fast in a long while because after moving to Entebbe and then the entire Covid thing, some people have had lost morale and all that. So what we did was to just go into a restaurant order for some drinks, sit with our laptops good enough that there was a huge screen where we could do. And we spent about six hours just there. And it was meant to be initially two hours, but it went that long because we had really spent some time and most of these people were really frustrated with the online meetings, this and that. And all they want to do was just catch up real time.

Devin:
It was more like a coworking event

Arthur:
Kind of. So after that we had our WordCamp in February, I think February, March, February I think. Yeah. And all these have just been going online. However, I wanted to resume doing physical meetings. The only challenge was that, well, we have a university premises where we can handle these events, but sometimes you find that university, sometimes the rooms are being used and you may not get the suitable room for you to have that exact meetup with all the things that you need. So at a point it requires us to still go back to a restaurant and we can just sit there and then do our meetups from there. But the restaurant we used to consider is currently under construction.

Devin:
Oh, again, you have to look for another venue.

Arthur:
Yeah, so that’s been the mix, but well, I’m still looking. There are not so many cheaper places because it’s a tourism kind of place. Most of these, when you look at the hotels, the restaurants, most of them are high end and they’re a bit expensive. So when you find a place, which is a regular place where you can just meet, there are a few of them, but that’s the tricky part. However, I’m still trying to see how we can do this offline because it’s really, really

Devin:
Good. Yeah. Well this is interesting because I heard from Dave that you mentioned about having a talk and you mentioned about probably of course I heard also from our conversation some other time that you also had a talk. So there’s a speaker, there’s an audience, and then the format is presentation, question and answer. But also interesting for me, it’s interesting for me to hear that you also try to do a coworking in te, although the driver probably was just, we just want to meet and work together with people after all these online meetings. I wonder if both of you have tried different formats because in our handbook we do have different kind of, we have a page that lists the different kind of formats you can try. So either it’s coworking or open discussion or ask me anything or a lecture. In fact, you can do something like lightning talk or contributor day or do action or workshop teaching people how to create plugins or themes for example. Have you explore the different formats so far, Dave, you’ve been doing this for the last time, 10 years probably. You have experience.

Dave:
We’ve done it all. Yeah. So mainly the thing that we did, but we did a lot of other stuff like you mentioned, I’ve written here a help desk, ask the experts panel. In the beginning, WordPress just coming together, life watching event, which was fairly kind enough to open our house.

Devin:
Was that for State of the Word or some other one?

Dave:
State of the Word in the evening? Or WordCamp US back then, but then State of the Word was kind of the high point, which was around 12 o’clock. 12.

Devin:
Oh you mean what us such as the streaming, live streaming, yeah.

Dave:
That was always quite nice with 5, 6, 7 people. So it was also kind of anxious to open up that meetup, but you never know for the same kind of, there are 30 people in Veerle’s house. That was one type. And I do for example, showcases.

Devin:
That’s interesting.

Dave:
Yeah, don’t ask a lot of preparation. You only say, okay, who wants to show their website? No preparation of slides, no preparation of what you’re trying to say. Just show your website, log in, show your team, show your plugins, show your settings. And then something, the reason why I do like that topic quite a lot because something magically happens that when someone opens their admin, then a lot of people sit on their share a bit straight

Devin:
Up and then started to learn.

Dave:
Yeah, started to learn but also give feedback. So it’s a two way of education. And that’s one thing I do miss quite some time on WordCamps where sometimes I hardly see any screenshot or video of an admin. And when I said that to a few people, they said, why should people even bother? But then I remind myself of the showcase evenings that we really did done a lot and everyone rais their back looks, their eyes and yeah, we’re really, really good. And also every summer we do a summer meetup, which is kind of a WordPress cafe. But then in the summer bar in the open last year I organized a summer meetup, which was the idea was to organize a meetup without computer. So we started at two o’clock and then ended up until everyone is tired, which is in. So at two o’clock we organized a walk walking through Antwerp three columns.

Devin:
I think I remember the video you shared in the community or event. Yeah, that was great.

Dave:
And then at five o’clock we rest on a tour at six o’clock we go for lunch pizzeria, by the way, which is quite affordable for everyone. And then at nine o’clock, 10 o’clock we went to a pub and that’s something I liked very much. And I also want to highlight another meetup type that we’ve done. Not really an enter, but in another meetup place, which I also co-found back then, it was a performance battle.

Devin:
Oh wow. What is that about?

Dave:
Yeah, someone created, first did a talk about performance. They also created a website with a lot of bugs in it and performance issues. Everyone in groups could first copy that website, all it. And then we had a battle. So the best performance website that they could fix that website, the team that has its website won that evening. Wow.

Devin:
So it’s like a mini competition?

Dave:
It’s a mini competition. It’s first theory directly in practice.

Devin:
Wow. Wow. This is great.

Dave:
Yeah, it’s directly. And also because it was in teams and everyone was free to do whatever they could, so they could download the caching plugin of their preference and install it, but their image caching thing or some other, they could download the files and re-upload it.

Devin:
How long does it last that kind of format?

Dave:
Two hours, three hours. But I think if I would advise it again to other people that the copying of the website took a bit too much time. So I think the presenter was organizing that or giving the talk can set up already four or five staging environments and give them access, FTP access, SSH, access to some groups. The battle is also an half hour of course.

Devin:
Right, right, right, right. It won’t be quick, right. I mean it sounds interesting. I mean I can’t imagine to be attending that kind of meetups. There’s a lot to learn and it sounds very engaging as well. Everyone kind of working on something. I would assume that it’s like a teamwork thing, right? You mentioned about the team who’s doing something. So that is so great. Would you be willing to actually write it up somewhere and publish it so that everyone else can learn and probably prototype what you’ve done in Belgium? This is really interesting.

Dave:
It’s four or five years ago, but I still remember a bit.

Devin:
Okay, alright. Well probably before you completely forget about everything, it’s better to write it down somewhere. And I’m pretty sure Arthur would be interested in trying out in Entebbe, right? Because now you’re preparing, what can you do to bring people in and feel motivated to attend an in-person meetup? All right. What about you, Arthur? Is there any other format that you have tried that probably also interesting to share with us tonight?

Arthur:
Actually, when he was speaking, I remembered something that I had skipped, and this is something that we’ve worked on. I believe people who work with computers take a lot of time seated on their computers and that’s their life. So everything sometimes becomes ones and zeros codes and they can’t really do anything else. So we started biking in 2019 where we have a WhatsApp group with over 500 members where we meet aside from Meetup and we organize bike riding events for us, the WordPress users, we’ve done this to race. And this year we did a bike ride on Women’s Day, which was in eighth March. And we were a group of about 10 or 12, where we rode bikes around. We went to some island in Lake Victoria, we rode the entire island. I think the entire distance was about 25 kilometers, got back to a ferry and then came back to the mainland. It was quite a relieving experience to experience nature. I can’t stress this much, but that a whole day event.

Devin:
Sounds like it. Yes.

Arthur:
So we took photos for contribution for the WordPress contribution to the repo for photos. . And then with that we were just talking, discussing about some issues could be work related and some of them just the usual life catching up, how things are moving and what’s happening one’s life. And it was really a great relief, a great relief and nourishing to our minds because it was over a weekend. So by the time we come back, it was a Saturday, came back on a Sunday, we are very tired and then had rested on a Sunday and then had to go to work. So we organized biking. And really biking is one great experience.

Devin:
Yeah, my question were first whether you set it up as an event, what press meetup event on your page?

Arthur:
Unfortunately no. So we didn’t

Devin:
No, that’s okay. I mean, because I was just curious whether you did it because then it would be announced to all of your Meetup members and they have the options to join or not. And the second one, if it was a lot of writing, did you get a chance to actually talk about what press? But then it’s, as you mentioned, it’s surprising that you actually cater it with the taking photos and then for the photo contribution. And that is something that probably similar to photo walk, I think there are some meetup groups as well in Japan. I mean we did it in Jakarta, they organized a photo walk. So they walk around the city and then they take pictures and then they learn how to upload it to the photo directory and then they get the badge as a photo contributor. Yes. Have you done that, Dave in Belgium, the taking photo in terms of contributing to the photo team?

Dave:
No. No, we haven’t done that.

Devin:
Right. That could be something because you also organized a walk a little bit around the city where you had the video last year, right? So something similar, but then integrate that activity of taking pictures and probably sit down somewhere in a cafe and then upload it to the WordPress photo directory. That could be also an option for meetup activities. Thank you for sharing all of these really fun activities that is very engaging and inspiring. Anything else that you did that you probably missed to share with us?

Arthur:
Well, several the same bike ride we talk about translating because we’ve been translating WordPress to Uganda for about five years now and still we on 30%. It’s hard sometimes because we really don’t have, there are some words that we don’t have in our language is the most language that is used in Uganda and we have quite a number of languages. But still during the bike ride you ask someone, what does this mean? Because one word can even mean about four things in our language. And you’re like, how can I really bring this out? So during such sessions we were brainstorming and it helps us, I mean the lead of Polyglots and I am really pushing so hard so that this can be at added, bit its not. It’s been a journey that we’ve been working over for all these years and yet they’re still there. Although as she said, we are not giving up. We’ve really given in a lot on this.

Devin:
Right. Wow, that’s also interesting to integrate this polyglot activities into the meetup. Have you done anything like that Dave with polyglots? The community in Belgium is translating WordPress into both French and Flemish.

Dave:
Well, there is a Belgian Flemish version and to be real honest, that is my biggest regret, which sounds harsh, but during my hippie naive years, I heard someone with, let’s call ’em high profile WordPress ecosystem saying a local WordPress community is not really full or complete if they don’t have their own locale. It was really going in my head. I say, okay, someone in the early days started underscore BE, locale, but it stuck around at 5%. 5%. And then I made it my mission to bring it to a hundred percent. And when it’s a hundred percent then it’s going official and then it’s going official into the installs of WordPress. And someone really advised me not to do that. And I was a very smart person because the thing is, and I think it has to be said when I had the chance now on the public podcast that it’s parrot work in some work in some way that it’s translated.

But it is a lot of work. It is a lot of work. And the leadership is not really prioritizing prioritizing language usage in WordPress mostly because there is this plugin of Pascal Birchler, which is called preferred languages. Preferred languages will says, it says that, okay, if your plugin or team doesn’t have an NL dot BE, you can set that. Okay, then use the NL nl. So a lot of contributors and users will be very happy with that. They can only focus on the plugins that they use. So we do, because a lot of translation from the 5% to a hundred percent was, to be honest, a lot of copy paste from the NL NL local translation. So that is some, I have very mixed feelings about the locale L to be honest. If I could turn back time, I probably won’t do it anymore. And I will join the NL underscore NL local. So hopefully if someone of the leadership team is listening, maybe the preferred language is getting more priority in the next releases. It’s an awesome plugin by the way. For everyone. For everyone. Not only Dutch language but also Spanish, which is also very broad English American.

Devin:
Just o clarify, when you say NL is the locale nl?

Dave:
Yeah, so we have NL, which is from the, then you have NL BE, which is the Dutch version of Belgium. So you have also NL_FR for French, but a preferred working plugin language plugin will be very awesome for the whole community.

Devin:
Well thank you for the feedback and hope somebody is working on that. Probably will reach out to you and have a further conversation to talk about this. So this is great to hear that you are part of the community team meet up organizers, event organizers. You are also involved in Polyglots team. Well Dave, you haven’t start taking pictures and uploading to the photos. The one

Dave:
Picture. Yes.

Devin:
Yeah, but you have, that’s great. So you can set an example for the team. It was a tried different things. Is there anything that you want to share? I mean it could be challenges that would serve as a lesson learn for everybody also something that some tips or best practices that you feel like this, it worked with us. Of course it might not necessarily work in other countries or because of the different cultures, but it’s worth trying for example, something like that if you have anything.

Dave:
Not really. Not really. I remember the, so the first WordCamp that we did in 2016, it was not really that kind of a mentor ship model. So I went to the WordCamp in the Netherlands. I was looking for a mentor, so I’m not going to mention his name, but I said, okay, what we’re going to plan a WordCamp, give us your advice. The only thing that he said was just do it.

Devin:
Just do it. Yeah,

Dave:
That is how. So be very proactive, be open-minded, be respectful, be empathetic, have empathy for all kinds of user skills that are in the WordPress ecosystem and enjoy the ride. So also for new meetups, organizers in Antwerp I can say it is a fun ride. You learn a lot. You learn a lot. Also because as an organizer you have to come to the meetup if the subject is not really aligned with what you do. Yeah, I will encourage everyone who’s listening to really be proactive in that role. Even if you have a meetup in your city, just reach out and says, I want also organize a meetup because we’ll always said all those 10 years that a meetup is like open source, it’s open for everyone to organize. That is very important and maybe also for some meetups. And I think maybe it’s not a problem that we’ve done of an issue that we’ve done, but then the new generation gap that you always have is then more easy to jump over if you have sideways organizers through the ride. Yeah.

Devin:
Well thank you for sharing Dave and Arthur. It could be also challenges that you experienced, but then you learning from it and then you overcome. So that could be also something that you might want to share.

Arthur:
The challenge that we had was we were missing a number of female attendees in the meetups. And it came to a point that it was only just one gender in the meetups as in the leadership position. And yet they were really brilliant women out there who could really do things that were stunning. And I think one way how we realized that was even towards the word comes, it was so hard getting female presenters come to the stage and talk to encourage other attendees, female attendees, to do these things and take on. And yet at least when one woman hears that one has succeeded in the same path, they will also take on the same role or be encouraged to even do better. So it was quite hard. But we’ve gone over that and we realized that the leadership now in Kampala, we are having three female ladies that are leading the community and Kampala is now the biggest meetup in Uganda, has about 2000 members on meetup.
And these ladies have brought brilliant ideas to the community to a point that we have many of them that are passionate about kids and bringing kids, onboarding them, teaching them how to code and sometimes how to use WordPress at a tender age is something I would die for. Or I think that if I had such an experience while growing up that I was exposed to this kind of technology, I would have been far much better than I am now.

So they’ve brought up brilliant ideas and they’ve inspired many to come through in WordPress in the WordPress community here in Uganda. And recently in Entebbe we had a talk where women came and gave out their stories, inspirational stories. We have people that have won awards, female and they’re part of the community. And yet there are some others that thought these things are for only men. It’s only men who can code. Men are very smart and yet women are critical. They can identify even the smallest thing that makes them really good people when it comes to user interface, user experience, and women who are just develop by one functionality. So when we brought in that angle, it really sparked off some fire

Thinking and we really, at least now we are balanced. The agenda is just balanced than it was back then.

Devin:
Well hopefully what happened in Kampala can inspire the other meetup groups in Uganda. I mean, I don’t know Dave, is this something that you also experience diversity in your meetup groups in terms of attendees, leadership team or speakers, that this challenge happens in some part of the world that it’s so difficult to get female attendees like women wanted to share and speak at our events?

Dave:
That is a challenge. It’s a challenge also because most meetups are in cities during the night. A lot of females don’t really feel comfortable, certainly if they’re living in smaller villages, for example. So I would never ask my mom to go on a Tuesday evening to go to Antwerp. And yeah, it’s always a challenge. And there are also other groups that I see also in a lot of communities not really getting the full reach is the Turkish community, the Marakesh community. Yeah, it’s a challenge.

Devin:
So you also face the same challenge when it comes to bringing diversity into your group?

Dave:
Yeah, yeah. Not really in terms of age, which I always find very amazing to see. So before Covid, a few people who were I think 75, 80. Wow, wow, wow. On the contributor day on 2018, we put those two guys, people around 75, they received the people going to the first day of work camp.

Devin:
Also a young generation in that occasion when you find both the veterans group of people and then the very young students for example,

Dave:
No, that is also the other challenge we see on WordCamps most exactly that it’s minus 30 or minus 25 years. It’s not that easy to reach them. I don’t know why, but on the other hand we had a very broad for, we have 25 or minus 30, 40, 50, but also the 60 17, which was fun.

Devin:
Well what Arthur mentioned earlier about the woman community and everything, this also reminds me of, if you’ve heard, last year we introduced this project, it was an experiment called Next Gen Project, but that project has ended, but what we have now is we opened for our WordPress event organizers to organize other events other than meetup and webcams. So other formats or interesting topics that you feel like missing in our space, you are open to actually explore and organizes. And in your case Dave, if you see this as an opportunity to actually bring new generations into the event space in Belgium, by all means you can actually apply to organize one. Another thing as well, what we encourage meetup or WordCamp event organizers is to reach out to the different audience. So you mentioned about the difficulties in getting venues. Perhaps if you connect to other communities, there could be non-tech communities or tech communities such as Mozilla community, Linux community, Drupal communities, in fact JavaScript community.

They might actually have resources, a venue that they can share with us and find something that interests them, that is appealing to them so that they want to support us and join with us in organizing an event. So that’s one thing that we started to encourage our event organizers to start doing, reach out to communities outside WordPress community, learn from them or collaborate with them, organize events that brings new audiences to our event space, bring new attendees, bring new WordPress users. So these would probably create some excitements to ignite again the spirit in your community, which can also leads to opening up resources that we can tap into organizers or venue or in the even donation for your events as a meetup organizers, you can also explore organizing an event as a meetup event that is a little bit bigger, but it’s not a WordCamp, and it’s not also meetup like the usual meetup that you do.
So you can explore that sort of format and topic. I was talking to folks from Malaysia at WordCamp Asia because they organized meetup focusing on plugin and they had an idea of one day they want to create some sort of network for plugin creators across Southeast Asia.

And I was talking to them if they’re actually interested in organizing an event that is larger than Meetup that can really host and connect all these plugin creators or plugin business owners in Southeast Asia to me. So it’s not Meetup, it’s not WordCamps, it’s something else. Something that really brings all of these people with shared interests which can also appeal to other communities that are using plugins, our plugins. So that is just an example that you can explore something that works with your community. Any comments, any questions?

Arthur:
Well that’s quite an experience when he talked about the age gap thing and I think, well we have a bit of 40 years going downwards, but how we’ve managed to tap into the younger generation, younger than enough is going through schools. We have other meetup leads like Rogers who continuously visit schools, they train children how to use WordPress building solutions on top of WordPress. And when these young ones cross over to maybe the university or can even some of them are even employed while they’re still studying because the are people that you can use to do a quick fix, a quick update on the website and they pick it up from there. So at the end of it all we find that we have met ups or still word comes where schools come in numbers ICT students and they have the presentation to make a speech to do, which is quite inspiring for others who are out there and they may still want to do the same as the presenters.

And it’s a cool way I usually regard to web development as a soft skill that every student should have because you can still get some quick money out of it then waiting for some future job, which sometimes may not come, sometimes it might come, but if you have this on you, you can do it and you can still build it on top of it and from it. So quickest thing is look at theme forest, how many people have downloaded this plugin? Just do your mat and things move. So that’s the kind of talk we usually give them and we serve practically show them how the business world works.

Devin:
Right. Well thank you for sharing Arthur. Dave, do you have anything to say?

Dave:
Well, I do like the fact that the community team gives more experimental options to its community. I think it’s also only good, but because you only know the market yourself over the country or it’s really dependent on base on the country. For example, some cities are as big as Belgium and we’re not even talking in our case about Belgium because the health of Belgium, although we do have English speaking talks and some Dutch speaking talks on work camps. But I do like the fact that we get of the work community gets more experimental features. And certainly if you look at the real beginning of starting the communities, a few years before work camps were even a thing in Europe or in our countries, there was something called a bar camp. I never went to a BarCamp. But I think it’s really awesome. That is, there’s no schedule, no sponsors and everyone is a potential talker.

So I think in some ways that can give some sparks because the main challenge for hosting a good quality WordPress event is that WordPress is really fractured. We have the classic way, we have the page builder way, we have the full set editing way, the block editing way, the combination, the hybrid way like work, but then you also have the skill level of working with all those options. And that is quite a challenge. But maybe if you stick it in a quiet of bar can improve and you have specific topics that people can share with each other or learn from each other. Maybe that is some kind of experimental idea that I maybe have.

Devin:
Yeah, I heard a lot about BarCamp, but I also haven’t been to one. Yeah, sounds very interesting. And I wonder if there’s any other community. There’s community who will try to do bar camm again. Perhaps you Dave want to try.

Dave:
Well I know Veerle if she’s listening, she has experience because she was a long time around, more around than me, than she has experience BarCamp and she always tell very positive stories about joining our bargain. But well what 15 year ago worked probably. Yeah. It’s really not so obvious that it’s working now.

Devin:
Well, I’m going to have my last questions for both of you. After everything that we talked tonight, I kept saying tonight because it’s very late in Jakarta, it’s 10:00 PM quarter past 10. Is there anything from our talk tonight that give you these sort of excitement to organize a bigger event? So I know we’re talking about Meetup tonight, but it kind of give you that tickle in your mind and your heart. Probably I should actually do this bigger event so that I can reactivate my community, whether it’s WordCamp or other WordPress events. I mean of course Entebbe is thinking about WordCamp, perhaps thinking about other WordPress event would also do good for your community. It doesn’t always have to be WordCamp. So Dave, probably you go first.

Dave:
That’s not really a good question to ask when I say I’m quitting. But I do hope the conversation here sparks someone else in Belgium or in the neighborhood of Antwerp to pick up what we are started. And they are free to do whatever they want, of course between the guidelines and they’re free to ask me any questions or free to leave me out. It’s all good, it’s all good. But I’m still here, still around. And if nobody shows up, probably we have sometimes an agency jumps in or we do a WordPress cafe, but I can only encourage everyone to really jump in. It’s quite fun.

Devin:
I guess that’s my attempt to really lure you to stay and help the younger generation mentor them. Don’t go anywhere, Dave.

Dave:
But of course everything has its reasons. That’s a reason I step take a step back because also I am very busy with my own company and I want to get in some ways my life back. I have a lot of maintenance contracts.

Devin:
Taking a break, it’s okay.

Dave:
We will see. We will see. But next generation is also good and then I can see it on the other side of the table.

Devin:
Yeah, yeah, I hear you. All right. What about you Arthur?

Arthur:
Well, we’ve had a couple of NextGen events in Uganda. One that has just ended I think last week, which was a school. And then we also having a website event Uganda, where it’s a website competition, people building and showing up what they’ve built and the functions coming up. And yes, us planning for a future world camp, however, the bigger picture of all this is to have a WordCamp Africa. Everyone has had these events, you have US, you have Asia, we have Europe. So the bigger picture, when we do have this, that will be the last part of the, I can say and maybe after that I can pull this off, but I believe we need one and the people still working through this to make sure that least we have enough communities to put this up and maybe get considered in some way and pull this off. So that will end goal for me, that bigger image.

Devin:
Alright, thank you for sharing Arthur. Your bigger dream than WordCamp Entebbe I guess. You’ve shared your experiences. We exchange IDs as well. And Dave, thank you so much for all the great work you’ve done for your community in Belgium and hopefully somebody will continue your good work and fiddle as well. Probably she’s listening at home and Arthur is one of our program supporters and so Arthur has been very active as well, mentoring what cams and vetting applications. So we look forward to more folks contributing, having a bigger role in the community team. But this is do the woo, what president talked and we’re happy to share this space with both of you representing community in Europe and in Africa. Next time we’ll talk with more event organizers. WordCamp organizers, I think we will talk with WordCamp Canada organizers in our coming episode. Let’s see. Well again, thank you so much for your time. I hope to see you either online on Slack or in person probably soon. We have WordCamp Europe coming up in Torino in June and WordCamp us in October. So let’s keep in touch and let us know if you have any questions and good evening I guess, or good afternoon to both of you and see you next time. Thank you everyone.

Arthur:
Take care.

Dave:
Bye