 Hello, hello. Good afternoon. If I can find the cursor here. There we go. Thank you for your patience while we worked out our technical difficulties. But yeah, hi there. I'm Courtney, P.K. Petubo Kransky is my full name, but most folks around the WordPress community call me Courtney P.K. or C.P.K. I have, as Emma mentioned, I've been a WordPress user since 2004. And I have been a full-time contributor to the project since 2016. I started mostly contributing to the community team, which is a good way to get started if you are interested in contributing to WordPress. I started as a traditional graphic designer, so doing print stuff, which is weird to think about. And I started using WordPress as a blogger and got really interested in the community and giving back. So yeah, it's a little bit about my WordPress background. That QR code there on the screen will lead you to an about page. It also has my contact info as well as links to the slides and stuff. So feel free to scan that. And I'll share that again at the end. I thought I had a little bit more about me. So as Emma mentioned, I'm based in Oahu, Hawaii. And to answer a frequently asked question during WordPress so far, yes, I'm safe. My family and friends are safe. But if you are curious about how you could help, please get in touch with me. I have some resources for folks to help out our community in Maui. I'm a food and drink enthusiast. I'm a cat guardian. You can see a picture of my ridiculous cats there. There are two cats there. It's not a two-headed cat. Video gamer currently working on and stretching out Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom. Do I have any other folks playing Zelda right now? Awesome. And a photographer. The picture down there isn't of Zelda. It's of my Animal Crossing avatar. So yeah, my Animal Crossing player is up here. All right, let's move on to our content. What we'll be talking about today, I'll be giving you an overview of the Learn WordPress website and the timeline of its history. We'll be talking about the content types we have on Learn WordPress, how we share Learn WordPress, and how you can contribute back to Learn WordPress. So let's just dive right in. So how many folks here are familiar with Learn WordPress? Have you seen Learn WordPress? Learn.wordpress.org? All right. Yeah, good amount. And just wanted to get a sense of who is familiar. So yes, Learn WordPress is at learn.wordpress.org. You can see a little animated gif of the site here, but Learn WordPress is an educational website and an initiative that seeks to be the definitive space for WordPressers across the globe to learn and teach about WordPress. So whether you're a first-time blogger or a seasoned developer, there's always more to learn here. This vast resource is brought to you by community members, like all of you, that are all over the world, and they will help you learn more about WordPress and share it with others. So we have a quick little timeline of the history of Learn. Oftentimes when you hear folks on the training team refer to Learn WordPress, we often just shorten it to Learn, so you'll probably hear me say that a bit. So starting in July 2013 at WordCamp San Francisco, work began on the Learn WordPress site. And the content originally lived on the training team's GitHub repository. We have some of the founding members down here, so thank you, Courtney and Tracy, for your work, and Courtney Robertson as well. Yeah, and the screenshots from WordCamp San Francisco, but not necessarily from that work. Thought that was a fun picture to share. Seven years past. August 8th, 2020, the first lesson plan called the Anatomy of a Theme was published. This is one of the types of content on Learn WordPress that we'll be taking a closer look at later. So you may have noticed that there was a seven-year gap between this date and the date that the work started. The training team was, of course, still doing work to bring educational materials and resources to the WordPress community, but the work specifically on Learn WordPress really ramped up once the pandemic began in 2020. And this is when folks were looking for more ways to learn about WordPress and connect with the broader community. This is when in-person WordPress meetups and WordCamps came to a standstill. On August 10, 2020, the first tutorial called Intro to Publishing with a Block Editor was published. Again, this is another example of one of the types of content we have on Learn. And again, we'll be going over that shortly. August 13, 2020, the first online workshop called Introduction to Contruding to WordPress was held. I didn't realize it was the first one, but if you look closely here, I was the host of this, and I had no idea until I went and got this screenshot. So, yeah, the first online workshop was held on, close to three years ago now. On December 15, 2020, the Learn WordPress website officially launched. So, this is a screenshot of the announcement that was posted on wordpress.org slash news. And then on June 14, 2021, the first course called Polyglot's contributor training is published. So, as promised, let's take a closer look at these different types of content that is hosted on the Learn WordPress website. So, there are four types of content that are hosted on Learn WordPress. We have lesson plans, tutorials, courses, and online workshops. And so, let's take a closer look at each of these types of content. First, we have lesson plans. So, lesson plans are teaching guides for educators to use while presenting at events or leading educational environments. Each lesson plan enables the educator to lead a 30 to 60 minute learning session aimed at clearly defined learning objectives. These were the original content type that the training team created to support WordPress meetup organizers. Lesson plans can be used by anyone that wants to teach others about WordPress. So, it's not limited to teachers, not just meetup organizers, but, you know, people that do workshops, word camp organizers, user groups, et cetera. So, here on the screenshot here, you'll see the main page for lesson plans, which shows where you can search for lesson plans. You can also browse by topic, audience, skill level, duration, and format. Each lesson plan includes everything you need to present on a topic. So, it provides objectives, prerequisite skills. So, those are the skills that folks need to get the most of the lesson. Also includes readiness questions, any materials needed, notes for the presenter, slides of applicable, also a lesson outline, some exercises, assessments, and any additional resources that might be required to run a lesson. So, everything you need here to teach folks about a particular topic. So, pictured here is an example of a lesson plan. The next content type we have are tutorials. So, tutorials are short standalone videos that are usually a few minutes long. Each tutorial addresses a single topic and are intended as a how-to guide for WordPress. So, pictured here is the main page for tutorials where you can search for tutorials, and you can also filter by a series, topic, language, if there are subtitles available, and the version of WordPress. So, pictured here is an example of a tutorial page. I'm not sure if you can see it clearly, but each tutorial includes the video of the tutorial itself, a transcript of the video, learning outcomes, comprehension questions, and any additional resources. And next, we have courses. Courses are a series of online self-guided lessons that are created with the Sensei plugin. So, the Sensei plugin is a learning management system. It runs in a plugin in WordPress. So, each of these courses consist of multiple lessons which builds up to an overall objective. Pictured here is the main screen for courses where you can browse and search for any courses you want. And once you start a course, you can easily access those courses by visiting the My Courses link at the top of the page, which is super handy. Course topics vary between basic WordPress usage, technical WordPress customization, and onboarding resources used for different Make WordPress teams. Each course includes an overview of the course, course objectives, and multiple modules and lessons. And pictured here is an example of a course page, and you'll also be able to see how many learners are enrolled in the course at the same time as you. It also shows the average final grade and the average days to completion. And last but not least, Learn WordPress has online workshops. These are learning sessions that take place live, almost daily. And so here you can see a screenshot of our online workshop calendar. So you can see that they definitely take place multiple times a week. We do strive to have them daily. Anyone around the globe can attend these workshops as long as the time aligns with your time zone. But don't worry if you miss a live session, because these sessions are also recorded and uploaded to WordPress TV. Topics in online workshops vary from basic WordPress usage to technical coding demonstrations from discussions over how the Internet works to the history of WordPress, which is one of my favorite ones to run. Just a little bit more about online workshops. Attendees to online workshops are, they're shared through a Zoom link, which then they can join the live session from once they register through meetup.com. So you'll see an example of a page on meetup.com here. It is free for anyone to join. It's free for you to RSVP to any of these events. Online workshops are a safe zone where people can develop new ideas, explore issues, ask questions, network show over shared interests, exchange theories, collaborate on work, engage in certainty, and just most importantly, just come as you are. I always tell attendees that this is a space where we all learn together. We encourage people to answer each other's questions if they know the answer to them. I mean, I certainly have learned quite a few things from our attendees. So let's briefly talk about how we share, learn WordPress with the WordPress community. Here are some examples that can help you figure out which content on Learn WordPress would be suitable for different types of learners. So first, if you're an event organizer, whether it's a, you're a meetup organizer, word camp, a user group, lesson plans and tutorials would be quite useful for you. Even if you aren't an event organizer or an educator, you can benefit from Learn WordPress. Users can benefit from online workshops, tutorials and courses. And the third example here, Learn WordPress has offerings that's specific to WordPress developers. So developers can also benefit from online workshops, tutorials and courses. So something that's coming soon to Learn WordPress are learning pathways. So this is a project that the team has been focusing on recently. The goal of this project is to provide progressive user-friendly learning pathways on Learn WordPress. And this would be tailored to different types of learners, such as developers and users and designers. So really excited for that project to get underway. So if you've already been using Learn WordPress, that's great. But if you would like to contribute back to Learn WordPress and the training team, we'd be happy to have you join us. So let's talk about how you can contribute. All right, here is the training team's description on the About page of the training team. I'll just read it really quickly. The WordPress training team helps people learn to use, extend and contribute to WordPress through synchronous and asynchronous learning, as well as downloadable lesson plans for instructors to use in live environments via learn.wordpress.org. The vision for the training team is to be the coordinator for all the content on Learn WordPress. We want Learn WordPress to be the go-to resource for learning and teaching WordPress. The training team consists of volunteers with a wide variety of skills and a passion for providing instructional materials for the presenters. We work in development agencies, solo businesses, classrooms, and more. We are project managers, technical writers, designers, developers, trainers, and teachers, and people from all over contribute to this project. Some of us are sponsored full-time or part-time to do this work, but the team is largely volunteer driven, just like many of the other Make WordPress contributor teams. So we have three team representatives on the training team. We have Pooja from India, as well as Destiny and Ben in Japan. I think I see Ben out there. So we are truly a global team. Our team reps represent the training team to the rest of the WordPress project and ensure issues are raised and addressed as needed, and they coordinate cross-team efforts. So I'd like to share the training team's current impact. Learn WordPress hosts content created by dozens of people. We also have a group of dedicated contributors participating in what we call the Faculty Program. That consists of about 30 members. Some quick stats I pulled at the beginning of this month. So as of August 3rd, Learn WordPress hosts 191 tutorials, 134 lesson plans, 286 online workshops, 26 courses, and 237 recorded online workshops. In addition, we have multiple locales that have been translating the content on Learn WordPress. So far, I think we have about 12 languages, including English, French, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, I hope I said that correctly, Portuguese, Serbian, and Spanish, and that list continues to grow. So the training team has five main areas of contribution that folks are encouraged to contribute to. Content creators, also we're going to start at the upper left here, the red circle. Content creators focus on creating the content that we host on Learn WordPress. Content translators take the published English content and translate that into different locales. Administrators work behind the scenes to make sure the team works smoothly. Administrators focus on providing the other roles on the team with the tools that they need to be successful and effective towards the training team's goals. We have subject matter experts that vet topic ideas before the content is created. So they also work alongside our content creators acting as sounding boards, helping them get the most recent and updated information in their content. Then we have editors. They review content before it's published. They also review published content and make updates as needed. And then finally in the middle there, we have the team reps who we just talked about. They are the folks that support all of these areas of contribution. So here we have the training team contributor ladder. The computer ladder is to demonstrate what the WordPress project that defines as the five stages of volunteering or contributing. So these stages are connecting, understanding, engaging, performing, and leading. The contributor ladder can act as a resource for new contributors to understand ways to participate and it can also be a resource for experienced contributors to see where they may find opportunities for growth on the team. Getting clear on the stages for contribution on each team can help clarify pathways to leadership or because not everyone is interested in leadership, they can find different ways to get involved. So this table shows the contributor ladder of the training team and where the team's different areas of contribution fit in. I'm not going to read through this entire table in every detail because you can of course review this table in my slides later. I'll be providing that link again at the end here. But yeah, in the interest of time we will move on. So how can you contribute to learn WordPress? The easiest way is to simply use the content on learn. If you notice any content that needs updating, please let us know by reporting content feedback. And if you have content topic ideas, submit them to the Learn WordPress GitHub repository. I'll be sharing the links to these pages in my slides as well. So yes, please come use the content especially if you've never used learn before. We would love to have you contribute. You can also contribute to learn by joining the training team of course. So all contributions are valued no matter how much time you can dedicate. If you like to join the team, you can join us in the Make WordPress Slack. There's a training channel there where we have conversations about the work we do and you can attend our weekly team meetings. You can attend those synchronously or asynchronously. I always attend them asynchronously because of time zones. So you can always peek in at any time. You can also complete the training team self-guided onboarding program. It's just something you can do at your own pace. It usually takes folks about an hour to complete. And the cool thing about this new onboarding program is that by the end of your onboarding, you will have completed your first contribution. If you're a new contributor to the training team, you can also join what we call our guide program. The guide program serves as a sort of mentorship program where new contributors to the team are paired with experienced contributors to guide them along as they start their contributor journey. Speaking of, if I have any experienced training team members here, we'd love to have you on board as a guide. Both new and experienced contributors can submit an interest form to participate, which I've linked in my slides. Another way to contribute to the training team and learn WordPress is to facilitate or co-host online workshops and also presenting any tutorials. If you're interested in facilitating or co-hosting an online workshop, you can apply to do so. We have links here. Being a co-host of an online workshop is actually a great way to dip your toes in and see how workshops are run. And then you can eventually build up to hosting a workshop of your own. And so that's something I would recommend if you want to get started with the team. And yeah, the second note here is if you're interested in presenting a tutorial, you can also apply to present one. And I think that's it from me. Here's the QR code again with all of my information as well as these slides and links to resources from this talk. Please keep in touch. You can join the WordPress Slack. That is at chat.wordpress.org. If you're not in there already. But note that joining requires an account on wordpress.org, which is of course free to join. And as I mentioned, please get in touch with me if you're interested in contributing. I'd be happy to help you along your contribution journey. Contribution can be with creating content or you can help us behind the scenes with reviewing and editing content. And in addition, you can also reach out to me if you have more ideas for content on any topics that you like to see happen on WordPress. So if you use mastodon or Twitter, my names are up there as well. And that's it for me. Thank you, everyone, for joining me today. Thank you for being so kind and patient with our technical difficulties and the fact that this was my very first word, cam talk ever. Yeah, I've been, as I said, I've been contributing full-time to WordPress for seven years and I finally got up the nerve to present. So thank you, everyone. Okay, we do actually have a bit of time for some questions. So we have two microphones here if anybody or I can run really quickly to you. Oh, great. Hi Courtney. Hi. On the screenshot of your calendar, you showed 20 about sessions that week. Are those 20 different sessions? Yes. How do you generate that much content and how do you avoid repeating yourself or do you repeat yourself? Sometimes we repeat ourselves too often to hit different time zones. So me personally and some of some of the other training team members, we will do a workshop at the beginning of our day and at the end of our day to try to hit two different time zones. But the main way that we fill up that calendar is because we have so many great contributors on the team and they have different levels of expertise, different topics that they present on, and yeah, we're able to get over 20 workshops a month. Hi Courtney. I know. So the Gutenberg interface, the block editor, the site editor is changing constantly. How does the training team kind of approach those, I guess, the constant iteration that's happening? Yeah, we definitely have to be on top of things. We keep an eye on, well actually, Courtney and I were just looking at the information sources the other day. So we keep an eye on the core blog to see what is up and coming and we keep updating our issues on the GitHub repo for those topics. We just put a comment on it saying that this needs to be updated for 6.4. So there is a lot of manual work there right now. I was cheating using my own microphone. So out of all of the ways that we can help contribute, which one do you think needs the most help immediately? Out of all those different editor? I think that's subjective. I would say, well, the quickest and easiest and most impactful way to help is to review for errors and for updates that are needed. Hi, Courtney. My name is Harishankar. I'm a contributor to the community team. I work on the contributor experience of WordPress. I'm one of the earlier older contributors to the WordPress program. So from that perspective, I'd like to ask you, where is Learn WordPress headed? What is the future of Learn WordPress? Well, as I mentioned earlier, we're working on the learning pathways project. So to have learning pathways for specific types of learners. So that's, I think that's the biggest thing on my mind in the future. Anyone else here from the training team have anything you want to add to what's in our future? Yeah, take a make. So during a community summit we were revisiting the multiple content types and thinking about streamlining as we work together. If anyone here caught Joe Mini's session earlier today from Mess to Success, Joe is working with us on information architecture of Learn's website. Because we know right now that when you first arrive at that site, we've heard quite similar feedback about your experience there and I'll just leave it at that. But we need to do some more information architecture around this and so making the experience of visiting the site more approachable to the users, streamlining the content types in an organized way. We need ongoing help for every release just the same as the docs team and our two teams collaborate really closely together. Every time there's a release not only do we have to revise all of the primary content but then when we have things in additional languages that also needs to be revised. And I've been hearing ongoing requests defer to third Courtney of the training team. We were on a NUX project in Tracy as well I want to say in 2014, early days and there was some ideas of pulling in some resources from Learn into the WordPress dashboard and those conversations are starting to come up again and I think now is more the time because we are in a state of having our site closer to where we want it to be, having multiple language support and because I firmly believe we should not need to know English to learn WordPress. That is absolutely a priority and accounting for multiple learning styles and all of these things that educators go through. So if we're starting to see in maybe a year or two down the road that we might actually get to this point of having resources from Learn linked inside of the admin dashboard not just on the about pages that release, you can bet that it's pretty important that we start moving in that direction now and I'd also call out both docs and training teams. Think of docs like the textbooks and training like the teachers crowd and how you approach the content that's on these teams. AI tooling is looking at what these two teams are putting out as the definitive source. There are lots of different projects out there that your WordPress companies that offer support teams and things are looking to that as a default source and I also think kind of coming up soon is that some organizations, I'm really advocating it where I work, that we start using those materials on learn.wordpress.org internally instead of trying to recreate the wheel and other organizations like I work at a major hosting company. I've heard kind of some of the similar requests in those cases too and using that to also drive their support of that material. So whether it be customer or employee facing for those training materials it's a big project folks and so we need lots of help. Yes please. Yeah thanks Courtney. Okay so we're actually oh I have one question. So for somebody building their first WordPress site or do you have, I heard you mentioned docs, I was looking for checklist on the the learn site. Do you have like a checklist or a series of documents that are like here's the things you must do, here's the things we suggest you do, here's like pie in the sky stuff? I wouldn't see we have a checklist but we do have some like beginner tutorials courses etc on there and again I think our learning pathways project I know this is not it's not ready in time for you to use it today but the learning pathways project will be helpful for folks that are just starting out it'll guide them down a path to learning but right now there there is content that exists right now for beginners. I think there might be a section in courses at least that is an introduction to WordPress so I would recommend starting there. I'll put in a plug for checklist too if you're on your to-do list, thanks. You're welcome. So can we get one more round of applause for Courtney? Thank you.