 Thank you, don't embarrass me Hi, good morning everyone. Thank you for being here this early in the morning. I hope you enjoyed yesterday If you went out to parties, I hope you had a good time. Thank you Anna for the introduction Yeah, that the original name of the presentation was the story of the Italian communities But and when I applied to talk here, I really thought we had a such a special story after talking to many people at different work camps and Getting more involved in the community team And especially so thank you. Thank you, Emmanuel After reading the wonderful series that Emmanuel run on the WordCamp Europe blog about all the European communities I think what I'm about to tell you will resonate with many of you We will just use Italy as an example because it's my country and I know it better than others I will not talk about other countries because I cannot really say much about them So how many of you attended WordCamps in Italy in 2014 or 2015? You guys are cute 2014 2015 I repeat No, no, I know you raised your hand to embarrass me But sadly no there were no word camps in Italy during those years And there were only two meetups Milano and Roma, and they didn't meet very often. So it was Pretty sad over there Well actually WordPress has been localized in Italian for since the beginning I think by a small group of passionate and dedicated translators Paolo and Steve there are our GTE's the global translation editors and they have taken care of Translations for as long as I remember and I'm sure that if it wasn't for them WordPress wouldn't be as popular as it is today in Italy They did so almost by themselves. They saw so many translators come in Drop a few strings year and then and disappear So they really they really took care of the translations for the Italians for so many years But sadly translation localization is not enough to build a community We really had some challenges to overcome How familiar are you with Italy and Italians and I do this in purpose We are a wonderful bunch of people okay, we have a beautiful country But on this particular matter of being part of a global community We had to face two issues that prevented us from getting involved with the global project The first one we don't speak English We use our hands a lot and we're fairly said we're pretty certain that when we do this You get a general idea of what we're talking about But you probably not but we're really sure that if we do this if we wave our hands. This is English less for us We are a huge country second issue. We are a huge country with 60 million people And so many cultural differences amongst us dialects are alive and kicking and We all speak Italians, but there are some regions where we mainly speak our local dialect Recipes Ravioli in a 10 miles radius you probably have like five recipes and Everyone is convinced that their ravioli recipe is the original one So we're hyper localized as Italians So despite having these amazing contributors that really did their best to translate WordPress in Italian We had some word camps or in the early days 2008-2013 and Despite the vast diffusion of WordPress in Italy There was a lack of Community and there was a lack of offline activities And there's also a third issue Well, this is very close to me and I think Software users that are not developers will Know what I'm talking about. So do you all know how open source works? The releases committing is there someone here that doesn't know anything about open source Where you're lucky, I didn't do it. I didn't know anything about open source. I Didn't know how WordPress was released. I didn't know that there were people writing code that were volunteering for writing code translations God send probably So have been making a living off of WordPress since 2010 and I never gave back to the community because I'm not a developer so I didn't know I could contribute But you actually can contribute also if you're not a developer so Please join us on contributor day because it will blow your mind The possibilities and there's so many things you can do even if you can write a line of code So, how did we go from this wasteland? sad sad Wasteland I just described to us to this look we're all smiling. We're having a good time So apparently something we did made us Smile and have a good time We took it one step at a time I went through some very important milestones and I will single out a couple of them Yes France and franchise going here. I think In spring 2015 to France to WordPress professionals realized that what was really missing was a central hub to connect us all and To allow us to share the efforts that were timidly being made around the country Francis living in the UK. He saw that they had a slack instance there that worked very well So say hey, let's do this in Italy too. So on June 9, 2015 So we're one years old They open the slack instance for the Italian community and this really allowed us to exchange information and grow all together It was really really important to have this in a matter of weeks we open channels we wrote guide lines the manifesto We had town hall meetings just to get a general idea of what where we were going and we talked a lot about meetups There were meetups already in Italy Some of them were struggling a little bit There were meetups that wanted to start and they didn't know how So I would say that the slack instance was very very important to kickstart the whole meetup craze that it's going on in Italy By the end of August 2015. We had eight meetups last April. We had 12 and today we have 15 so and we have them Almost everywhere we miss central Italy, but I hope something good will come in the next month The biggest change of all Came during World Camp Europe and this is why you should always attend World Camp Europe Because good things happen here good things happen with so many different communities come together To celebrate their love for WordPress During contributor day a bunch of people met I think eight ten some of them are here And in eight hours they went from Dreaming Probably went through a little bit of fighting Because we're passionate To planning and to action and this is a an incredible achievement for a one-day work I would say There was that a blog that was silent for seven years was revived and in July we started posting again Maybe you know, maybe you don't every locale every website WordPress localized website has a blog feature in it and this is the easiest way to communicate Across all the WordPress users that are using a localized version because the news will show in their dashboard So we started posting About meetups mainly About releases we had a couple of posts about work camps that were going on other places and Suddenly people noticed that there were news in Italian in their dashboard And they started coming to meetups and say at the beginning everyone was very surprised Everyone who came to a meetup after seeing it on the Rosetta dashboard. They were on their dashboard It was like hey suddenly there were the name of my city on it instead of some random news from Planet WordPress And they started seeing that their city was missing so they decided to start new meetups We chatted for the whole summer Italians take a long break during August, but we kept on chatting. We just couldn't stop I like to call that the summer of WordPress love. It's not catching up I don't know why because it's really nice. I think but I'll keep using it. So after this Intense months of talking we really really wanted to meet in person We really wanted to hear the voice behind the nicknames Because really I can tell you there were hours and tons of messages over there So we decided with the help of some friends from abroad more experienced than us on community matters To organize a bizarre thing because they're not very popular But they really should be a standalone contributor day We would meet in Milano That it's easy to reach from all over Italy for a day to get to know each other mainly but also to learn how to contribute because Let's be fair at that point beside those ubergeeks that were already active in the community We didn't really know how to contribute it all sounded fancy and exciting, but we didn't know what to do Took us a couple of months to get there Endless discussions about the most important thing of all food But we did it In November we had our standalone contributor day and we had 60 people attending From all over Italy and people that came from abroad to help us We invited leads to come from Italy and Europe and they helped us understand the true meaning of giving back and contributing to a global project because Yeah, it sounded excited, but no we didn't know what to do and The thing when I think about that day the main thing I remember is the feeling of having experienced friends there Showing us what to do and not just telling us go read the get started at a contributor day in the handbook They sat with us. They looked at our screens. They told us all you should do that and We started brainstorming ideas and everyone got very excited. It was really a great day We had sex six teams Accessibility core community mobile polyglots and support I'd like to single out three of them because Yeah, writing code is great, but I think these three themes Are the one that can really help you to? Grow your community. So of course first of all community team We learned some best practices in Milano We started helping People who were interested in starting new meetups in new cities and they didn't know how We help people with applications. We learned how to do that because we didn't really know how to do that I Think it was very satisfying to help smaller cities a smaller meetups Brainstorm ideas how to get more people involved and also understand that it's okay If your meetup has three people having cake in a bakery in the afternoon. That's perfectly okay We had the polyglots the motto for the polyglots. It's the translation team is translate all the things Translations help make WordPress more accessible to everyone yesterday I don't know if you had the chance to Hear Morton's pitch about empathy He was saying something that really struck a chord with me He says that the people who are here the people who contribute and show up to events We are the 1% we are the privileged ones Translating all the things will make it easier for the rest of the 99% to get on board as users first and eventually as contributors So if you can translate WordPress in any language that is not American English Please go do that. This is really really important for everyone and Then we had support support Makes all the difference for somebody that is going around desperately looking for an answer You know the feeling when you don't know something and you you have really no idea about this issue So you don't even know which questions to ask So you go to a forum and if you're not a skilled developer It doesn't matter you can go there and help people out because if you know one thing about WordPress Maybe it's installing WordPress. Maybe it's installing a plug-in or change the language of your WordPress It doesn't matter if you know one thing Go to the forum look for somebody that is asking that question and give that answer It it will make all the difference in the world And finally during our amazing contributed a we sent our application for the first word camp in Italy since 2013 and last April we hosted work came to Reno We had a we had a full house We had the 300 people coming 17 volunteers 24 speakers nine organizers We had talks in Italian and in English and we had an incredible Incredible contributor day where a hundred people showed up to make WordPress because this is what open source is about So Remember all the people smiling at the beginning of the presentation. So that's us at contributor day in Torino Smiling even after a long long day of work So here is a short list of very easy to implement things that you can do to start today Your community and give it a little bit of tender love and care that it deserves First of all show up. That's an easy one Not only to this amazing word camps Show up to your local community show you show up to your local meetup if there isn't one start one Apply to host the word camp This is overwhelming work camps are not like this work can pure up and work MP us are like this All the word camp can be 50 people at a community center with sandwiches brought from home The word camp central will take care of the coffee because coffee is really important So you don't have to take care of the coffee, okay? You just get to know to have 50 people in a room talking about WordPress. That's pretty easy. We get excited about it. So It's not a big big thing to do you can do it Help others make it very easy for people to join give clear instructions Make it less intimidating as possible Encourage all kinds of people to come and talk Meetups are not only for developers are not only for designers are not only for bloggers Oh, they're for everyone who's excited about WordPress or Everyone that doesn't know yet that he's excited about WordPress, but they will be after the first four after the first meetup Try to think about different models of meetups because not everyone enjoys the speaker attendee thing Not everyone will step up and say yes, I will give a talk about it But do it do on conferences on conferences are great Contributing sprints Q&A's there are so many things you can do at a meetup and they're very fun to do and Also help others if you see that the city is struggling Land the hand if you are struggling ask for help. There's nothing wrong about it Make it inclusive. So I want to read this We are committed to providing a friendly safe and welcoming environment of all for all regardless of gender sexual orientation disability ethnicity religion preferred operating system programming language or text editor This is the code of conduct for all WordCamps You are not formally required as a meetup organizer to have the long version of it in your meetup play page But you are required to read it understand it embrace it and commit to enforce it if something would happen and Courage diversity and inclusion. I cannot stress this enough So as we said meetups are not only for developers designers and they're not only for 20-something male developers wearing Goofy t-shirts They are really for everyone and I'm really really proud to say that many Italian meetups Have a large number of women attending because hey, we are there We're not just telling other woman to come we go there and we have fun. We laugh This is really really important step back if you're lucky enough if you're fortunate enough of being one of the people That will help a community grow Remember that this is not about you Doing something for a community means that when you leave your efforts will stay there The results of what you did will stay there for years to come So please step back and let other people shine. It's their turn now And last but not least have fun. I Mean make friends have some good food after the series of Emanuel and talking about people I realized that it's just not Italians really into food Food makes people cheerful. You don't need a sponsor to do that Hey, if you don't have a sponsor to pay for pizza have the meetup in a pizzeria Have it at someone's house and ask everyone to bring snacks and drinks And laugh have fun talk about your favorite topics that is WordPress So this is our story I'm very happy to be here today to tell it and I hope you heard something that will help you Go out today and do more for your local community If you have question, I will be at the get involved table It's the community table is right outside this room if you have any question bring it I'll be happy to answer. Thank you very much You