 Thank you very much. My name is Tobbo Tuana, and hello, everybody. I'm really excited to be here. This is like my first time in Cape Town. So I just wish I had more time to spend doing some sightseeing and stuff, but this definitely won't be my last time here. So I'll get to do all that next time. A little bit about me, I just joined Automatic this year. I'm a happiness engineer for WordPress.com. And I know what you're probably thinking, right? You're like, Cape Town, the topic is growing a WordPress community. And you're probably like, Cape Town, we've had a community for years, and we were the first WordPress community in Africa. So what can you probably tell us? So I just want to see by a show of hands how many of you are here from out of town like me? OK, that's a pretty sizable number. OK, how many of you are here from a place that doesn't currently have a regular WordPress meetup? OK, that's quite a few hands. So I'm going to assume that some people actually come to Word Camp Cape Town because they don't have Word Camps in their town or they don't even have WordPress meetups in their town. So this talk is basically for you. I'm speaking to you if you fit that category. So this statement, I heard this statement said to me by a friend of mine who I just met named Ravi. We were volunteers at Word Camp Joburg. And I often hear this being said, when the topic of why do you love WordPress or how did you find out about WordPress? I often hear this being said. In fact, the same day that Ravi said this to me, I had two other conversations with two other different people. They said exactly the same thing. So it is true WordPress has got, I think it's got the best community out of all the CMSs, in my opinion. And WordPress is a community. So what I mean when I say WordPress is a community is that WordPress is more than just code. You have people who give their time, volunteer their time and resources to help build WordPress. In other words, they give back to this platform that they have benefited from so much. And then you have, you've got more than 100 community events that happen all over the world every year, just like this one. And you've also got hundreds of meetups that take place every month. So, and also, when you start using WordPress, you are actually a part of the WordPress community. And everybody in here that showed up, you are actually a member of the WordPress community. So the question is, how do we organize this community so that it grows and becomes active? So I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we did in Harare. We were in 2016, the WordPress community team selected Harare as one of three locations for the WordCamp incubated program. And the purpose of the incubator program is to help spread WordPress to underserved areas and by providing organizing support so they can do a first-time event. So in other words, the incubator program targets areas where there is no active WordPress community and helps them to organize a WordCamp for the first time. So one of K-town's finest youth last group who was my mentor, and he still is my mentor unofficially, and you and Rocio Valdivia, they were the WordPress community deputies that took me through the onboarding process. And they told me that in order to have a WordCamp, there are a few requirements. And the most important for us was that you had to get a meetup started. And I often hear people say, you can't have a WordCamp without a WordPress meetup. That's where it all started. And the reason is the meetup is actually a building block. It's like the foundation of your local WordPress community. And meetup groups, they are locally organized groups that meet face-to-face on a regular basis. So a meetup is different from a WhatsApp group. It's different from a Slack group. Meetups are where we come together in real life. Not saying that WhatsApp is not real life, but you know what I'm trying to say. And you meet in person, you network, you build relationships. And you get to learn and share with each other. And you get to see how to do stuff on a hands-on basis. So there's more value to meeting in person. And that's what we do at meetups. And a WordPress meetup is by definition. It's a gathering of two or more people to talk about WordPress. That's all it is. It's not complicated. Just two or more people, you've got a meetup. So WordPress community support, they added us to the official WordPress account on meetup.com. And I took the social media. I started making noise about it. People started joining the meetup group on meetup.com. And when you are a new member, you automatically got a welcome letter from me explaining what a WordPress meetup is, what we were trying to do. And so this slide right here, it's just a few things you may want to consider when you're starting a meetup group. One of the coolest things about WordPress meetups is, you can meet anywhere you want. You know, I heard Taco do a talk about organizing meetups. He said, you can meet at your next door neighbor's house if he'll let you. It doesn't matter what the venue is. It doesn't have to be a formal or fancy venue like this one, just anywhere you can meet. But however, in some cases, you may find it challenging to find a place to meet. And that's where the WordPress community team comes in. They will give you support. They will, if you ask them nicely, they may give you assistance to help pay for a venue if push comes to show. You can always ask them about that. And there's a very comprehensive handbook, community handbook. It's on the makewordfress.org webpage. And that handbook will help you answer some of those questions. For instance, there's a section in the handbook that talks about suggested meetup formats. And it also gives you ideas on some topics for presentations. So it's a very good thing to check out. So once I followed the suggestions in the handbook, followed the steps that were recommended, we finally had our first meetup. Our first meetup was held in August, 2016. And the actual, the purpose of this meetup was to recruit an organizing team for the, remember I said we were trying to have our first word camp. So that was the purpose of this first meetup. I know from the looks of it, you might be impressed that everything went smooth in. Everything was hunky dory, no hitches, no problems. But actually what you see here, that was actually my second attempt to host a meetup. Prior to this, I didn't have a venue. So from what I read in the handbook, a lot of meetup groups, they like to meet at coffee shops, you know. So I tried that, I scheduled a meetup at a local coffee shop in Arara. Well, basically this is what happened. And you know what, it's something should have told me when you only get one RSVP, right? Chances are there's not gonna be a big turnout. And I was so embarrassed, I was like, I had told the staff behind the counter, I said, we're gonna need this big table right here because I'm having a group that's coming to me. And I think I waited for them, like when they turned their back to go to the kitchen, I kinda snuck out like this, because I was so embarrassed. But I didn't give up, right? I didn't give up. I kept on spreading the word about the Harare WordPress Meetup on Twitter, on Facebook, people kept on signing up to join on the meetup.com page. And what happened was one of our members named Charles Muzonzini, he was working for the computer society involved. He approached me, well he contacted me by email. And he said, Tabo, you know, we'd like to partner with you. Let me ask my bosses at the computer society, let's see if we can have meetups at our office. So that's what happened, we met them and they gave us that nice picture when you saw the people with the smiley faces. We had that meetup there at the computer society it was about. So one thing I want you to take from that little story is when you're looking for a venue, ask around, you know, see what connections your group has. You know, in my case I was fortunate because Charles came to me. But you know, don't wait for somebody to approach you. I mean, that's what community is all about. We share resources, you never know who's got a connection, who's got other resources and contacts and just work your group's connections. So what I found was that as our community grew, we found members would ask us about, Tabo, how can you bring the meetup to my workplace or to my school? And I really love, I get excited when I hear that because it tells me that, what it tells me is that the awareness of WordPress is spreading, you know, so I really love to hear that. And this was a meetup that we were asked to do at a private school called Hellenic Academy. One of our new meetup members, she's a career guidance counselor at this school and she also runs the media club. She was like, Tabo, could you bring a meetup to our school so that the kids, they wanna build a website for the school newspaper. And I'm pretty sure they'd be interested in WordPress. Yeah, we were very happy to do that. And this is one of our, one of my colleagues, one of the organizers, co-organizers of how to WordPress meetup. His name is Nigel Rogers. Oh yeah, did y'all know that WordPress celebrated its 15th birthday this year? Yeah, it's, that was one of my favorite meetups right there. We had a bigger than average turnout. We had fun and it was special to me because in my opinion, I feel like our, this event gave us a sense of belonging, you know, like, because we were celebrating in unison with meetup groups all over the world. So, you know, it feels really good to be a part of something big. This is a meetup that was hosted by, this was actually our first meetup at Moto Republic. Moto Republic is a co-working space slash creative hub in Harare. And one of their members, he was a member of the meetup.com group. He got his bosses to donate this venue to us. So, no more venue problems. We got a permanent home at Moto Republic, 100% donated. We don't have to worry about the call. So she is, that's Melissa, she's from Pay Now. Pay Now is like a local payment gateway developer. They're like the Zimbabwe version of Pay Fast. So she did a meetup for us and that was really cool. So, as you can see, our community has gotten more and more active. And we have begun to receive support from local organizations. You know, because of spreading the awareness of WordPress and you get companies and organizations excited about WordPress and people just wanna to give back and contribute. And like I said, I feel like our members, we feel like a part of the global WordPress community right now. You know Zimbabweans, they've been marginalized for far too long. So being a part of this wonderful community that we all love, it's really exciting for us. Now the last time I did a meetup, there was no meetup group in Tanzania. There was no group in Swaziland. Zimbabwe only had one meetup group. So as you can see, the number of meetup groups is growing in Southern Africa. And that's really nice, but as you can see, there's a lot of room for growth. You know, I just wanna say like, if you're from one of those areas that doesn't have a meetup group, it's up to you to go back home and, you know, try to get one started. I mean, any one of us in here has the ability to organize a meetup. I mean, I'm as dumb as a doorknob. So I mean, if Tal can do it, I know each and every one of you can do it. So it's not hard. There's a wonderful community that will give you all the support you need and just go for it. All it takes is a willingness to bring people together to talk about workers. That's it. And like I said, all you need is two or more people. Three is even better, but you know, two or more people and you gotta meet up. So remember, I talked about how I had applied for the WordCamp incubator program. So all these roles were leading to that final goal of having the first WordCamp in Iraq. And WordCamps are all about getting to meet and learn from other WordPress users face to face. And no matter what your skill level is, no matter your experience. And a WordCamp is a little bit different from a meetup because a WordCamp, it's only held once a year. It's only held once a year and it's an all day event. So in essence, a WordCamp, it's a celebration of the local WordPress community. And it also serves a second purpose of inspiring others to do more with WordPress. That's like the secondary purpose of a WordCamp. And I understand that the minimum viable product for WordCamp is just 50 people. So if you can get 50 people together in one room for WordCamp, you're doing very, very well. So on this slide, I've got the steps that you need to take to get your WordCamp officially added to the calendar. And I don't know if you can see this, but this is a link to the page where you'll find those steps and you'll actually find more detail about those steps. And right here, we're assuming that number one, you already have a WordPress meetup in your town. Number two, you've already been approved to be a lead organizer for WordCamp. Then after that, those are the steps that you'd have to follow. So when we were looking for our first venue, we had got a quote from a conference center called Crestillage and you, Lashbrook and Rocio, they did a budget review for me. Now I remember them saying, you know, they said the size of your WordCamp doesn't justify the amount you're gonna have to pay for this venue. And you know, it made plenty of sense. I mean, first of all, we had never had a WordCamp before. Number two, we never had any sponsors and there's no telling if we were gonna have any sponsors. So you know, it was all about starting small. You know, so they told me just try to go find a venue that's a little less expensive. So I ended up hearing about this event that was done at the Harare City Library. I didn't even know that the library was hosting event. And this organization is much bigger than ours. So they did it there. I just approached the library and come to find out the cost. What they asked for was like a tent of what this conference center wanted us to pay. So that was really cool. That helped us lessen our expenses tremendously. So a word of advice about looking for your first venue, don't be afraid to think outside the box. You know, libraries, schools, they make great venues for a small working. Yeah, cheap tickets. Have you ever stopped to think about how much it costs to put this together? I mean, what I like about WordCamp K-Town, they actually published their working budget on the website. And you can go there and see, you know, you all know how much your tickets cost. You can go see the breakdown of how much it costs to put this together. And what you pay for your ticket, it doesn't even come close to what it costs for each person in here. So, and the only way that's possible is because of these wonderful sponsors we have, some of whom you see in the back. That's what makes them able to bring this price down. And the reason they try to bring it down, what you and Rocio told me is that you wanna make, you don't wanna have anyone have that excuse that they couldn't come to WordCamp because they couldn't afford to attend. You see, it's all about being inclusive. We want as many people to come as possible. So that's the thinking behind that. That's why we try to make these tickets as cheap as possible. So, a few months later, after I did all the organizing and following the suggestions and every step that needed to be taken, we had our first WordCamp, WordCamp Parade 2016. We received a massive amount of support from the global WordPress community. And it was a great day of learning, networking, making new friends. That guy right there looks kind of familiar though. Seems like I've seen that guy somewhere before. But yeah, we were fortunate to have two automaticians to come speak at our first WordCamp, Yoke Thomas and Herman Cote. I mean, to me, that was really special because there are a lot of first-time WordCamps that never have an opportunity to get somebody from outside the country, an international speaker, we call them. So that was really exciting for us. And it just keeps getting bigger and better. This was last year, 2017. That's another one of Cape Town's finest right here, Mr. Warren Holmes. He, actually, he's not really one of Cape Town's finest because he's my homeboy, he comes from Zimbabwe, so y'all kind of stole him from us, but anyway, he came to talk about WooCommerce. And this is that same venue. Remember I was telling you about that private school? I mean, the lady just in love, we had a talk and I explained to her that we wanna do WordCamps and we looked for venues and she just fell in love with the idea so much, she got her bosses, the headmaster to let us use that venue. From what I understand, we can use it indefinitely. Well, I mean, at least as long as she's working there, I don't know what happens when she leaves, but. So that was really, really amazing. I really love this photo right here. This is a Germany meets Zimbabwe. This is a friend of mine named Casper. I met him at WordCamp Europe 2017. Yeah, when he found out about this small new community that we were trying to grow it out of, he was like really excited. He wanted to do whatever he could to help us and he applied to speak, he came to speak. He even did a meetup when he came down to Zimbabwe now. So he's an honorary member of the Harare WordPress Meetup and he's always welcome to come back any time. We really, he's one of our community's best friends. Everybody loves Casper, so. Now, what you can do. So if you have been paying attention and if you haven't, I don't blame you because I know I'm the last talk before lunch and you're probably tired and ready to eat, but if you have been paying attention, I kind of gave like an overview of what we did in Harare to grow a WordPress community, a local WordPress community. So I just want to give a few tips and insights into how you can grow your WordPress community wherever you're from. Make sure you spread the word on social media. Tweet about it, retweet about it, re-tweet about it. Just keep on pushing the message that this is what I'm trying to do. I want to get people to come to this WordPress Meetup. If you're like me, at the time, I didn't know any other WordPress users in Harare, at least not personally. So I just got on Facebook, I let my family and friends know and just keep pushing that message. And then whenever you do have a Meetup, you want to talk about what you want to do. Like speakers and presentations, they're like the most common format for Meetups, but Meetup formats can take any shape or form. You can have social networking Meetups. I remember one time we did a blogger's Meet in Greek, which was real successful. You can do a hackathon, you can do a help desk, you can do, I think Cape Town does like a co-working Meetup, like every month is it on Table Mountain? Okay, yeah. I mean, that's really cool. You know, that's where people come together, you bring your laptops with your projects, whatever you're working on, you know, and you're with people, you can get assistance right there in real time, it's really fun and you get to bond and network. Also, there's the expert Q&A, like panel discussion. My team lead at WordPress.com, his name is Davol. He lives in Serbia. He told me that they used to do this whole speaker presentation thing and he said it was getting kind of old. So one day they decided to do a expert Q&A panel and he told me that was like one of the best Meetups they had in a long time. So don't be afraid to change it up, just try new stuff. So if there's one thing that I want you to take away from this, it's that you will benefit so much more from WordPress if you have a local WordPress community. You know, you'll make connections and eventually friendships. You'll expand the community and you will help the WordPress community to grow. So that brings me to the end of my talk. I want to thank you very much for listening. I think we got a few minutes to do like questions, comments, feedback. If I told a lie, you can correct me. I mean, now's your time to think we got a few minutes. Social media, what was the beginning when you were doing the Meetups? Did you have like stocking engines or like you posted a schedule but you have just like a kick-less guide and not just that but like, make them kind of like, build them into kind of like wanting to come and worry about the phone? Like, how was your beginning in order to get it to be bigger? Okay, thank you. Great question. I'm a total newbie when it comes to social media. all the things she mentioned, she's got to be like a social media expert. To tell you the truth, all I did was post it. I just talked about it. It's kind of like, it's like a learning curve. Like when I got started, I knew nothing. And as I did it more and more, I started learning more about how to optimize your social media sharing, how to put nice images and, you know, make your posts more attractive. But when I began, I knew nothing. So not even any images, I don't even think. My first few shares, I didn't even have any images. It was basically just, in the beginning, it was just telling my family and friends. That's how it all started, but, you know, as time went on, we're getting a whole lot better. I think in the beginning, we didn't even have a Facebook page. So I was just sharing it to my friends, my personal friends, but now we've got a Facebook page. It's called How to WordPress Meetup. I've gotten better, you know, I've learned about things like Canva and, you know, I know how to find stock images now. So yeah, we are, it's a learning process. So basically what I want to say about that is, just start where you are. You don't have to be, none of us are experts. You know, none of us are event planners. None of, we're just volunteers. You don't need any experience in planning an event or you don't need to be like a social media guru. Just start where you are. And you know, the more you do it, you're going to pick up new stuff and you're going to learn more and more and get better at it. So yeah, thank you for that question. Cool, any other questions for, for example? I'm on my way. I press this on registering with the press for, is it, is it, you start, you just pass it on me that for, is there a, let's put it like. Aha, beautiful question. Basically, you don't need any sanction to start a WordPress meetup. You can just start, right? If you want to be on meetup.com, that means you're going to have to pay your own dues every month. The assistance like getting assistance with a venue, you're going to be on your own. But you can start. There's nothing stopping you from starting. But the good thing is that we have a WordPress community team who deals specifically in that, helping meetups to get started and helping them to grow. So you'll end up talking to people like you. He's a WordPress community deputy. And there's an application form. You'll find it on, there's a link that I had a moment ago, but there's a website called make.wordpress.org. And in the sidebar, if you land on the homepage, I think you'll look for community because there are different types of ways to make WordPress, but you'll find the community section. When you go there in the sidebar, there'll be a link to the meetup handbook. That's where it will explain, if you want to be a part of the WordPress chapter account that's on meetup.com, it's just a simple application that you fill out. You send it to them, you wait for them to respond. And yeah, so what that means is they'll pay your meetup.com fees. Like I said, if you can't find a venue or a free venue or need money for a venue, you can, there's a way to apply for that. So there's a lot of support that comes with being a part of the chapter program, but yeah, you can just get started any time you want. Cool. And the other question is for Zafo. Here we go. How's the quality to, how do you make? Okay, good question. The first thing is we make the tickets as cheap as possible. So you know, I remember when we first, when I had my budget review, I was asked how much do you want to charge for your ticket? So I said 20 US dollars because that's, that's the average price that I saw in the handbook. And Roche was like, you know, you, you live in Zimbabwe, you know, you live, you've got a poor economy. Your average income is really low. She said, why don't you make it six dollars? So, you know, I, I followed what she said, I did what she said, that's what, that's what we did. And like I said, the only reason that's possible is because of these sponsors. And you know, once you get your local community on board, get more of them to sponsor you, you'll find you'll be able to make it, maybe even lower. But the first thing is just keeping your ticket prices low. Of course, everybody doesn't may not have an interest or maybe like you said, there's a certain class of people that would probably attend something like that. I think that's just basically just spreading awareness. You know, that's where the meetup comes in. See, we have meetups. A lot of people who came to our WordCamp for the first time, they found out about it at the meetup. So it's just spreading awareness, keeping prices low. You know, you can only do so much, but that really helps to make it more, more inclusive. Yeah. Awesome, okay. I think that's all the time we have. Let's give it a round of applause.