 Yeah, um good afternoon. I'm really glad to see you all here and Welcome to our panel discussion on like Birgit also said contributing to WordPress without knowing how to code I spoke mentioned my name is Birgit Olsson and unfortunately the original host I made the computer and as a panelist manual Who were original part of this panel? Couldn't attend due to the visa situation and on very short notice, I'm really glad that Jumko and Alicia agreed on participating on this panel and sharing their stories and I'm also very thankful for the WordCamp Europe content team who were very responsive to deal with this situation on short notice and Yeah, make the best of all so Now let me introduce again Alicia Jumko and Patricia. I invite you could you please introduce yourself for a short? Hi everybody, good afternoon. So I'm Alicia Roo. I'm Italian I work as a content designer and software localization specialist especially for many things and WordPress themes and plugins with a focus on inclusive and accessible writing and I started contributing WordPress in 2016 Hello, my name is Patricia. I come from the French-speaking part of Switzerland in Geneva I contribute to the community team by organizing events in my country WordPress meetup and I was in 10 years for 10 years and Co-organize in work games in Switzerland Hi, hello, and my name is Junko Nukanga Yeah, I live on a small island in Japan and called Ogizuma with a population of 115 people I'm freelance web designer and with WordPress, I I Organizer of World Camp Kansai and World Camp Kobe and I'm Deputy in the WordPress community and one of the this year's team lives. I Also do translation and report bugs when I notice them I'm not very good at English So and today I'm supported by my Japanese friend, Shusei Try to speak myself as much as possible, but sometimes I may miss Japanese. Sorry. Thank you Again, welcome to our panel and thank you for your assistance. So Okay, let's start with some personal experiences and our on your journey Could each of you share how you contribute to WordPress project and what initially inspired you to get involved and Why community? What do you personally get from contributing to WordPress and Patricia, would you like to start then we move over to Alicia and then to Junko. This is okay. Yeah Do you want to introduce yourself as well first? Okay, I call myself a WordPress veteran because I've used WordPress since the first release 20 years ago and I'm contributing to WordPress over 13 years and I started with translating WordPress in German and then I also started managing the local Translation platform on the word for start off thanks to Robert Windish who pushed me to do and That's when I started actively contributing to WordPress, but I also visited WordCams and Now I'm focusing more on creating more awareness for diversity Equality and inclusion in our in the WordPress community so that everyone feels welcome and belonging to the WordPress community Can you just repeat the question first question? Yes I guess why community and what do you personally get from contributing to WordPress community? Okay, so the first thing is I've made friends from all around the world and By organizing local meetups. I made long lasting friendship in my local Community, so that's what the main that is the main good thing that is to contribute to community and organizing events and I get to travel to what came Europe and nearby country WordCams for example from Switzerland I go to What came in France and Italy and I try to volunteer all the time because it's such an amazing experience What I get is because every time every month when we do local meetups I learned something new all the time, you know and over the years also I learned to how to organize events find sponsors race funds And it's good also to to have some diverse range of Speakers who talk about so many topics, so I learned a lot to meeting all those people. Thank you So in my case, I started contributing in 2016 and that those times I recently joined a WordPress company WP rocket, so I was already working in translations and I met Laura Sacko Which is who is one of the pillars of the Italian polyglots community and she on board it Immediately because she said you can speak languages you can speak Italian I also speak Spanish and French so being a polyglot was my thing right away and So I found the Italian community first then the Spanish one and then I met the European one as well so I really First of all, I'd say that my The main reason why I'm here is because of as Patricia was saying because of people and I met a lot of friends over the years, so Speaking at work and also contributing via slack and remotely with the community is a way to keep in touch with a lot of people Scattered around the world, so that's very precious for me and also professionally. It's been very important to I'd say that the community has been my first Training field because I learned about localization international internationalization very specific topics that it would have It would have been difficult maybe to pay Maybe online course or going to university just to learn those stuff So the community was very supportive also in that sense So I own it a lot own a lot also in that professional In the professional side of things. So yeah, yeah, thank you and very inspiring Hi, I focus on WordPress community and support betting and orientation for people who want to start a bad camp or and meet up and I Also concert with them about how to run the event and Why community and I think it is not easy to make money With community, but I believe it has helped me grow as a person At the time I think WordPress has brought me so far. I Can make friends With so many people. I would never know it to my daily life And here they are those I would never have thought Coming abroad Learning English like this if it was not for WordPress. I think that experience Itself Is a treasure to me Thank you very much. So as I understand You choose to contribute to WordPress because of the people within the WordPress community So you found someone who had introduced you are you picked up your own? profession in within and found your field I Would like to hear about your challenges and skills and how you overcome obstacles within Getting involved into the project What are the skills that I had you when you started contributing? When you what you learned through the process you told you you learned so much English also to contribute and What are the obstacles you saw? While contributing to WordPress Alice, would you like to start and we move on to Junco and then to you The main obstacles I found I think was just getting used to all the I don't know the many places where the community moves. There is this lack. There is the Make-over press. There are a lot of places of where and channels of communication So at first maybe for me was a bit difficult to understand where my people where where the polyglots met But at the same time the onboarding process was pretty Supportive so I always have people around that told me where to go where to find answers Well to read documentation. So yeah, I was kind of I think it's natural when you start doing something new You feel overwhelmed a little bit by the many information and flow of information you can get But I mean the good thing of the WordPress community is that there is a lot of people doing this for so many years and And they're very supportive. So it's easy to find your way Yeah, and that was the main obstacle I have to say in the Italian community is very open and welcoming so I've always felt at home I think relationships can be very difficult Most of us are doing WordPress things while having other jobs So communication in a limited time frame Can lead to Misunderstanding this We value dialogue, but at the same time we try to make sure our honest opinions are hard For example when some someone is struggling Struggling Thank you. With someone else in the community, I will not be the Referee, no, I know But I will be as honest as possible about what I think Yeah, very Important and if I am long I Approaches, I believe that even if the conflict is not resolved No need for apologizing The most of the people were attending to work in Europe are not native English speaking Yeah, I think and Honest so important. Yes So first Junco your English is better than my Japanese Thank you for contributing like this So about the struggle I faced first on my personal level, you know, I'm used to work alone I'm a kind of freelancer or rather solo printer So one of my struggled was to work with a team when we were organizing work in Switzerland So I had to learn to Work with others and I got better at that. I hope and on another level the struggle we faced organizing Evans especially work camps is about the multi lingual Part because the work campsite are not yet Multilingual and in Switzerland we speak so many languages So thankfully this year we had the help of a great Team mate mark mark how else made who used the great features of the site editor the full site editor and Blocks to create as free languages work in websites. So that was how we overcame this. It's much better now with the site editor and Yeah, there was so there is also struggles There is no budget for meetups Monthly meetup. So we have to get creative to find free venues and Yeah, we we somehow Used to that now But is now so because after the pandemic, you know, people get used to stay at home and Sometimes difficult to even have people coming to the meetups. So we have to get creative and that's good because we Train our creative mind. You know to find solutions. Yeah, that would be just regular. Thank you What do you think are? Also obstacles for new contributors to come to contribute to WordPress, especially for people who are afraid or intimidated by having to know code because as we are seeing in the WordPress community, there's some kind of Celebrity around the core committers and I feel myself or felt myself kind of intimidated at the beginning and how to contribute to a project like WordPress, it's an open source project and so many talented people are also giving their time and effort and skills to it, but I think we would like to have more people involved, especially in Underrepresented make teams for WordPress. Yes, as you mentioned you started with Translation and organizing events. You are organizing events. What obstacles do you feel are there for new contributors to Entry the WordPress ecosystem. Would you like to start? Yeah So go to sign you're a night you can I did even do more to So you're saying if there's too much Things to do and get worried that might be like an obstacle for the new contributors, you know, like Yeah, like don't they don't have to be scared like I have to do this I have to do that like they can just start small so that could be one of the obstacles the shi shi shi So What do you see that's up to go for new contributors to start? Yes, there is this misconception That I don't know to code. I cannot join or I'm not a designer I'm a beginner and I constantly repeat in meetups and Local work camps. You don't have to be so many things to do. We need you Yeah, I would say the first thing would be to attend meetups and local work camps and join the contributor day where there is an onboarding process, which is very welcoming also have a look at make dot WordPress dot org and Look at the description for each team because that you might find something that appeals to you, you know, and at the beginning when I started Organizing meetups. I didn't even know I was contributing to a large-scale community I was thinking oh, there is a local meetup about WordPress So I go there and they asked me that the two of I mean founder of this group were leaving the town And they asked two of us to take take it over I didn't even realize there was like 800 groups around the world and so many work camps I didn't know about so I was contributing without knowing that I was contributing, you know, but if When when I say now two people, please join we need It would be a dream if every WordPress user gave like five percent of their time for to contribute to the project As we we talked yesterday about five to five for the future. So it's yeah, it's good We we have a free and priceless solution that is WordPress. So it's good if we give back by any skill that you can contribute with Absolutely what Patricia said it all But I just wanted to add up that for my experience what I noticed is Meetup and maybe contributor days that were local work camps or even European ones Are very crowded. There's a lot of people starting from they want to contribute What I noticed is that sometimes it's difficult to make people say So you have a lot of onboarding the first day and then over time It's difficult to keep up Be a slack or doing remote contribution. So what Patricia said about finding your local places your local people it's very important to keep the motivation of that first contributor day because it's easy to On being on board and on the first day, but then when you get back home you get caught up with your job your family and your life and Maybe the contribution is worth left a bit on the side. So maybe as a community you we should keep on strongly encouraging people to keep in touch even remotely and Sharing the way we can do that without without even be back Let's think about how many people live in little towns or remote places where there's not even a local meetup So finding communities moments online and remotely is very it's still very important I just heard that a new meetup group has been created in Catalonia to be A rural Yeah, a rural meetup for Catalonia that will go from small towns to small towns because there is no meetups And that's that's a great initiative that could be should be Also for meetup organizers if you sometimes we don't have an ID who to invite what to do but to say at next month's meetup So we could simply do contribution So you would say the easiest entry point into the virtuous Contributions is are going to a meetup attending to a meetup or maybe organize a meetup But what's about the other projects and teams within a virtuous community? Which doesn't involve to Have the knowledge about how to code As we see we have the documentation team the training team who are building learn retrospect or Want to help to to build more confidence? We have also the WP diversity team who is very very passionate about to motivate and encourage new contributors to speak to be on a stage like this yes But also the testing for wordpress everything which every project which involves Development needs also other parts. I guess no developer is really fond of it of the idea to write the documentation or So What do you see? Are the most needed? Parts of the wordpress community contribution Equal system to jump in When you are not an developer I struggle with this word. Sorry. I'm not an active English speaking person So what do you think? It's the most runnable part of a community Where we need more active contributors. Do you like? Maybe Okay, we are going around Not for example translations is one of the the polyglots group is one of the groups that really is accessible to Almost anyone knowing their own language. That's what Laura Sacco told me when I said, I mean, you know Italian You know Italian well, I mean, of course you have to speak the language well, but there's a lot to do Even in the polyglots team without knowing how to code we translate plugins themes We translate the core but we also do a lot of documentation and have translating Documentation from other teams. So there's it really a lot to do of what the wordpress community has a whole produces there's a lot to translate and if you know your language well enough, there's always need for a good hand to To work on those documents and all the many things that the old community produces and Would like to translate I Started also To translate some years ago, but it's not where I was the best. So You know you depends what you like and you look at the list that as I said before on make dot what press dog And you see the list of all the teams and but what whatever it sounds good nice to you to participate you just join the slack and Begin to talk with people at that and the office hours on slack and read the chat Maybe you will find something very exciting. You will make friends as I love and Yeah, I think yeah, it's up to you what what you are good at what you like And In Japan and original region Japanese slug wordpress slug and And One week one time Gathering slug translation time we have and so Gathering and mentoring So kind You're doing some kind of WP translation days in Japanese where you're on board New contributors and also work on the project itself. Yeah Sorry, sorry. Sorry. So you do it weekly weekly. Yes, not monthly or not yearly We do it every Friday from 10 p.m. And we in Japan we welcome everybody to come in and Translate plugins or themes or even the documents. That's this amazing. I'm totally jealous So yeah, and whenever people come in we don't do it in zoom or in In-person style we do we only do it in slack so everybody can join from Let's say home or their work or maybe somewhere else and if there are newcomers coming in we always welcome them and we Ask them what they want to do and we try to guide them to how they can do it like Sustainably, I think Alice. I think we were saying that sustainability for you know, onboarding new contributors Key process. So that's what we've been that's what we've been doing in Japan and you're gonna spend part of that Also, so I think she said Translations keep on going. It would be a good thing to do Yeah, thank you. I'm just one short advice for new contributors What would you tell when someone approaches you I would like to contribute to WordPress, how can I get involved? How can I do it? What would you what would be your takeaway tip for them? Would you like to start? Yes, it's basically what I said before about looking what they like to do but I Would emphasize on the fact that it's a very inclusive community that we try to to like help all diverse diversity diverse people to to join and Yeah, make friends and eat good food at work. Can say a food is always a good topic Yeah, we say go all in don't worry and For everyone who's also listening not only contribute, sorry When you contribute to WordPress, it's not only about bringing in your own time and knowledge Money is always welcome So there we have some initiatives in a WordPress community and not only the five for the future program Where companies can pledge? Time or their employees can pledge time to contribute to WordPress, but also we have the W P collective I Hope I recall it right. I will treat about it. Yeah, where you as a company or a freelancer can donate your money So that contributors can get funded to pursue there and continue their work Incredibutions, especially if you are on a level with a high responsibility and or being a bottleneck because a big project like the WordPress is sometimes really hard to stay consistent if you are Working on it on your spare time and you don't have the financial backgrounds to Give in more time. So That's why I think it's important that we as a community also Make room and say this are these are contributors who are very involved and passionate about Contributing to WordPress we need to support them With room or even money to help them to stay on track So, yeah, that's what do you think about this? This is very important as far and my tip will be like find your people as Patricia was saying find you what you like, but also the people you like to spend time with so that's a very important part of the contributing experience and And ask a lot of questions because there will be a lot and but we have a lot of documentation and information to provide so Yeah, ask question and find find your people too. I mean we try to be a very inclusive and accessible community So I feel safe and given this tip you will find somebody you like. Thank you I guess there's also the mentorship program rolling in into so Where new contributors of WordPress I can get a personal mentor to guide them and Hari Shankar is currently hard working on it So please reach out on make wordpress.org reach out on Twitter to us If you have any questions, I would like to invite you and I'm really glad that you all attended to our panel and I would like to Open the floor for questions From our beloved audience, please Well, thank you so much a big hand before For all the panelists and when you get ready for your questions Line up up behind the microphones and then we need the microphones because the live audience will hear it And we have the first question over there Okay, now you're here. Hello My name is Toby I'm one of the global mentors for the polyglots team. So a couple of people in this room may have seen me before Wanted to ask do that's the community team have any Obvious place Where you would collect good ideas about how to do things in a different way Or what could be improved because I have a feeling that there are so many different things happening There are so many people involved that I A little bit loose track on okay, if I just have some idea. Is there any kind of Virtual box where I could just drop this idea so it doesn't get lost First on slack on the make what press a slack you find the channel to corresponding to the team you want to suggest things to and Then there would be a post Posted on make dot what press dot org with anyone Publicly can comment and bring new ideas. I Think in every channel there. There is office hours as well. So at that time, there's a lot of people to reply to you Yeah, thank you for your question. Thank you also for your dedicated work as Polyglots and we work together for a long time on a polyglots global polyglots mentor team So thank you also for your contribution store and your questions, please Hi, my name is Olga possibly some also saw me before anyway I'm wondering if you're what is your next big what press desire What you wish like big wish you can like accomplish with help of all this audience Who is are looking for us right now? So what do you want? Would you like and I hope run world camp Asia in Japan Do you have any ideas what's your best biggest wish for wordpress in the community I Would like to I mean we keep on talking about diversity and inclusion and accessibility Which is the three topics they like a lot about but a lot of people in the community care about this and We had some interesting panels yesterday and talks about these and we are talking about that It's a hot topic. I mean it's been a hot topic for years And so I hope that this conversation keep going and we find more places and times to To speak about it like face-to-face or even remotely, but like taking really good care of of this I would love for for what camp Europe to Be more European it means for example the Last year in Porto at the Thursday event They were Portuguese dancers and that that that bring a lot of the local feel Instead of only English international feel maybe in the future we can have like translation tool automated tools and ever more Yeah, something more European than rather than only like an international cosmopolitan Yes Translation Yeah My biggest wish is also to have some kind of entity within a wordpress community to ensure the Diversity equality and inclusion Not only on breadcams and meet up, but also within the contributing groups so that there is a dedicated team Who have the knowledge and work? Intensively to make sure that everyone despite of color or gender or sexual orientation or Skillset feels welcome and finds a place within the wordpress community Thank you. Oh, thank you sir. Great question. Oh, we have time for one more question Harry. Yeah All right. Hello Hi, everybody. My name is Harry Shankar. I am a community deputy and as Birgit mentioned I am trying to build a mentorship program for wordpress. So my question is to all of you Alice you mentioned about the contributor journey about like how somebody starts contributing At the contributor day, then they are not able to go forward like that comes into it I found a very interesting and that's the problem that I'm trying to solve I'm trying to you know get first of all point one get more people to come into wordpress and point two get them to stay So my question to all of you is mean you all you're all basically non non-code contributors I am a non-code contributor. My question to all of you is I Would like to hear your thoughts on how to solve that problem. How can we Get somebody who comes into the project to stay Based on your experience like what based on the three points that you faced What are the ideas that we can do to sort of like fix that problem? Thank you This is to all of you. Um, I would like First of all, thank you for your question That's really a pain point to keep contributing or contributors on track and keep them motivated to contribute for my experience we started in Germany the marketing team twice and Dried out because people disappeared because they couldn't Stay longer on the project and I think We need more involvement and as you mentioned the mentorship program. I think It's important that we stay in touch and communicate on regular basis and Ask for their needs also. What obstacles do they face during the journey? first of all, we learn as mentors and Experienced contributors, but also to maybe solve issues. We didn't see as an experimental season contributor Yeah, I have the same experience in the Italian polyglot team. I think we were one of the first teams to organize mentorship program inside the translation process so every experience translator had like One of you new contributors to to follow during their journey in the first at the beginning of their Translation journey and this worked very well because you have instantly you have a reference inside a community Somebody to speak and ask questions to and that's very important for people knowing Where to where to find that person that can solve the questions No, maybe not in the common channel, which is we can be intimidating sometimes now posing that question in the Whole group so having like a direct channel of communication with your mentor It's very important also for operational tasks like translations Do I have any I think you said it all Yeah, this and what you mentioned before to be a sponsor because for Independent workers, it's a bit more difficult to you know to balance with your client work Do you have additional You and I be the size of a contribution does not matter Everyone can contribute and let's encourage each other and the nice to each other Mr. Speaker, thank you very much Folks I don't know if they have this time I wanted to ask one more follow-up listen, but I want to be mindful of time. It's okay, but gets Can I ask one more question? Well Quick very quick. Okay. Not to everybody very short very quick question. So all of you know One answers Okay So It's it's related to this Many of you mentioned that life comes in the way that is a pain point which stopped you from contributing. I mean generally Other than that, is there anything in the project at this time that makes the process contributing slower prevents people from continuity continuously? I Think that's overwhelming of information. We need more guidance on the onboarding process on a WordPress site so make it more visual because Collecting information from every make team. I feel overwhelmed and I'm a seasoned contributor WordPress And I can't imagine how it feels for a newcomer So I think like you also did for your proposal for the mentorship program to visualize The past the contributor journey has some visual guiding How they can start and where can they jump into the project would be really awesome and designers you don't need to have to code or Project manager you don't need to code to contribute to those user journeys and contribute of journeys to work for us