Notification about calls for volunteers or speakers

[casiepa]

If you like speaking or volunteering at WordCamps, there is no easy way to keep track when the WordCamps in a 500km radius launch a call for those, except subscribing to all the news of all WordCamps.

Some months ago there was an initial short discussion on a centralized email list where one could subscribe and then be warned, but as there was no clear idea about who would manage that list, or who would be allowed to send, the idea just faded away... but I have given it some thought so here I go with a proposal:

On any 2018.xyz.wordcamp.org site:

• The organizer has 2 fields that are empty by default.
• The moment a call for volunteers or a call for speaker is launched, the permalink of the post is copied in the appropriate field.
• In case there is something wrong, a different parmalink could be posted, triggering an new notification.

On central.wordcamp.org:

• Possibility to subscribe to (and opt-out of) a mailing list for speakers and/or for volunteers.
• Nightly job, checking new or changed opportunities on the different WordCamp sites and notify the subscribers of WordCamps that have published a call.

I'm going for the nightly job and not for an immediate notification so that:

• If an organizer makes a mistake, it can still be modified in the next minutes/hours without generation extra notification
• In case multiple WordCamps launch something, it could be aggregated into 1 notification.

The advantage of this approach is that nobody needs to handle the list. When WordCamp organizers perform an action, everybody that subscribed gets notified.

Any further ideas/proposals? Please add notes.
Thanks.

[coreymckrill]

I like the concept here. Having a way to aggregate volunteer and speaking opportunities would save hassle for potential volunteers/speakers and also perhaps give organizers a larger pool of applicants for these roles. I do wonder, though, how big the audience would actually be for this kind of tool, given that the majority of WordCamp attendees only go to their one local camp.

Here are some brainstorming thoughts:

• A simpler mechanism on the WC site side might be to just have the organizer add a call-for-speakers or call-for-volunteers tag to relevant posts. That would make it easy for an aggregation script to find them.
• On the aggregation side, my thought is that WordCamp Central's news feed is under-utilized. Perhaps when the aggregator grabs tagged posts from other sites, it could republish them (in full or as excerpts) right in the news feed. Or, if that would be too much extra content, maybe it would just be a once a week digest post listing speaking and volunteering opportunities. Then we could use the existing Jetpack subscription module and encourage people to subscribe there.

[iandunn]

I think this would probably benefit from a discussion on make/Community first, since it involves a lot of non-technical decisions, and most of the Community team doesn't follow Trac.

In particular, I think many on the team might have some concerns about doing something that could encourage circuit-speaking rather than focusing on the local community.

[casiepa]

​https://make.wordpress.org/community/2017/11/16/proposal-wordcamp-central-twitter-strategy-and-tactics/

[bph]

Thanks for linking the P2 post for a central twitter strategy and tactics to this issue. We don't know yet how we monitor WordCamp.org and its subsites to amplify posts via twitter. We probably would need a mechanism that will give us more than just "call for speakers" or "call for volunteers". For now, I am looking at already available tools that monitor the web for keywords, like Google Alert, RSS readers etc. I am hoping we will get a small group going on the Contributor Day in Nashville Sunday. Maybe we can briefly discuss overall notification options already in place for deputies.

[wpfangirl]

I just led the Speaker Training & Diversity Outreach at my meetup and it would be great to have this feature as a companion. We're encouraging people to speak at WordCamps, but unless they are already subscribed to updates from a specific WordCamp, they'll have trouble finding out about opportunities. (I have, of course, encouraged everyone who attended the training to speak at the meeutp, but we don't have our own WordCamp.)

[francina]

I think having a central hub for calls (speakers, sponsors, volunteers) would be very helpful for all parties involved :)
This, combined with a good use of social media, would probably amplify the outreach efforts immensely.
@iandunn do you think this particular topic needs a P2 post? Or is the one mentioned about Twitter enough?
Thanks!

[dd32]

This ticket has been moved to GitHub ​https://github.com/WordPress/wordcamp.org/issues/596