The “WordPress Community.” Everyone talks about it. And it does exist, and is great.
But where, as a person new to this whole WordPress world, should you look to find it? That’s our topic today, we’ll cover WordPress events, WordPress meetups, WordPress developer spaces, and whole lot more. Let’s get to answering: where is the WordPress community?
Find In-Person WordPress Events
Most people still think of community as existing when your body is near other bodies. That is, we’ve been slow to accept virtual spaces as social realities. There’s a limit to which we human animals can get the sense of belonging alone in a room, even with the latest VR technologies.
Even the WordPress developer community — a little more insular than other parts of the “WordPress world,” still like to get together in person. But how?
Lots of Local WordPress Meetups
Your first stop to find community in and around WordPress should be in your local city or town. It’s not super uniform worldwide, but many cities of over 250,000 people will have an existing WordPress meetup. And many smaller ones will as a well.
Good article, thank you. Before WordPress, I was always part of an active community, online and offline. Since I’ve been using WordPress, I have literally never been able to find any type of “community” at all, yet I’m constantly hearing that phrase. I tried the local official WordPress meetup, but it was 100% controlled by one guy who dominated everything and used it as a purely money-making activity for himself. This was in a major urban area. A “meetup” consisted of him charging admission and then giving a lackluster “presentation”. I tried to start a second, alternative WordPress Meetup in the area, but that person didn’t like it and did everything he could to stop it. I went to WordCamp — fun and interesting for a few hours, but nothing came of it. Back in the day, I had been part of a vibrant, very real online web developer community based on NNTP forums, the kind of forums that actually technically lend themselves to community. (Methods of group communication these days — primarily social media — seem so crude and backward in comparison!) I had close friends, got major jobs, and shared weddings and funerals with the community. I’ve never… Read more »
Oof! That sounds hard PJ. I’m especially disappointed to hear about your Meetup. Do you know if this “meetup” is covered by the WordPress Foundation? (IE> Does it show up in your WordPress dashboard?)