what does it mean to be a member of a community
In the WordPress globe, we hear the term "community" thrown around — a lot. So what does community mean? How practise y'all become an active part of a community?
As a kid of the seventy's, I was raised on Sesame Street. I can even so hear the song in my mind:
"Who are the people in your neighborhood, in your neighborhood, in your neigh-bor-hood? Oh who are the people in your neighborhood? The people that you meet each 24-hour interval."
Sesame Street did a lot more teach letters and numbers. It emphasized neighborhoods. Information technology emphasized community. "The people that you meet each day" included teachers, librarians, plumbers, and mail carriers.
Dictionary.com contains one definition of community that is widely-applicable:
"a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing mutual characteristics or interests and perceived or perceiving itself every bit distinct in some respect from the larger society within which it exists (normally preceded by the):"
And then, what does community hateful to you?
Customs might be based on locale. Or, for some, based upon a shared interest. Information technology could also be based upon a shared feel.
The WordPress Customs
The WordPress Community is a group of people who share a passion for WordPress, open-source software, collaboration, and doing good.
Depending upon skill set, your WordPress Community experience can be unlike. Peradventure you lot write Plugins or commit to Core. If you're a blogger you may exist an terminate user. Both ends of the spectrum can nourish meetups and speak at WordCamps.
Just within the Community as a whole I see information technology cleaved down in geographical terms.
The Customs: Global
The global community would be the highest lodge of the community taxonomies. I see this as the temper that contains our oxygen. Information technology'due south huge. It'south big. It may seem invisible. Just it is there.
You can be office of this community on Twitter, Slack, or Facebook Groups. You may exist watching shows online like WPwatercooler, WP Circular Tabular array, or The WP Oversupply. You may listen to podcasts like KitchenSink WP, Apply Filters, or DradCast.
These activities ground yous within the customs. They give yous more to talk nigh — a sub-community if you lot will. Fans of a evidence tin chat near the topics on Twitter, in a Facebook Group, or in a Slack channel.
Eating some dinner and watching some @WPblab! Information technology'south been a adept night. =) film.twitter.com/AtkbFggqUc
— Robby McCullough (@RobbyMcCullough) March eleven, 2016
I've been a co-host of WPblab since Oct of 2015, and nosotros have quite a few regulars who watch the testify every Th. What'south great is that when the evidence is live on Blubber, everyone can run across the icons of people currently watching. Not merely that but there'southward a chat box on the side.
It's fun to watch and interact with folks from all the way from New Zealand to as well-nigh equally Riverside, CA. Nosotros're all chatting, interacting, and building relationships. Some people are watching as they're catching up on work or even making dinner.
Without a incertitude, I experience more than cemented into the WordPress community because of it. I think others exercise, too.
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The Community: Local
Speakers, sponsors, attendees and volunteers gathered for WordCamp San Diego 2016 four/25/xvi taken by Found Art Photography
Without a doubt, WordCamps are an integral part of the local customs. In many ways, WordCamps are great for on-boarding beginner WordPress users and encouraging them to attend meetups on a regular ground.
WordCamps assemble folks from the same geographic region to highlight local talent. People in your community may non be outspoken nigh their talents or feel in other situations. Encouraging speakers to tell the stories of what they experienced in WordPress and how they learned from their mistakes inspires everyone to expand their own boundaries: personally and professionally.
No affair where you are in WordPress, yous accept something to larn and something to teach. This is how community is developed inside these events. Giving. Learning. Sharing.
The Community: Hyper-Local
What's interesting to me is that Sesame Street wasn't about the whole of New York or even Manhattan. Information technology was almost the people who lived on 1 street. I call that hyper-local community. For WordPress, our local meetups would be considered hyper-local customs.
The value of in-person meetups cannot exist understated.
In Orangish Canton, for example, we have several meetups to choose from: General, Developer, Designer, and Women Who WP. Those have go mini communities in and of themselves, interchanging ofttimes, but by building relationships, there is a cohesion that binds people together. You're not alone. You're not isolated.
The experience is valuable for several reasons.
- You gain insight into hurting points.
- You larn new things.
- You lot meet new people.
- You strengthen relationships.
Gaining Insight:
If you're a back-cease developer and PHP is your affair, and so listening to people tell their stories may requite you ideas for solutions and plugins to build. If you love pattern, yous may be inspired to teach a new markup at the next meetup. Those who struggle with contracts may larn a new fashion to onboard their clients.
Learning New Things:
My teacher bias will evidence here but if you're not learning at the meetups, yous're doing it wrong. Y'all may not learn a new function, but you may acquire how people think (insights). You may learn SVGs are attainable in add-on to being less of a burden on your server. Perhaps a friend wants to build a plugin but needs an API expert and that's right up your aisle. Practise you lot run into what I mean?
Setting the stage for ideas and collaboration is what makes the serendipity of a meetup amazing. Ideas need connection to become keen.
Meeting New People:
You may accept seen that person on a prove, chatted in Slack, or left a review of their plugin on the WordPress Repository, but that doesn't mean they know you. Meetups are great for that official introduction.
The conversational style of the meetup, allowing people to chime in and reply questions, also facilitates relationships. A question nearly Gravity Forms and Salesforce integration may inspire someone to meet with an offer to help out. Or vice versa.
Strengthening Relationships:
Information alone is valuable but information plus human contact defines exceptional communities. Google isn't a community builder and personal relationships thing. We are certainly influenced by our peers and when nosotros experience continued and part of a group — we all get better, together.
As an example, I outset met Jacob, a front-finish developer at Zeek Interactive, on WPblab. When I finally went to our Full general WordPress meetup, I had an opportunity to chat with him about other things (like the strategy backside using custom mail types). And, of course, nosotros got a selfie.
Meetup!
W @JacobArriola and photobomb by @GreggFranklin #OCWP pic.twitter.com/PCPBZaoxnj— Bridget Willard (@BridgetMWillard) March 1, 2016
I'd say that a friendship that started online is even stronger at present that nosotros've had several in-person chats. And who knows? I may fifty-fifty sit down in his WordCamp Orange County talk now.
The $64,000 question is what does it ACTUALLY mean to be office of the customs?
That depends on yous. How involved exercise you want to be? You can be community to one person who needs a mentor. You lot tin collaborate in GitHub. You can have a center-to-heart over coffee at a WordCamp.
Bottom line: Community ways participation.
Customs means giving back.
Community means relationships.
Answers from the Community on Community:
I asked a few friends, read some articles, and watched interviews on YouTube to get answers on why they value the WordPress Community and what it means.
"Information technology'due south not simply the CMS nosotros choose to build on; it'southward our called community." Modern Tribe on WordCamp Minneapolis
"Community is tangible; community is cohesive; community brings people together in ways that let them to exercise things they couldn't have done in isolation." Sky Blueish
"I'chiliad the web-mistress for a non-profit whose site was hacked (earlier I took over) I was able to achieve out to the local WP community to become the help I needed on the site. Doing a little blistering in exchange for the free help…" Iris Messina
"Later on spending the by 4 years in my domicile office I started to feel increasingly disconnected from the WordPress Community. It may sound foreign because I was still immersed through dedicated WordPress Facebook groups, Slack channels, Twitter, Blab.im sessions and more. Merely I was missing the intimate and personal interactions I feel when attending WordCamps. Those hallway conversations you take, the business organization and partnership opportunities you detect (or create), and more than just, the friends you brand." Adam Warner
"The WordPress customs means helping each other go better … developers, designers, entrepreneurs, clients, man beings … Supporting, educational activity, accepting and helping without judgement or competition. I am proud and grateful to exist role of the WordPress community." Tara Cosacchi Claeys
"If you but open yourself upward to [the WordPress Community], you lot can accept and so much goodness come up dorsum to yous." Shayda Torabi
"[The Customs] has helped me kind of build my own business and information technology's given me an opportunity to kind of put back into the Community. If no ane is putting into it, it'due south not going to be good… Yous don't have to be the pb organizer, you tin prove up and move stuff." Alex Vasquez
So, how are you going to get involved in your community?
Source: https://givewp.com/mean-part-community/
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