We hereby announce 2012 as a Year of a WordPress Meetup. You’ll wish to get in on this action.

meet·up mēt-əp noun
A meeting, especially a regular meeting of people who share a particular interest and have connected with each other through a social-networking Web site: a meetup for new moms in the neighborhood; a meetup to plan the trip; a meetup for WordPress users.¹

So what is a WordPress Meetup? Basically, it’s people in a village removing together — assembly adult — who share an seductiveness in WordPress, either they be bloggers, business users, developers, consultants, or any other difficulty of chairman means to say, “I use WordPress in some approach and we like it, and we wish to accommodate other people who can contend a same.” Meetups come in opposite shapes and sizes, though they all lift a advantage of joining we with intensity collaborators and friends, and assisting we learn some-more about what we can do with WordPress. Here are some of a common forms of WordPress meetups:

• Hang out and work on your WordPress sites together
• Social/happy hour form gatherings
• Mini-lectures/presentations
• Developer hacking meetups
• Show tell of how organisation members are regulating WordPress
• Formal instruction on how to use WordPress
• Lecture array (possibly with visiting speakers)
• Genius bar/help desk

There’s no prescribed format, as any internal organisation can confirm for itself what they wish to do. Some groups brew it adult from month to month, while others have mixed events any month to prove a needs of their community.

The tough part? Running a renouned organisation takes time and money. Just as we worked final year to mislay a financial weight for WordCamp organizers and yield logistical support so they could concentration some-more on their eventuality calm and experience, we wish to start fluctuating that kind of support to meetup groups as well. We don’t wish it to cost anything for someone to run a WordPress meetup, or to attend one — building internal communities should be as giveaway as WordPress itself!

Since there are so many some-more meetups than there are WordCamps, we’re going to start with a cost that is a same for any group: meetup.com organizer dues. We’re environment adult an central WordPress comment on Meetup.com right now, and over a subsequent integrate of weeks will be operative with existent meetup organisation organizers, people who wish to start a new meetup group, and a useful folks during Meetup.com to put this module in place. WordPress meetup groups that select to have their organisation turn partial of a WordPress comment will no longer compensate organizer impost for that group, as a WordPress Foundation will be balance a bill.

This is sparkling for several reasons. First, it means internal organizers who are giving something behind to a plan by approach of their time won’t also have bombard out $12-19/month for a privilege. That alone is a large step. Second, it will open a doorway to some-more events and leaders within a community, given care and eventuality formulation won’t need to be tied to “owning” a meetup group. Third, some-more active meetup groups means some-more WordCamps, yay!

In further to a financial aspects, we’ll be operative on ways to urge amicable approval of meetup activity by incorporating feeds from a central meetup groups into a WordPress.org site, and including meetup organisation appearance in a activity tide on your WordPress.org profile.² I’m also anticipating we can do something around providing video apparatus to meetup groups (like we already do for WordCamps) to record presentations and tutorials that can be posted to WordPress.tv, assisting meetup groups offer WordPress classes in their community, and removing concerned with mentoring WordPress clubs during internal schools and universities. Oh, and we’ll send out some WordPress buttons and stickers to a groups that join in, since everybody loves buttons and stickers.

We’re also putting together some cold resources for people who wish to start a new meetup group. There will be a margin beam to removing started and some reserve to assistance we get your organisation going, and a forum for organizers to speak to and learn from any other.

Over time, we’ll be articulate to organizers and looking during what other losses we can catch and what other support we can yield to internal groups. For now, we’re starting with a organizer dues. If we now run a WordPress meetup organisation (whether we are regulating Meetup.com or not) or would like to start a WordPress meetup organisation in your area, greatfully fill out a WordPress Meetup Groups survey. Filling in a consult doesn’t want we to join a central group, it only gives us a starting indicate to a) find out what groups are around/interested, and b) get some information on existent groups and their losses and needs. Meetup.com will hit a organisation organizers who’ve pronounced they’d like to join a new program, and will travel them by a logistics of a change and answer questions before assisting them to opt-in officially.

So, if we now run a WordPress meetup group, or we would like to start one, greatfully  fill out our WordPress Meetup Groups survey. we can’t wait to see some-more meetups!

1 – Adapted from “meetup” clarification during dictionary.com.
2 – Didn’t know about profiles? Check out http://profiles.wordpress.org/users/yourwordpressdotorgusernamehere (put in a username we use in a WordPress.org forums) to see yours!

Article source: http://wordpress.org/news/2012/01/year-of-the-meetup/

WordPress.org is strictly fasten a protest opposite Senate Bill 968: a Protect IP Act that is entrance before a U.S. Senate subsequent week. As we wrote in my post a week ago, if this check is upheld it will jeopardise internet leisure and change a energy of a eccentric web into a hands of corporations. We contingency stop it.

On Jan 18, 2012 many sites around a web — from tiny personal blogs to internet institutions like Mozilla, Wikipedia, reddit, and I Can Has Cheezburger? – will be going dim in criticism and to expostulate their visitors to sites like americancensorship.org to take movement and assistance quarrel a thoroughfare of a Protect IP Act. So will WordPress.org.

If we wish to join a criticism by blacking out your WordPress site or requesting a ribbon, there is now a accumulation of blackout plugins in a WordPress.org plugins directory. While fasten a criticism in this demeanour is laudable, greatfully don’t forget to also make those phone calls to U.S. Senators — they’re a ones with a voting power.

• Get a criticism plugin
• Take movement during americancensorship.org

Article source: http://wordpress.org/news/2012/01/internet-blackout/

You are an representative of change. Has anyone ever told we that? Well, we usually did, and we meant it.

Normally we stay divided from from politics here during a central WordPress plan — carrying users from all over a creation that camber a domestic spectrum is justification that we are doing a pursuit and democratizing publishing, and we don’t wish to divide any of a users no matter how most some of us might remonstrate with some of them personally. Today, I’m violation a no-politics rule, since there’s something going on in U.S. politics right now that we need to make certain we know about and understand, since it affects us all.

Using WordPress to blog, to publish, to promulgate things online that once on a time would have been relegated to an unread private biography (or simply remained unspoken, uncreated, unshared) creates you a partial of one of a biggest changes in complicated history: a democratization of edition and a eccentric web. Every time we click Publish, we are a partial of that change, either we are posting shrewd domestic discernment or a cat that creates we LOL. How would we feel if a web stopped being so giveaway and independent? I’m endangered freaked right a heck out about a bills that bluster to do this, and as a member in one of a biggest changes in complicated history, we should be, too.

You might have listened people talking/blogging/twittering about SOPA — a Stop Online Piracy Act. The new SOPA-related protest of GoDaddy was all over a news, with many people expressing their snub over a possibilities of SOPA, though when we ask people about SOPA and a sister check in a Senate, PIPA (Protect IP Act), many don’t unequivocally know what a bills propose, or what we mount to lose. If we are not freaked out by SOPA/PIPA, please: for a subsequent 4 minutes, instead of checking Facebook statuses, saying who mentioned we on Twitter, or examination a latest part of Sherlock*, watch this video.

Some thoughts:

• In a U.S. a authorised complement maintains that a weight of explanation is on a accuser, and that people are trusting until proven guilty. This principle seems to be on a chopping retard when it comes to a web if these bills pass, as companies could close down sites formed on indictment alone.
• Laws are not like lines of PHP; they are not simply reverted if someone wakes adult and realizes there is a improved approach to do things. We should not be so discerning to annotate something this far-reaching.
• The people essay these laws are not a people essay a eccentric web, and they are not out to strengthen it. We have to mount adult for it ourselves.

Blogging is a form of activism. You can be an representative of change. Some people will tell we that holding movement is useless, that online petitions, phone calls to representatives, and other actions won’t change a singular mind, generally one that’s been assured of something by lobbyist dollars. To those people, we repeat a difference of Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a tiny organisation of thoughtful, committed adults can change a world. Indeed, it is a usually thing that ever has.

We are not a tiny group. More than 60 million people use WordPress — it’s pronounced to energy about 15% of a web. We can make an impact, and we can be an representative of change. Go to Stop American Censorship for some-more information and a garland of ways we can take movement quickly, easily, and painlessly. The Senate votes in dual weeks, and we need to assistance during slightest 41 some-more senators see reason before then. Please. Make your voice heard.

*Yes, a latest part of Sherlock is good. Stephen Moffatt + Russell Tovey = always good

Article source: http://wordpress.org/news/2012/01/help-stop-sopa-pipa/