WordPress.org educational initiatives and how to learn with WordPress: Community ProfDev Session

So, let's start with our few um kind of just welcomes and um Taylor and I might just introduce ourselves briefly and then um we want to give a a quick overview of what's coming up later this summer. I'm Marin Deep and I work with Reclaim as a consultant and we do a whole lot of community outreach and prof sessions and workshops and I'm really excited to have our speakers here today to talk about WordPress education initiatives. Um, Taylor, do you want to introduce yourself, too? >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm Taylor. I work at Reclaim and uh I uh work on with our um infrastructure team as well as kind of our um we're we're a small company, so we all do kind of a lot of things at Reclaim. Um, and I'm really excited for the session today because obviously, you know, us at Reclaim, we're always um thinking about how um uh these types of tools, WordPress, open- source tools, web hosting tools in general, can kind of meet uh educational needs. So, I'm really excited to hear what the WordPress foundation folks are here to talk about. >> Awesome. Well, um, however you're watching the session, whether it's the recording or whether you're live with us here in the room, we wanted to welcome you all. Um, and we have a whole panel of speakers with us today. Um, so in a moment, we'll hand over to you guys and, um, hopefully meet and have a lot of discussion in the session today as we're talking about these different educational initiatives and how to learn with WordPress. But before we do that, um just to say that we have two more dates in the diary for upcoming sessions and like this one they are focused on particular topics that we get asked about a lot in our community. The first one is coming up on May 20th and that will be accessibility in action and we're going to look at the editorially plugin and also do a live review session where we're looking live at questions from the community look at a page and kind of figure out the um things that could be improved upon and our colleague Alexis is going to join us for this session and um and run you through this demo and then at towards the end of the academic year on June 16th, we're going to return to a topic that we talk a lot about, particularly as an academic year comes to an end, which is archiving and preservation. And we're going to look at, you know, long-term archiving and maintenance, but also kind of strategies for when things wrap up and how to keep what you want to keep and how to responsibly dispose of what you don't need anymore. So, that's a little bit of a kind of house cleaning um session at the end of the year. Now for those of you who are joining us maybe for the first time or welcome back. Um remember that you can connect with our community throughout these sessions but also throughout the year. We have our ATTE Discord server where everybody is welcome and our events calendar is always up to date with everything that's coming up and if you can't stay for the whole session or you're watching the recording obviously on reclaim TV. Right. So these are um lots of ways to connect with us and now we're ready to hand over to our speakers. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen and allow you to get take over and maybe to kick us off with we just go around the room and introduce ourselves. So um Franchesco, why don't you maybe kick us off with introductions and then we go around the room all the speakers and um when we're ready. >> Thank you. I'm Franchesco. Nice to meet you all and u I'm involved in the WordPress community since years ago and I'm kind of organizer of uh some work camps in Italy and in Europe. I'm actually I'm one of the three global lead for the World Camp Europe for the next World Camp Europe that will be in Krakco in 50 days more or less and um and also uh couple of months ago I was involved with from Mizota about this WP credits project that started uh yeah 10 months ago more or less and now is growing up and is going to to be one of the by me most important project in the WordPress uh uh community and I'm really really uh happy that I'm one of the uh admin of this uh this project. I'm involved in other thing in the community but today I think that the most important thing is that uh this this project will be will be our the most important thing Thank you and welcome. Great to have you with us. Um, do you want to um introduce yourself next and then we come to M. >> Yeah, sure. Uh, thank you so much Marin for hosting the session and for having us over. So, thanks a lot Taylor for supporting the the session. Um, I'm Isa. I'm based in in Spain, but probably you can tell that I'm Italian. It doesn't matter the language I speak since I say hi Italian and yes [snorts] and I've been around in WordPress community since 2022. I work at automatic and I'm sponsored to dedicate full-time a week to the WordPress foundation nonprofit project and I currently lead WordPress credit credits which is one of the four education programs uh from the WordPress community. So I'm excited to uh share a bit more about all kind of things that we we've been doing it with you all today. Um thank you. >> Fantastic. Great. And Matt, welcome as well. >> Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Uh my name is uh Mache. Feel free to call me Matt. It's the easier version, I think. I've been with the Workers Community since 2007, so it's been a while. Uh but I actually started um contributing around 2014. So that's been a while. My first event was World Camp Europe in Sophia and it opened my eyes to to the whole community and how a powerful concept it is. So since October last year, I've been supporting uh ISO uh with the credits program. Uh I've been working for at this point for 10 years almost with with automatic. So, it's been a while, but uh since last year, like I've mentioned, since October, I've been supporting Minnesota fully with with the credits program, the educational initiatives. So, um thanks for having us tonight and we're happy to share more details about them. Awesome. Well, welcome you all. I know you're joining us all from all across the globe. So, fantastic to [laughter] have you with us. Um, if you want to try bringing the slides back up um, and sharing your screen, then I think we're ready to jump in. And everybody in the room who's joining us live, if you have questions throughout, please post them in the chat. Taylor and I will keep an eye on the chat. And um, there'll also, I'm sure, be some time for discussion and questions um, later once we have heard the presentation. >> Of course. One sec here, please. Okay, I'm receiving a thumbs up. So awesome. [clears throat] Thanks a lot. Um have one uh well prepared um quick overview of all the programs that we we run but please feel free to share questions, comments in the chat. We will also have space at the end for more discussion because we would also love to hear from you if you have had experience with uh opensource programs in education which I believe many of you would. So, okay, since um we're all um part of the WordPress community, I'm going to I'm going to be very very brief about okay the importance the why why we want uh WordPress to enter formal education which is something that until now has been done by so many teachers and warper professionals around the world but it was never back up with former program from the WordPress foundation. So this time last year um we got to a point where with the within the foundation uh it was decided okay let's give it a try and try to have a more um a more structured way to offer students and teachers opportunities within our communities. It all revolve around uh the goal to democratize publishing in a new way because so far we always we all know that what is the mission of WordPress we never formalize it under okay why this should be important for students why it is important for students to understand what is open source what is the difference in uh having a website using WordPress or using other uh other tools What is the main difference between a website like a website presence versus social media for example and most importantly we want to show students how they can enter the professional world after graduating. So we want students regardless of what they're studying to see that there are opportunities for them to create their own career in WordPress world and in a remote environment even if they're not developers which is still a a sort of um mindset that we can find in many students and and institutions. Last year we when I say we I refer to the WordPress community, the community team and the WordPress foundation. We launched uh four main programs WordPress credits. I'm going to then explain uh details of each one of them but we can say that we divide in contribution program. So WordPress credits focus on contributing to WordPress, contributing to the contribution teams, WordPress campus connect and in this case we talk about workshops happening on campus where students learn WordPress skills, WordPress students clubs which is a way to enable students to organize their own event on campus. And so this way we want to encourage the peer-to-peer learning. And then faculty training which is a program uh that aim to enable teachers to run and lead WordPress education programs for their students. Um WordPress credits was launched in um June. Last year it was announced rather than launch in June 2025 at work camp Europe and we had the first pilot with the University of Pisa in Italy. The pilot included only students from translation and communication and we have a few student testing the testing the the curriculum testing uh processes and helping us building the structure itself. Um the main part of this program is that in in addition to teaching students WordPress skills because we help all students um gain basic WordPress skills and setting up for many of them their first website. What we want them to do is to show them that they can train other types of skills by contributing to WordPress. This is why we piloted with the students of translations to show them that hey you might not know that but you can join the WordPress community translate WordPress and see that your translation are immediately available for thousands of users uh using WordPress in your language. So this is uh this is the project we took with this program. Uh it started at the beginning. We launched a 150 hour program and the idea was to facilitate the internship experience for students who are looking for something different. Um we received a great feedback from diverse types of schools. So we started receiving requests for different like to different modules and to adjust to less fewer hours or more hours. So right now we are also piloting a module of 50 hours. So for schools uh colleges that just require students to complete 50 hours of practice within two or three weeks. And so we are we are piloting this format. The students are paired up with mentors from the WordPress community and so they have always somebody with them helping them navigate the contribution uh the contribution spaces because students are requested to be active on Slack of course depending on what type of contributions uh they might be um active on GitHub or on track. So they need uh they need to learn how to jump from one space to another and also how to communicate and work in a remote environment. And what we ask from institutions is to recognize the time that students have spent on this program either as credits or as part of their curriculum. So if a if a college or a school they require students to complete a specific amount of hours on um practice work in exchange for uh for credits. This is a way for them to introduce this program to the students. In other cases, schools are embedding this program into a course already active. So this is this is very flexible. We intentionally build it in a flexible way. So depending on the school needs this could fit in one approach or another. And for the students um the main benefits from mentoring this program is that they would be also trained at different skill sets because the the program is divided into different steps and in every steps there are actions required to students so they can be more prepared to enter the job market once they graduate from from college or from schools. We intentionally ask them to be proactive in taking specific actions. We teach them how to work in a reliable way without micromanaging but also teaching them how in a remote environment in a company um they would be expected to share weekly updates. We request them to to manage their own project. So they learn time management, project management and another other transferable skills that are going to be relevant in their life even if they decide not to continue their career in the WordPress world. I'm going to pause a second in case there were some comments or or question also feel free to unmute yourself or Marin if you want to jump in and stop me. Um and we were just posting the link to the WordPress credits in the chat as well. U one question I had was around um you know at what sort of level like in terms of the program for students what when in their educational journey do you think does this fit best like is this mainly aimed for undergraduates or you know like what when is the what is the level best? >> [sighs] >> um more than a specific level. We're seeing that it experience changes a lot depending on the student mindset. Meaning that if somebody is um proactive or they are okay with like taking step outside their comfort zone and trying to communicate in such this person big environment like the WordPress community this is where they have mo the most benefit because we've also had some very very young students with zero experience with WordPress. doing incredible amazing job with great results. And we've also had um older students with excellent academic careers and yet they faced many challenges because they they couldn't um they couldn't take the step and for example ask a question in a channel on Slack and so they they felt a little bit blocked by okay if my mentor is around and I need something I can proceed and I can progress rest easily, but if I'm left alone, I'm stuck. So, this is Yeah. >> Oh, that's really helpful. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> I I I think I think >> Yeah. I think we also try to uh figure out that first with the in institution when we do an onboarding call with a university or any institution that we start the collaboration try to figure out what would be the best students group the age group to get started with because on on some universities uh the first year for the students can be very busy with on boarding into the the the the courses that they participate in. So we don't want to also add the credit program on top of everything what they they do. So when we do initial calls with those institutions, we try to also figure out the best approach uh when to introduce the program that will work best for them and of course for the students. >> Great. I know Franchesca wants to come in here as well. I'm I like to to to say that this is not only program about WordPress, but it's a program about how to to be in the open source world and how to use tools. So the students are able to use tools like Slack to connect with other people to ask things and to to be involved in a in a big project. So may maybe he start the student starts doing translation that is not WordPress related at all and then they they discover that they are able to to to programming or stuff like that. So this is this is important because it's a kind of big project that grow with the students. It's not only about about WordPress. >> Well, thank you all. That's really helpful. Um I'm hoping if anybody else wants to jump in with a question, they just post it in the chat or raise your hand. But for now, Esot, I'm going to hand back over to you. >> Okay. Thanks. All right. So, let's jump to Campus Connect. Campus Connect is a event series uh supported driven by the WordPress community team. So the same team that supports work camps and meetups. Um this was born by an initiative from the atm community in India back in 2023 when the community was exploring with event organizers what type of types of new event formats could help the community reach new and different audiences that weren't covered almost at all with work camps. And so they they tried out workshops on campus on multiple days uh where the commitment uh with the schools it's a little bit different that what we usually have when we organize a work camp for example on on campus. In this case for campus connect we require a deeper collaboration with the with the teachers and the idea is to provide students with um workshops hands-on activities on campus facilitated by WordPress professionals. It could be uh one day half day or multiple days events. And the idea is from students to be working together and learning from professional. The topics it they may vary because depending on the schools their needs and the students experience with WordPress. It can be a workshop absolutely for beginners or it could be a very advanced one. It depends on the need. um for this type of events uh there to organize and to apply to organize this type of events is not requested. Preview experience organizes WordPress WordPress event. There is an application form to fill um it can be filled by a WordPress organizer who want to organize something locally in their in the college they have collaboration with or it can come from a teacher, somebody who has never been to a war camp. they found out about this opportunity and then can apply. By applying they have the the support of the WordPress community team, meaning that they would receive uh a website, they would receive funding to cover eventual needs to offer, I don't know, a little bit of food, snacks or or drinks for the students during the workshop. And they would also rece all students would also receive if needed a certification of of attendance. And for the institutions uh we want we're trying to encourage and push more institution into organizing a like an official campus connect when they're thinking about offering workshops to the students. also because this is a great uh way to introduce students to like the next steps in their career. So if they are if they are teach learning WordPress fantastic they have a chance to hear from multiple voices they might be um they might be learning from their teachers and additionally WordPress contributors who have been contributing to such a huge program for many years. So this is also a way to offer schools um a way to enhance the quality of uh of the programs and the teaching that is provided to the students. And for students well the feedback that we're getting so far is that first of all it's fun because usually they spend like the normal normal class uh classes at class time is different. So they get to spend time with their peers doing something different, hands-on and also in a very practical and [snorts] fun way. And also um I like that you you mentioned earlier about students competitions because in many cases at the end of this workshop there are also competitions among students and so it becomes also something um a little bit more dynamic than usual uh workshop where somebody's facilitating and others just following along. Um, now I'm gonna stop a second here to see if probably Magic wants to jump in. >> Yes. What is also great is that the campus connect uh goes hand inhand with the credits program uh because it can work both ways. Uh the institution can start with the campus connect event and lay ground for the credits program uh in the future. introduce the students to the credit program which they can start if they express interest and at the same time students who participate in the credit program uh might have a need to actually organize a campus connect event to go deep deeper or explore any particular topic they they would like to dive deeper and thanks to that event and the community engagement we can bring in local community members and specialize in various topics or particular topics the students would like to explore and connect them and build this relationship that uh strengthens those this this bonds with the community and introduces even more the students to the wider WordPress community and the ecosystem. So it's both of them uh working alongside there are various ways um how the students get involved in the the educational initiatives but overall they they they support each other. >> Oh that's really interesting. And Franchesco I know you want to come in as well. So um >> yeah yeah yeah I was um um in next week I will have a campus connect in in Pisa University that maybe can start having uh can transform to have some people some students in WP credits. This is a demonstration how this kind of events are connected. This kind of products sorry are connected because when I go to to a university with a campus connect event I can reach more students and also universities um teachers and uh organizers and admin that can be interested in the credits program. So the campus connect is a kind of uh way to have more people more students in the in WordPress credits. >> Oh, that sounds really interesting. And I'm wondering like because many of our um administrators and and maybe even some here in the room um you know they they are busy people and they have a lot going on each term. So um if they're interested in in learning more sort of how long is the application process and what would you say you know in terms of um like the the time scales how long does it take to kind of organize um something like that typically? >> Well applications are um are vetted and processed by volunteers. So I always recommend to apply with at least 1 month and a half or two months and a half in advance for the the recommendation is 3 weeks. Now being absolutely honest, it's volunteer work. So if you already know that you want to have uh you want to have a a workshop in your classroom on for a specific like you know already right now that you want to have it in June, I would apply the sooner the better because uh most of the work is on the volunteer side rather than the the organizer. Still if all or all applications arrives at the same times and volunteers have to manage by like date h you already know that you're going to you're going to have an event. I would recommend the sooner the better. Um if not in general between five and 3 weeks you should be you should be fine. A good news about it is that we are working different contributors um we are kind of joining forces to see how can we reduce the um the timelines how we can make the application process smoother for those who applies and those who are processing the application because this is a very a very delicate Great uh aspect of organizing event is making sure that whoever is uh representing the WordPress community by organizing event is also somebody who respect and embrace the code of conduct like safety for those who participate in events is a main point. So when uh uh when we only had war camps, one of the requirements for organizing war camps was to have been already an active member of the community. And so it would be okay somebody who already have taken uh trainings on uh like community expectations, the standards um and the code of conduct. Now since we open up to also organize events from people who have never been part of the community uh of course it is important to vet their online presence and ensure that we're not authorizing like approving people to host events under the WordPress community and maybe it turns out that there are people whose their online presence doesn't align with the code of conduct. >> Oh that's a good point. Yeah, I hadn't appreciated that. Thank you for um for telling us more about that. That's really helpful. Um okay, any other questions or comments before we move on to the next initiative? Okay, I think looks like we're good. So, um let's continue and then we'll have a bit more question and answer time at the end as well. >> Okay. Okay, sounds good. So let's move on students clubs. Okay. Uh [snorts] for students club what we what inspired us was uh to allow students to recreate sort of meetups environment. So a place where students would be able to organize events and activities for their peers. So with WordPress credits we see students working uh with experienced contributors campus connect we have professionals facilitators teaching students WordPress with students club we want the students to be the facilitators to be the teachers and at the end to becomes community leaders so be able being able to create and grow their own communities on campus. Um this uh program was launched um at first uh paired with campus connect. So uh in occasion of a campus connect event uh if students were interested they also would have launched a student clubs but then we saw also interest from other institutions and students who didn't need um a workshop at that specific moment but who wanted to uh give it a try and create a club. We're also seeing this on with with a few WordPress credit students. So they joined the community entering from another erh another door and they thought hey but I would love to create a space on campus to share with other students what I'm doing. If there are multiple students from the same uh college they can also gather and work on their WordPress credits program together. And so also as a way for them to um to become leaders or being able to learn and teach um per from peer-to-peer. In this case uh the application is is very easy and the students we require when the contact of one faculty member because also students of course they're at some point they're going to leave uh they're going to graduate. So what we want to ensure is a continuity and uh they get a website of course to create uh to create and brand their clubs to announce their events and for the activities they can do any type of activities uh that they want. Of course, if everything under uh respecting the code of conduct and the nonprofit um the nonprofit goal of of the events for the from the institutions we ask them to provide a space of course for the students to gather >> and I see match face and so I understand [laughter] >> I cannot hold it. Yeah. Because uh what is amazing about the students club it this feels like a very organic and natural form of starting something a group of friends group of people who uh is interested in something and would like to build something together. So this this is a perfect way to get started with uh all the uh educational initiatives. uh they share an interest they would like to work together on uh something. So they uh create a club and then they spread the they they energy around particular project that they decide to work together and the next step is growing all those things bigger. But this is very uh natural process to get uh people together and start working on something amazing in the future. Are there already any um student clubs that have been established or is there's a new initiative? Yes, there are already um I'm going to check the actual number but there should be already between um more than five five to 10 clubs. I'll be able to tell you in a second. Erh but yes this started well campus connect was launched more than one year ago and alongside with campus connect the first clubs started to uh to pop up. So >> Oh wow fantastic. Well, once you check um we have a comment in the chat as well from Alexis who suggested that um these initiatives are could really well align particularly for admins who are using domain of one's own um to kind of explore as an introduction to WordPress when students are learning how to use the NUC panel and also especially for campuses who are having issues with bringing student interest in kind of attracting more student engagement and kind of being a stepping stone for what we call our um domain of one's own zone program. So that sounds really interesting. Thanks Alexis for that comment as well. And um yeah, we did want to mention as well, we um Alexis actually spearheaded like a a women's showcase recently and we have our student showcase coming up that's launching next week and we have a whole range of student projects who I think this could really um work well with. We um we had like a student newspaper for example um that were running um their own kind of newspaper and also um a student project about history um where they were building kind of an archive for their community um as well. So there's a um a whole range of student projects that we've started to showcase and I think the student clubs could be a great way uh for some of these project groups to kind of you know um get more credit for their WordPress activities and kind of come together. So that sounds super interesting for sure. >> Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. >> Oh no, don't worry. I didn't even thought when like all these programs were popping up about um like students journals and uh these type of activities because coming from Italy student clubs and extra like class time activities on campus it's something absolutely uh unfamiliar to me. I started learning more about all these type of activities. Well, one year, two years ago when we were discussing uh these these programs and there are so many like it it blew my mind to see how in different countries students are empowered to create and uh and collaborate together. While in Italy, at least in a public system in Italy, it the system is or was extremely top-down. So you go to school, you stay in class, you listen and then you go home, you study at home alone and then you get back and you take an exam. So I love to see that the situation is completely different in in other countries and there are lots of of opportunities for them and they're actually encouraged to pursue these opportunities. Oh, thank you. Yeah, that's really inspiring. Yeah, I think um we have a couple of student radio um initiatives as well, student newspapers. We had a a site called the diplomacy lab. Um and also um as I say, a few other uh projects around accessibility and and students teaching other students. Um, so I think there's definitely some um some opportunities to approach projects um who to learn more about these initiatives. So that sounds exciting. Um, awesome. Okay, so thanks everybody for comments and questions. Um, have we got one more initiatives to cover? Is that right? >> Yes. Yes, we have. I dropped a message in the chat because I checked and I have to correct myself because we currently have 14 student clubs active. So this is uh this is way more than what I mentioned at first. Okay. So let's cover the last point. Faculty training. This is a brand new program. It was launched in the past weeks and the goal of the program is to enable teachers to run and lead WordPress official WordPress communities initiatives on campus or with their students. So basically um they go through a training divided into different topics. So they can learn about contributing to WordPress if this something that they are new to. They learn how these the different programs works deeply. So the the different the differences between campus connect student clubs, WordPress credits. Um the goal is for them to understand what could be a better fit for the students or depending on their needs, the different needs of the students, what type of programs they could uh they could start offering them and also of course a way for all teachers out there who are interested in collaborating more with the WordPress community to also enter more active actively the community spaces if they are already teaching ing WordPress, but maybe they're not on Slack. So, they're not on the WordPress community Slack and they're not uh they're not talking, chatting, contributing, and creating with with other contributors. This is uh this was the last program launched and also the idea is to bring in more teachers who are already teaching WordPress to their students and help them find new ways to keep doing their work of course and and find inspiration also from what others have been doing and hopefully also help bringing together more teachers around this program so they can also uh share feedback uh learn from each other get inspired. I'm going to stop in case there are any question or anybody else wants to jump jump in. Well, I'm sure um Taylor might have some questions here because the uh educator uh training is one of the things we're really interested in and you know we want to really promote. But I was very excited um about the the range of topics covered and um yeah that sounds fantastic and you say this is a a new initiative alto together like I um I was just checking out the link that Mark puts posted in the chat and there's a lot of um new offering there. >> Yeah. Um I'm sure if I'm going to wait in case match or Franchesco wants to jumps in. If not, I'm going to >> um Yeah. So, basically the link that I shared is part of one of those pathways that is presented in the um um facilitator training because there are two two uh ways how to um get engaged in that. One pathway is the safe uh uh guided course that I shared the wing uh link to. The other one is someone that has already existing knowledge and like would would like to um share their area of expertise and get connected with us and also help us to with all those educational initiatives. >> Yeah. [snorts and clears throat] Um thanks Met. Uh about the the course, yes, it is brand new. uh it was launched a few weeks ago and we started collecting content and think about the possible structure uh and the goal um of this course when we saw that the other education programs were growing fast. So we thought about um solving two future needs. Once what happens if we keep getting students, more students, more students, more student and there are no more volunteers around. So the community is huge but it's not uh it's not endless. So what if in 6 months in 12 months we're going to have not 300 students on WordPress credits but 10,000 at the same time and what if there are institutions wanting to or students requesting to have more workshops we need to find a way to enable more people running these these programs worldwide. So on one on one hand >> [snorts] >> um all the I'm going to sorry I'm going to uh stop sharing I'm going to share in another tab. Okay going to share this tab so you can see what I'm looking at. So the course as you can see it's very complete and it covers everything that a person who doesn't know yet how to lead any of these programs needs to know needs to learn in order to start uh to start offering this to the students. So on one side we were thinking about okay the sustainability of the education programs on the other end we were thinking okay what if there is a college out there who like where teachers and the organization they really want to run these programs but they don't want necessarily to uh be told when they should start who are going to mentor them or if their students have needs that we don't know about and so they prefer the students to work only within like a specific circle of people. Okay, this is this is completely fine but how can they do it if they don't know how to guide the students or how to lead this this initiative. >> [snorts] >> Um this program is uh of course uh it's long is detailed and it covers everything that is needed starting from okay open source what is open source what are the main um like the philosophy the collaboration how does uh governance works in open source and in the WordPress project what is WordPress they're going to see WordPress related skills they're going to learn about contrib contributing to WordPress um the education programs their impact what their aim to what are the results that we're seeing from this and then they're going to deep dive into each program of course we expect diverse um type of profiles to come in here so if you're if you're a teacher and you already work with WordPress you know what is open source you know WordPress skills okay you can just skip the part that are not relevant to you and jump to what you want to uh what you want to learn. You don't have to do all the models at once. You can start with what interests you the most right now and then in six months in four months you want to okay uh learning more about another program. Okay, you can go there and just cover the part that interests most you. Okay, I'm going to going to get back to to the presentation. But uh that was it. Uh we we covered why this program are important, what they bring to students and also to the teachers involved. And at the end here, we already shared all the links, but in case anybody want to take a picture of here, we have uh the same links that Marin share in the shared in the chat. So, thank you so much. >> Oh, fantastic. Oh, thank you everybody. Um Taylor, sorry you were jumping in there. >> Oh, yeah. I just I I had a couple questions. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Um this is a really amazing uh program to hear about. Um and I'm I'm kind of curious um uh kind of my main question and is I'm curious about if you can share anything around sort of um sort of goals for the program in terms of like I understand kind of some of the like what you're hoping folks can get from it. That makes sense to me. But I do I'm kind of curious about the scale you all are kind of hoping for with this because um I think that kind of I don't know if you have any like literal numbers or things you can share or whatever but but yeah I'm just kind of curious about that because I see some folks um you know the the uh participating institutions right now but I that's that's kind of um one thing that is um interesting to me is how do you all um imagine that might uh scale over multiple campuses and things like that. >> Of course, this is a very relevant question. Um for WordPress credits, at the end of last year, we set a goal for our team to reach by the end of 2026 at least 22 institution globally. Er, we were probably miscalculating because we we are already we already have almost well 20 not almost we already have 20 institution confirmed and it's only April um but more than numbers actually because at first we focused a lot on numbers of institutions number of students number of hours of contribution put into the program and now we are reconsidering a bit not like like numbers of course are important. We still want to reach more students and also have um have the program active in different regions. But we're also trying to when I say we in this case I talk I refer to the admin of the program and also the whole team of mentors. We have more than 60 mentors collaborating and with us and following students and so we are trying to understand better what are the types of contributions that are meaningful to the students and to the WordPress project more than just okay pure hours because you can be in a space for 10 hours and have an impact an enormous impact on so many people or in so many aspects. of the project and you can also stay around 500 hours and just be there but not being active. So this is this is one of the points that we are currently learning from and we're trying to figure it out how ours can translate into meaningful contribution to WordPress itself. But I see that Franchesco wanted to to add something. So I'm going to >> yeah sorry I was I'm only want to say that uh the most important thing is that some of our students that already finished our course are contributing in organizing events. H I have a students that finished the course and now are organizing work camps and are in the organizing team of work camps that or other students that are still contributing to to our community translating or uh doing uh um social uh uh stuff for our event. So as I is says most important thing is that people stay around the community even if they finish the course. It's the the the goal of this kind of uh um organization and now we are we are having this kind of students that even they finished are still around our community >> and uh th those students will also help us to shape the future of the project uh because they allow us to stay relevant up to date with what's happening. um they bring new perspective, new approaches, completely different mindset to how to organize the community or how things function. So uh not only they learn from us uh about how the community works functions but uh we also learn from them a lot how to adjust and modify and grow the community so it stays current and relevant and it's keeps the project basically alive. >> Yeah, that's amazing. It might even be kind of cool to over time kind of keep track of of sort of student contributions to this actual initi like itself. Not even the broader which is obviously the whole point but um you know sort of in in an open ed education kind of way of you know have we had people contribute to the course and learning materials and things as well. >> Well, we're nearly out of time. Um, so this is the the moment to ask any final questions or comments and also give our panelists an opportunity. But I just wanted to say thank you. It's it's been so inspiring to hear about these initiatives and you know all of us working to engage the coming generations in open practice, opensource technologies. you know, um whenever Taylor runs workshops around things, um well, we're hoping to get, you know, the next generation um literate in digital um ways of being open and being safe. We always kind of really appreciate hearing from other initiatives and kind of hoping we can promote those as well. And I'm sure everybody in the room feels that as well. So, any final comments, Taylor? Any last bits from you before we just give a round of applause and and draw things to a close? No, I don't think so. I just thanks so much um to our uh uh folks from the WordPress Foundation who were able to join us today. Really appreciate it. >> Yeah, >> thanks so much. >> And thank you everybody who's tuned in and learn the live recording. If you are here, you can find your applause emoji so we can show some digital appreciation. And um yeah, we just want to say thank you to Franchesco Naut and thank you so much for joining us guys. It's been really fantastic to have you with us. >> Thank you for having us. >> Thank you for for having us.