Contributor stories: discover your place in the global WordPress community

For many contributors, their journey into the welcoming and energetic WordPress community begins at a WordCamp.

Being part of a global experience

For Jeroen Rotty, his WordCamp adventure started in 2016 by going to the event in Antwerp. He said:

I fell in love with the WordPress community on the first day! Since then, I have tried to visit many camps and I love contributor days. Learning stuff from others or teaching someone else how to contribute is amazing.

Learning stuff from others or teaching someone else how to contribute is amazing
@jeroenrotty (Belgium)

He has become an active member of the Polyglot Team and was involved in WordPress Translation Days. He helps organise WordCamps and sharing his enthusiasm for collaborating with others on the global project. He also contributes to the support and community teams, and has started discovering the documentation team.

WordCamps spark ideas for how you can contribute

Miriam Schwab has travelled to take part in a number of WordCamps across the world. She discovered that contributing to the project was for everyone working with WordPress.

One year I finally found the guts to attend Contributor Day, and it was the best!
@miriamschwab (Israel)

She said:

One year I finally found the guts to attend Contributor Day, and it was the best. Turns out I did have lots to contribute, and I loved being part of small working groups. I eventually even helped lead a Contributor Day working group at WordCamp London!

It can be an exciting journey from initially finding your area of interest, to starting to contribute to that and helping further extend the software and its community. Through WordCamps and contributor events, sharing this experience with others can make it easier to find your first steps and to inspire others.

Miriam has contributed to the hosting workgroups at a number of WordCamps and encourages others to find their areas of interest through contributor events.

Attending a WordCamp could change your life

Marcel Bootsman’s journey began with attending his first event in 2010, and nine years later he undertook a big challenge to raise money to help others attend WordCamp Europe.

Contributing allows me to interact with people from across the world and be connected to a great community
@mbootsman (The Netherlands)

He said:

Somewhere in 2010 I read a tweet about a thing called ‘WordCamp The Netherlands’. I bought a ticket and went there. Not to sound dramatic, but this decision changed my life, in a very, very good way.

The first WordPress community member he was greeted by was Remkus de Vries who welcomed and chatted with him. Looking back, this was the moment I joined the WordPress community,” said Marcel.

He added:

I felt welcome, saw and met people I ‘knew’ from Twitter and from companies that were in the WordPress ecosystem.

From these first few steps, Marcel joined the translation team for the Dutch language. He then started to assist in the support forum, helped organise WordPress Meetup Rotterdam and WordCamps in the Netherlands, Europe and Rotterdam. In 2020, he led the organising team for WordCamp The Netherlands.

Marcel has presented at a few WordCamps too, sharing his professional knowledge and enthusiasm for the community. Last year, he even walked more than 700 kilometres to Berlin from his home town in the Netherlands to raise money for DonateWC.

Contributing allows me to interact with people from across the world, inspire and get inspired, make a living with WordPress-related services and most of all, be connected to a great community.

He contributes to the WordPress.org polyglots, community and support teams.

How can you contribute to WordPress?

Feeling inspired and want to find out more about contributing? Our featured contributors in this edition have supported the work of many teams including the ones listed below.

You can discover the full list of teams that together ‘make’ WordPress and why contributing to WordPress benefits everyone.

You can also use the Contributor Orientation Tool to discover a team to join and start your contributor journey. You could be a future #ContributorStory we feature.