5000 miles away from home

4 days ago I boarded an AirFrance flight from Cancún to Paris that took me across the ocean under 10 hours. This is my 3rd WordCamp. I have ben doing this for 6 months now, and I am loving it.

First things first

I want to thank a bunch of people for all of their help and support over the last couple of days. Thanks to Josepha, Andrea, and Rocio for answering all of my questions during the Community Summit –a couple of days before the event–. Thanks to Kevin, Andrea, and Bridget for their help and orientation on the Contribuitors Day. Thanks to Ian and Corey for helping me getting my Meta environment set up. Thanks again to Rocio, for all her invaluable help, and also for her hard work along with Jenny‘s and all the other organizers and volunteers that make the WordCamp Europe possible.

It’s all about the community

Matt’s presentation –The State of the Word 2016– really made an impression on me. So much so that I just couldn’t simply stop and let go after the event. I was sold on the idea of giving back to the community, so I decided to start the WordPress Meetup in Cancún –Yes I do live in Cancún. Mostly–. My experience doing this has not been very successful so far. But this does nothing to discourage me from keeping on. I made a commitment –with myself– to help as many people as possible who want to use WordPress to accomplish their goals –I intend to keep it–. Spending the last couple of days, with people from all over the world who have or have had similar problems to grow their community, and getting more people involved in the project, is enlightening and electrifying.

What I have learned so far

Zig Ziglar used to say

People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Looking back at this, I can tell you now. All the efforts you make to grow your community have to be around what is more important to the other people in the community –not you, really in this case me–. I am capable of teaching anyone in the community what they need to know to accomplish their goals using WordPress. However, this fact alone doesn’t qualify me to determine what is more important for the community. I need to talk to people in the community and listen to what they have to say and what their motivations are. This is very clear to me now, but it wasn’t before. As you read the article you may say, “this is common sense”. My answer to that would be to still Voltaire‘s words when he said

Common sense is not so common

And even if I misunderstood how to grow the community a couple months ago, I think I have a better grasp at it now. After all I’m just a soul who’s intentions are good. This realization, this new point of view, comes from experiencing it first hand at WordCamp Europe. People from nearly every corner of the world has listened to me, and have helped me to better understand how to reach and connect with you –hopefully–.