I was going to write a straightforward account of the group but it has turned into a reflection on the value of sharing.

Last evening Tuesday the 1st of April I attended an informal meeting of the recently constituted WordPress group at the King William Ale House in King Street, Bristol. I saw it advertised on the dashboard page of this site.

Normally I ignore all meetings but this one jumped out at me and as I’m sure you’re sick of my telling you it’s always because I feel drawn by some mysterious gravitational force to attend. I do not discover the puporse until I actually show up.

To Bristolians, my home town of Midsomer Norton is on another planet and I did indeed have to leave early to catch the last bus back from where I had parked in Faringdon Gurney.

I love entering a room to find complete strangers because I see them as ‘friends that I have not yet become acquainted with’ and it is an extension of my policy of speaking to anyone with a pulse that I meet in public and who displays the slightest sign of animation.

I’m not being snobby here, it’s just that I like to see the light of humanity in someone’s eyes before it is worth engaging with them and when I say ‘worth’ I mean this is worth my time but also theirs. In other words I want to feel that as a result of our dialogue no matter how fleeting it is they have benefited or gained in some way and I have reminded them of what it is to be a human being with  a unique skill-set.

I know that sounds a tall order but that’s what I do on a daily basis and though I say so myself with not much modesty I’m rather good at what I do.  I have learned to avoid people who will not respond; 90% of the giveaway features are in the body language.

Anyway to come back to the meeting.

There were about a dozen of us and after some introduction of the history,  each person was invited to say how they came across WordPress.

NB As of 2025, there are about 1.2 billion websites on the web of which more than 472 million sites use WordPress but I think that is a conservative estimate. Let’s say ‘a lot’.

WordPress is primarily a community made up of the combined voluntary efforts of many people to produce a user friendly Internet friendly framework in which those who want to buy or sell or announce anything can do so without a vast expenditure of money and time.

The average age of the people at the meeting was I guess 35 years of age and many had been involved in the WordPress movement for over 10 years. We heard accounts of the development of CSS, HTML and the roles they had historically taken. CSS has an old-fashioned ring about it.

CSS stands for ‘cascading style sheets’ for styling web pages and is used for specifying the presentation and styling of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML

CSS is a cornerstone technology of the world wide web. I am not a techie or a web developer, so CSS doesn’t really mean much to me. All I want to do is to find a framework which I can populate as I’m doing now with this entry, and get help when I need it.

My other major sites are www.5Gexposed.com and covid-unmasked.net. They are ridiculously large and it would take a saint working full-time to explore their full possibilities but then I am a data person and I always will be. 

My way of serving the world is to spread information so people can make up their own minds. I am an observer more than an activist.

At this meeting, Janice the chairperson chose to get us introduced by asking us questions about ourselves which we shared with the others.

1. name 
2. employment employed our self-employed
3. How long have you been working with WordPress if you are
4. How you became involved with WordPress in the first instance
5. Is there anything you really want to learn
6. Watch your favorite thing about WordPress
7. What’s the one WordPress tool or plugin you couldn’t live without? 

People did rise to the occasion and kept their contributions brief. It is possible for a certain personality type to start telling their life story but the way the questions were constructed discouraged this.

In a small group you have to balance formality and informality and I think the chair in this case got it right. It is so easy to stray off the subject and get involved in detail when in fact this was an overview meeting where we could get an impression of the diversity of the potential contributions that we could expect from each individual member.

I remarked that even amongst a small number of 12 of us there was considerable expertise and numerous potential useful connections. If each one of us knows three useful people that means a potential network of 48 people and if they are in the spirit of sharing that is a formidable community network as it existed today never mind growing the numbers.

There can never be too much networking.

There is always a concern about where an idea will go or if it has ‘legs’. I feel that the universe looks after this and if an idea has reached its time then nothing will stop it, and if there is no need it will fade away without anyone losing any dignity.

Locally the Bristol WordPress group was one of the largest in the area but covid when it came along distracted people in many ways through financial problems, health problems, family problems and straightforward illness.

This is an effort involving the Phoenix rising from the Ashes. The next meeting will take place in another venue with more people attending and who knows we could turn back the clock and see a resurgence of the free and freedom based covid WordPress spirit living and active in Bristol.

I am and always have been a great ideas person. If I could have ideas for breakfast, I would. I had to restrain myself at the meeting from saying ideas as they occurred to me knowing that it is important to create a balance for everyone to have their say. 

Everyone should be encouraged to speak out even if their idea is in a formation stage and is not complete i.e. work in progress. That is nothing to be ashamed of. You’ve got to start somewhere.

You can play ‘pass the parcel’ with an idea and it could just turn into something special.

The next scheduled meeting in Bristol is on Tuesday 6 May and the topic is “How AI is shaping the future of professional web development”

Another link is here
https://mastodon.social/@BristolWPMeetup