Simon Pollard has built a long career around WordPress and community organising in Bristol. Originally from Devon, he worked across several UK cities before settling at Illustrate Digital in 2020. In Bristol he helped grow a casual pub meetup into an organised, officially backed WordPress group with dozens attending monthly meetups, food sponsored by local companies, a bank account, a Trello board to manage events, and a welcoming team that made newcomers feel at home.
Early growth came through outreach on Twitter and Facebook, word of mouth, and help from people in the wider WordPress ecosystem. Finding speakers was a recurring challenge; organisers stepped in to present when needed. The meetup’s warmth and approachable atmosphere—name badges, volunteers greeting new arrivals, connecting people by skill or need—made it more than a series of talks. People came as much for the community as for the content, staying afterwards to debrief, ask follow-up questions, and build lasting professional relationships.
Then COVID hit. In-person events stopped almost overnight. Simon and many organisers lacked the appetite, technology, or bandwidth to pivot to virtual meetups, and the group’s activity dwindled. For Simon personally, a new baby and family responsibilities shifted priorities, and he found social outlet in a local band rather than meetups. Attempts to hand the meetup over to new organisers had mixed success; some tried and failed, while others later resurrected the group. Recently Simon returned to a meetup and found a smaller but familiar and friendly crowd—proof the community had not vanished, only contracted.
A key problem since the pandemic is fragmentation of online social spaces. Pre-COVID, Twitter served as the town square for many WordPressers and meetup organisers: public posts, retweets, and account management made promotion and networking straightforward. Since then many people have left or reduced use of those platforms and scattered to different networks, making it harder to reach old contacts or promote events consistently. Simon found invites and notices arriving on disparate platforms he barely recognises; he’s active mostly on LinkedIn now and isn’t sure where the best place is to reconnect people at scale.
This fragmentation ties into broader shifts in how people seek help and learn. Historically developers used forums, blogs, and Stack Overflow—public, attributable places where knowledge and reputation were visible. Contributing answers built community standing and direct human connections. Today, AI tools can provide immediate answers without attribution, reducing the impetus to seek out or credit the person behind a solution. That convenience risks substituting human interaction with a text response that leaves no social trail to create relationships.
Simon and Nathan reflect that in-person meetups and WordCamps fostered a type of connective tissue crucial to WordPress’s growth. Meetups helped people share knowledge, find collaborators, recruit teammates, and feel part of a broader project. The warmth of a person-to-person encounter—unstructured chats after a talk, the ability to follow up in private—cannot easily be replicated by asynchronous posts or AI replies. For freelancers and small teams, these contacts often translate into problem-solving help, referrals, and partnerships.
So what can revival look like? The community appears smaller and in flux, but not dead. Ideas to adapt include:
– Emphasise the social and welcoming aspects: name badges, greeters, and active introductions help newcomers feel included and encourage networking.
– Broaden meetup content beyond strictly technical WordPress talks. Creative talks (animation, design, soft skills, related tech) can draw a wider audience and spark cross-disciplinary conversations.
– Combine formats: socials, live music, small performances, or other cultural elements can make events more appealing in a world saturated with on-demand entertainment.
– Offer multiple touchpoints: keep meetup pages, mailing lists, and at least one reliable social channel updated so people know how to stay in touch between events.
– Consider scaled WordCamps: a smaller, single-track or simplified WordCamp might better match current attendance patterns while preserving concentrated community connection.
Simon gives examples: bringing in diverse speakers like Gavin Strange from Aardman, whose talks weren’t WordPress-specific but resonated because they were creative and energetic; and the possibility of integrating local musicians—many WordPress community members are musicians—into events to add atmosphere and draw interest.
Both agree the loss of a centralized “town square” means organisers must be intentional about reconnection. That includes thinking about how to attract younger people who grew up on platforms like TikTok and may not instinctively value a meetup, and how to compete with the constant pull of streaming entertainment and always-on screens. The goal isn’t necessarily to recreate the exact pre-2020 scale, but to rebuild sustainable, meaningful in-person opportunities that offer unique value compared to online alternatives: real conversation, serendipitous introductions, and the warmth of a room of peers.
Where to find Simon: he works at Illustrate Digital (illustrate.digital) and is most reachable via LinkedIn.
