WordPress Community Events Dashboard

A management view of the WordPress community events program: meetups, WordCamps, and the WordCamp application pipeline. Built for DotOrg / Comet + Orion.

This is deliberately not a copy of events.wordpress.org. That site is the public directory of what's on. This dashboard shows the three things a public listing structurally cannot: the application pipeline (what's in flight and where it's stuck), the decay (dormant groups, the US-at-zero), and the trend/synthesis (2018→2026 trajectory, bench renewal).

🌐 Published publicly via GitHub Pages at https://wordpress.github.io/wp-events-dashboard/. The dashboard data in this repo has been cleared for public release. Note that live API credentials (api/meetup_secrets.json, api/wccentral_secrets.json) remain git-ignored and must never be committed.

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How it stays up to date

A GitHub Action (.github/workflows/refresh.yml) runs every night at 03:13 UTC, and can also be run by hand from the Actions tab. It:

1. Pulls the Meetup network (api/pull_meetup.py).
2. Pulls the WordCamp application counts per stage from Central (api/pull_pipeline.py --funnel).
3. Reads Central's public WordCamp Status report for this year's monthly flow (api/pull_status_report.py). No credential needed.
4. Merges everything into dashboard_data.json (assemble.py), including a live read of Central's public events feed.
5. Rebuilds the page (build_dashboard.py), copies it to index.html, and commits if anything changed. GitHub Pages redeploys on that commit.

Credentials live only in the repo's Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions. Each pull step is skipped if its secret is missing, and the dashboard keeps the last data.

What still needs a person: the Pipeline tab's event-by-event list. The nightly job's Application Password can count applications in each stage but can't read them, so that list comes from a manual pull in a logged-in Central session (step 5 below). The monthly momentum chart used to come from the same pull; it now updates nightly from the public status report. Until someone runs it, assemble.py carries the last pull forward. The page footer shows the date of each source, and marks the pipeline detail "(manual)" when it's older than the counts.

The bench-renewal numbers on the Events & WordCamps tab come from Central's Counts report, which no script reads yet, so they stay at their last manual value.

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Setup

0. Just want to look at it?

No setup needed. The dashboard is one self-contained file:

open events-dashboard.html

It opens in any browser, works offline, and already contains a data snapshot. The nightly job keeps the published copy fresh, so everything below is only for running a refresh yourself: testing a change locally, or doing the one manual step.

1. Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+ (the pull scripts and build_dashboard.py use only the standard library, nothing to pip install).
• To refresh the meetup feed: a Meetup Pro API credential (JWT) for the official WordPress chapter.
• To refresh the events/pipeline feed: a WordCamp Central account with (a) an Application Password and (b) the ability to log in to central.wordcamp.org in a browser.

2. Clone

git clone git@github.com:WordPress/wp-events-dashboard.git
cd wp-events-dashboard

3. Add your credentials (git-ignored, never committed)

cp api/meetup_secrets.example.json      api/meetup_secrets.json
cp api/wccentral_secrets.example.json   api/wccentral_secrets.json

Then edit each:

• api/meetup_secrets.json — fill in the Meetup JWT fields (see api/API_SETUP.md).
• api/wccentral_secrets.json — your central.wordcamp.org username and an Application Password (generate at central.wordcamp.org → your Profile → Application Passwords).

4. Pull the feeds

python3 api/pull_meetup.py     # -> data.js + history.json   (needs meetup_secrets.json)
python3 api/pull_events.py     # -> event counts             (no auth)
python3 api/pull_pipeline.py --funnel   # -> funnel counts into history.json (needs wccentral_secrets.json)
python3 api/pull_status_report.py       # -> status_report.json, this year's momentum (no auth)

The nightly job runs pull_meetup.py and pull_pipeline.py --funnel. pull_events.py isn't needed for the dashboard itself, since assemble.py reads Central's public events feed directly.

5. The one manual step: pipeline detail + momentum

The active-funnel record detail (which specific ~100 events are in flight) can't be read with the Application Password, so it comes from a logged-in Central browser session, using an account that can edit WordCamp posts:

1. Log in to https://central.wordcamp.org and open any wp-admin page.
2. Open the browser console, paste the whole of api/pull_funnel_detail.js, and press Enter. It downloads funnel_detail.json.
3. Move that file into the repo root and run python3 api/merge_funnel_detail.py funnel_detail.json.
4. Commit dashboard_data.json and push. The next nightly run (or a manual run of the Action) rebuilds the page.

merge_funnel_detail.py keeps only fields that are safe to publish, so no organizer names end up in the public data. The snippet also produces momentum counts, but the next nightly run replaces them with the status report's. Weekly at most is plenty.

6. Assemble and build

python3 assemble.py            # merges the feeds into dashboard_data.json
python3 build_dashboard.py     # renders it

build_dashboard.py reads dashboard_data.json and writes:

• events-dashboard.html — standalone, double-click to open
• events-dashboard.artifact.html — body-only variant, originally made for publishing as a Claude Artifact

7. Publish (GitHub Pages)

The dashboard is served publicly at https://wordpress.github.io/wp-events-dashboard/. Pages serves index.html from the repo root, which is a copy of the latest events-dashboard.html. The nightly job does this copy and commit for you. To publish sooner, run the Action by hand from the Actions tab rather than committing a local build, since the bot commits to main every night and a hand-built copy can collide with it.

In the repo, Settings → Pages → Build and deployment → Deploy from a branch → main / root enables hosting.

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How the data is wired

dashboard_data.json is the single input build_dashboard.py renders. assemble.py builds it every night from the Meetup pull (data.js), the pipeline counts (history.json), the momentum from the status report (status_report.json) and a live read of Central's public events feed. A few pieces it can't recompute are carried over from the previous dashboard_data.json: the SVG map land outline, the bench-renewal numbers, and the manually pulled pipeline detail. The top-level dates object records when each source was last refreshed, and the page footer shows it.

The four tabs

• Overview — definitions + headline numbers across all three domains.
• Pipeline — the WordCamp application funnel (~100 events in flight), where each is stuck, monthly momentum, and the outreach list. The unique value.
• Meetups — 704 groups on a world map by activity, the recency curve, and the biggest groups that went quiet (reactivation targets).
• Events & WordCamps — bench renewal, the events map, by-year / by-country / by-format. Delegates "what's on" to events.wordpress.org.

Design notes

• Palette follows wordpress.org: WordPress blue #3858E9 on a light white-gray ground (#F6F7F7), white cards, near-black ink (#1E1E1E), hairline borders (#DCDCDE), serif display.
• Maps are self-contained inline SVG (equirectangular projection, land outline baked in), not Leaflet — a published Claude Artifact blocks external tiles, CDN scripts, and web fonts.
• Light theme is forced via CSS custom-property tokens (data-theme="light" on <html>); the dashboard does not follow system dark mode.

Lesson worth keeping

For a point-in-time report (like a midpoint post), freeze a dated snapshot and build charts + prose from it. WordCamp Central is live, so small day-to-day changes (105 → 107 events) otherwise read as false "drift."

Open tasks for whoever adopts this

1. Remove the manual browser pull (step 5) so the event-by-event pipeline list refreshes nightly too. The public status report can't carry it: not every status change is logged there, so about a quarter of the list would show the wrong stage.
2. Read the bench-renewal numbers from a source a script can reach, or label them as a dated snapshot on the page.
3. Add GatherPress (events.wordpress.org) as a fourth feed when it goes live; the data model is source-agnostic.