Oof! That sounds hard PJ. I’m especially disappointed to hear about your Meetup. Do you know if this “meetup” is covered by the WordPress Foundation? (IE> Does it show up in your WordPress dashboard?)

Before WordPress, I was always part of an active community, online and offline.

Since I’ve been using WordPress, I have literally never been able to find any type of “community” at all, yet I’m constantly hearing that phrase.

I tried the local official WordPress meetup, but it was 100% controlled by one guy who dominated everything and used it as a purely money-making activity for himself. This was in a major urban area. A “meetup” consisted of him charging admission and then giving a lackluster “presentation”. I tried to start a second, alternative WordPress Meetup in the area, but that person didn’t like it and did everything he could to stop it.

I went to WordCamp — fun and interesting for a few hours, but nothing came of it.

Back in the day, I had been part of a vibrant, very real online web developer community based on NNTP forums, the kind of forums that actually technically lend themselves to community. (Methods of group communication these days — primarily social media — seem so crude and backward in comparison!) I had close friends, got major jobs, and shared weddings and funerals with the community.

I’ve never come near anything that even approaches what I would call “community” with WordPress. I think it’s a myth for 95% of those working with WP, and sort of wish people would stop insisting that it exists.