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Issue #13
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This week in WordPress

"We stand with #WCAsia"

"I've arrived at the difficult decision to cancel the inaugural WordCamp Asia event," writes WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg, announcing on the WordPress.org blog that WordCamp Asia has been cancelled due to COVID-19. He says despite the excitement around the event, which was to be held from 21-23 February, "there are too many unknowns around the health issues unfolding right now in the region to explicitly encourage a large public gathering bringing together over 1,300 people from around the world."

WordCamp organisers globally shown their support, including WordCamp US, WordCamp Nordic, and 71 volunteers from WordCamp Europe who have signed An Open Letter from Past and Present WordCamp Organisers.

Some attendees have already made the trip to Bangkok while others have bought non-refundable flights. "You may request for refunds for your WordCamp Asia tickets from now until 21 March 2020," tweets WordCamp Asia. Attendees can also get free tickets for next year's event.

Organiser and Automattic Globalizer Naoko Takano has published a bittersweet WordCamp Asia 2020 "Recap." For more as the story develops, Justin Tadlock is keeping on top of things in WordCamp Asia 2020 Canceled Over COVID-19 Concerns for WP Tavern.

The unfortunate saga has shone a light on the good in the WordPress community. Wordfence has announced a WordCamp Asia Cancellation Fee Assistance Package.
Founder and CEO Mark Maunder tweets it will provide "a fund of $10,000 immediately to assist the community with airline and hotel change fees. We are a global community, we stand with #WCAsia in making this tough call, we will do our part."
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Since Wordfence's announcement, GoDaddy Pro, Yoast and ServMask have each pledged $10,000 to the cause, bringing the total fund available to help those affected by the cancellation to $40,000. Already in Bangkok? MailPoet is organizing an unofficial WC Asia Meetup.

Pagely's Lizzie Kardon vs wage inequality

"Yes I only have 31 Twitter followers but I just started this doc today and hundreds of #womenintech have already submitted their salary info. We are stronger together!" tweets Pagely's Head of Content and Engagement Lizzie Kardon, who created a spreadsheet for women in tech to openly and anonymously share their salaries in the hopes of closing the wage gap. More than 1000 women have contributed to it in just four weeks.

Lizzie's been featured on Business Insider about how she is helping women in tech find out how much they're making compared to their male coworkers. She tells Women's Agenda that after calculating the entrants on the spreadsheet, the average woman tech worker is being underpaid as much as $10,000 per year. This week she was interviewed by NBC on the TODAY Show.

"Maybe it's the fresh air of a new decade or the fact that I'm sick of hearing how my female peers are underpaid, but my Salary Transparency project came to life to illuminate the pay gap we're still seeing in 2020 as women in tech," writes Lizzie on the Pagely blog.

WordPress 5.4 Beta ready

WordPress 5.4 Beta 1 is ready for testing and feedback, writes Justin Tadlock for WP Tavern. There's lots to look out for, including the merger of 10 releases of the Gutenberg plugin. There are also developer changes to do with new and deprecated functions. As Automattic Design Director Mark Uraine shared on the Make WordPress Core blog, the Gutenberg navigation block has been excluded from this release.

"This is very cool. I reported on @Coywolf last August that Chrome added native lazy-loading... In October 2019, @wp_rocket added it to their plugin. Now @WordPress 5.4 will use it. 🙌" tweets Coywolf Founder Jon Henshaw.
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