WordCamp Central

Multi-Event WordCamp Sponsorship Program

andreamiddleton — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 22:23:22 +0000

Do you love sponsoring WordCamps? Perhaps you love it so much that you wish you could sponsor every WordCamp on the planet. If so, you’ll probably want to look over our new Multi-Event WordCamp Sponsorship Program, a new way for companies to sponsor multiple WordCamps even more easily. We’re excited to roll this program out for the second quarter of 2013, which starts… Monday!

Huge props to the events group that helped draft this program: Al Davis, Kevin Cristiano, Jared Smith, and Marissa Rosen. And to the sponsors of every WordCamp, thank you for helping us make great WordPress events possible.

WordCamp SF dates announced

andreamiddleton — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 23:00:25 +0000

WordCamp SF has been scheduled for July 26-27, with a developer’s hack day on July 28, 2013. The event will be held at Mission Bay Conference Center again this year, and as the annual WordPress conference, will surely feature some of the best WordCamp speakers known to humankind.

A Call for Speakers and a call for speaker nominations have been published, so don’t delay! Help us create the best WordCamp SF to date by telling us who you’d like to see at the podium.

Reviewing WordCamp Guidelines

andreamiddleton — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 23:27:49 +0000

Current WordCamp guidelines were published in April of 2011 and haven’t changed since. We’ve had nearly two years to observe what’s been working, what needs clarification, and what might need a tweak. A working group to review WordCamp guidelines was announced in December of 2012, and has drafted a survey for past WordCamp organizers to share their experiences with the guidelines.

The deadline for response to this survey is February 28, 2013. At the end of the data collection period, the working group will create a prioritized list of current guidelines that are pain points, identifying why they are pain points and for whom.

They’ll go on to compare each pain point to the reason behind the associated guideline, and analyze the most efficient way to ease the pain while still solving the issue the guideline was introduced to solve, for the community’s maximum benefit. After that, they’ll draft a plan for revised guidelines for review by team reps.

If you are a WordCamp organizer and have NOT received an invitation to take the Review Guidelines Survey, please comment on this post, and they’ll send you the link. All members of a WordCamp organizing team can take the survey, but the survey is restricted to past or present WordCamp organizers. It’s not required, but at the end of the survey, the group does ask for an email address so they can contact respondents directly with further questions.

Updates to this project will be posted at Making WordPress Events – if you’re involved in organizing any kind of WordPress event, I highly recommend following that blog.

WordCamps in 2012

andreamiddleton — Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:29:46 +0000

Another year gone by, and my how the WordCamp program has grown! As you will see below, a total of 67 WordCamps were organized this year by volunteers in communities all over the world. The fairly even split between WordCamps inside the US and outside the US has stayed about the same, and we still average about 250 attendees per event. There were 22 WordCamps in cities or countries that had never had a WordCamp before.

This year, we also expanded the video camera kit program, which ships video camera equipment from WordCamp to WordCamp, to reduce the cost of recording WordCamp sessions. We now have 8 kits in the US, 3 kits in Canada, and 2 kits in Europe. Related: 445 WordCamp videos were posted to WordPress.tv in 2012, almost double the number from 2011. That’s a huge amount of free WordPress content available to anyone, hurray!

WordCamps now use the CampTix plugin to sell tickets and manage registration. Additionally, there is now an SVN repository for the WordCamp Base theme and our special WordCamp custom post types plugin, which means that community members can dig into and help improve these resources.

Stats!

2012
Number of WordCamps: 67
Number of WordCamps in the USA: 34
Number of WordCamps outside the USA: 33
Total Number of WordCamp Attendees: over 17,000
Total Days of WordCamp: 102
Number of sessions presented at WordCamps: 967
Number of people who spoke at WordCamps: 877
Number of companies that sponsored WordCamps: 498
New WordCamps: 22
The month with the most WordCamps: October, with 13 (and one BuddyCamp)
The month with the least WordCamps: December, with 1
WordCamp videos published to WordPress.tv: 445

2011
Number of WordCamps: 52
Number of WordCamps in the USA: 25
Number of WordCamps outside the USA: 27
Total Number of WordCamp Attendees: over 13,000
Total Days of WordCamp: 74
Number of sessions presented at WordCamps: 429
Number of people who spoke at WordCamps: 450
Number of companies that sponsored WordCamps: 313
New WordCamps: 15
The month with the most WordCamps: November, with 9
The months with the least WordCamps: March and April, with 1 each
WordCamp videos published to WordPress.tv: 271

At the end of 2012, the WordPress Events contributor group was created, and we now have 6 subcommittees of volunteers working on exciting ways to make the WordCamp program even better.

The WordPress.tv Event Moderators group reviews and publishes WordCamp videos.
The Event Planning Training Materials group is collecting and creating documentation for WordCamp organizers to use.
The New Organizer Mentorship Program subcommittee is creating – you guessed it – a mentorship program for new WordCamp organizers.
The Multi-Event Sponsorship Program subcommittee is creating a sponsorship program that will allow companies to sponsor multiple WordCamps more easily.
The Review WordCamp Guidelines subcommittee is taking a look at current WordCamp guidelines and determining ways to improve them.
WordCamp Base Theme Page Templates subcommittee is working up some page templates to help improve the special WordCamp Base theme that WordCamps use.

If you’d like to participate in the Events group, head over to http://make.wordpress.org/events/

Thank you to everyone who made WordCamps so amazing in 2012. Here’s to even bigger and better things in 2013!

WordPress Event Organizers Collaborate

andreamiddleton — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:09:34 +0000

If you organize WordPress events – be they WordCamps, meetups, or some other interesting kind of gathering – do take a look at what’s happening over on make.wordpress.org/events. Eleven projects have been posted for community involvement, and they run the gamut from translating WordCamp guidelines all the way to creating new meetup starter packs! There’s something for practically everyone here, and now’s a great time to get involved.

Great WordPress events help to make our community a wonderful place to publish, design, and code. When everyone pitches in, the sky’s the limit!

WordCamp Houston 2010 Makes Second Call for Sponsorship Nominations

andreamiddleton — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 22:59:35 +0000

Do you remember 2010? Faintly? Fondly? Well, here’s a happy blast from the past:

WordCamp Houston 2010 organizers announced, in the process of organizing the event, that they planned to use the surplus funds from the event for a scholarship. Cool, huh? Alas and alack, no one nominated any students back then, and the money has been sitting and waiting… until now.

In order to qualify for the WordCamp Houston 2010 scholarship you must:

1.) Reside in the Greater Houston Metropolitan area
2.) Be involved in the local, or larger WordPress Community in some capacity
3.) Be enrolled as a high school or college student

Applications will be open from Nov. 1 – Dec. 1, 2012.
During the review period, applications will be reviewed by a committee of local Houston WordPress community members and someone from WordCamp Central. The scholarship winner will be announced at central.wordcamp.org on December 15, 2012.

The award of $2,500 will be made by Jan 1, 2013.

APPLY NOW!

Holy October, Batman!

andreamiddleton — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 21:53:24 +0000

It’s that time again – the month with the Most WordCamps Of The Year, October! This year, there will be a whole 15 WordCamps (including one BuddyCamp). That’s up from last year’s 12 events in October, w00t!

A world traveller could have a grand time hopping from WordCamp to WordCamp this month – we have events from Stockholm to the Phillipines, from Gdansk to Mumbai. Cape Town, South Africa kicked us off yesterday, and Vegas and Detroit are taking us through this weekend.

Then next weekend we get a string of FIVE events! Gdansk, Denver, Louisville, Vancouver… and then of course BuddyCamp Vancouver, the first event to be 100% focused on BuddyPress.

The weekend after that, you can shuffle off to Buffalo, Mumbai, Sofia, Philadelphia, or Stockholm. WordCamps on three continents in one weekend – yes, please!

Closing out the whirlwind of October will be WordCamps on almost opposite corners of the globe: the Philippines and Providence, Rhode Island. Both start with “P” and thus will likely be perfectly pleasing. :)

Don’t take your eyes off of WordCamp Central as the holidays approach – there will be plenty of interesting events in November and December of 2012, as well as new WordCamps springing up in 2013. It’s a great time to be part of the incomparable WordPress community!

WordCamp Lisboa opens registration

andreamiddleton — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 18:13:29 +0000

According to lead organizer Zé Fontainhas, “Lisbon is awesome, the people are gorgeous, and the drinks are cold.” What better excuse, then, do you need to attend WordCamp Lisboa and get your WordPress awesomeness on? Tickets are on sale now – don’t delay!