As part of building WordCamp Denver’s schedule this year, we (the organizers) have decided to experiment with a new town hall-style track format for six of our 22 sessions. Each town hall will essentially be a 50-minute topical Q&A session.
The idea of these town halls is simple: recruit experts in a variety of fields and create an open, intimate environment in which attendees can ask questions across the spectrum of those fields; and get answers.
The six town halls we’ve created each fill a 50-minute slot and cover eCommerce, growth / marketing, development, business, community organizing, and design, respectively. Following a bit of grunt work and cajoling, we think we’ve managed to bring together some of the greatest minds in WordPress to host them.
For instance:
- Pippin Williamson and Caleb Burks will be co-hosting the eCommerce town hall, each representing a major player in the WordPress eCommerce space.
- Cami Kaos from WordCamp Central joining local meetup organizer Jeremy Green to host the town hall on community organizing meetups and WordCamps.
- Jon Bellah and David Hayes will be co-hosting the development town hall, fielding questions from brand new beginning developers all the way up to seasoned professionals.
- Sonja Leix from the WordPress design team and local UX aficianado Meg Delagrange will be co-hosting our CritiquePress town hall, which is a town hall/panel discussion hybrid we first debuted at last year’s WordCamp Denver. CritiquePress’ provides solid, real-time advice on submitted attendee websites.
- Tracy Malone and Amber Hinds will be co-hosting the Growth / Marketing town hall, sure to be packed with useful nuggets and content marketing tips.
- D’nelle Dowis, Miles Kailburn, and Vi Wickam will be co-hosting the business town hall, bring perspective from the freelance, small business, and agency communities.
As you can see, we’ve made a pretty good effort to make sure these town halls start off with a bang. We hope this experiment yields good results, but either way, look for a retrospective on this on the WordCamp Denver blog after the event!
WordCamp Denver is scheduled for November 5-6 and as of this writing, there were only 24 tickets left!
