Thank you to the WordCamp community and to Jane for the warm welcome! Working with WordPress community leaders all over the world is an amazing experience.

WordCamps are energizing, inspirational events – true labors of love – and each is unique. When Aaron Hockley and I organized WordCamp Portland this summer, I learned how the frustration of too many little details can evaporate when an attendee tells you how much they’ve learned that day, or how they’re now inspired to write a patch or volunteer on the forums. My goal is to give every WordCamp organizing team the support it needs and the attention it deserves, so that everyone’s WordCamp experience – attendees as well as organizers – is reliably positive.

My highest priorities right now include making sure that every WordCamp is community-driven and provides the highest possible quality content. We’re working hard to help organizers flush out their local experts and encourage them to speak. I’d like to close the gap that occasionally exists between the local WordPress meetups and local WordCamps. I’m also really excited about getting all WordCamp sessions onto WordPress.tv, thus expanding the educational influence of WordCamps exponentially.

Since coming on this summer, I’ve worked with nine different teams of brand-new WordCamp organizers. Before 2011 is over, nine additional WordCamps will be organized by new community leaders. It’s intriguing to consider how many more successful WordCamps we can have if we can make the process of organizing less daunting for newcomers. Now that organizing teams can run event finances through the WordPress Foundation, there are even fewer barriers to organizing a WordCamp. I’m working on making that part of the program run even more smoothly.

I’ve also had the honor of working with multiple teams of repeat organizers and learning from their experience. I’d love to create more collaboration between WordCamp organizers everywhere. The guidelines at plan.wordcamp.org contain a lot of valuable insights gathered from repeat organizers and attendee feedback, but I want to make sure we’re taking full advantage of the experience out there so every team isn’t reinventing the wheel. I welcome organizers to comment on plan.wordcamp.org with ideas or advice that you think might benefit other teams: what lessons did you learn the hard way? What bullets did you narrowly dodge? What’s the secret to your awesomesauce?

I’ll be posting a weekly wrap-up of WordCamp Central news every Friday. Stay tuned – we have great things in store!

As more and more people decide they want to organize WordCamps in their areas — especially people who are new to the community or event planning and need more guidance — the volume of applications has become overwhelming. Trying to handle all the WC organizer requests in addition to my responsibilities with core and other community initiatives meant that I wasn’t giving WordCamps as much time as I felt they deserved. As the number of WordCamps increased it became a full-time job, so it is with exceedingly great pleasure that I officially introduce Andrea Middleton to the WordCamp community.

As current WC organizers already know, Andrea — a WordPress user for three years and the owner of mad project management skills — took over the day to day coordination of WordCamp Central this summer. Based in Portland, she is now the one to review organizer applications, to work with WordCamps operating under the WordPress Foundation’s financial umbrella, to update the WordCamp Central schedule, and generally do all the things I’d been doing around WordCamp organization, all the things I wanted to do but never had time for, and probably a bunch of brilliant things I never even imagined.

In addition to getting her WordCamp feet wet by being in charge of volunteers for WordCamp San Francisco this year, she is cutting her teeth as a local organizer with WordCamp Portland (which is this coming weekend, will be awesome, and if you live anywhere near PDX you should totally go!).

Random fun facts about Andrea:

• I’ve known her for almost 20 years.*
• Her work for the past 6 years has been a blend of project management, HR, and marketing that hits all the needs of this job.
• She is a certified wine educator, and lived in the Virgin Islands for a few years.
• She is a certified TESOL instructor and taught in Mexico. Latin American WordCamps, Andrea’s your girl!
• She once stayed up all night dancing in a 24-hour James Brown Dance Marathon**
• Her husband likes BBQ even more than Matt does.
• Her daughter is beyond adorable, and was sporting a WordPress button on her baby hat the very first day she was alive.

I’m still involved as needed, but in a more advisory capacity (more ideas and advice, less email and budgets). This will hopefully mean I’ll be able to dedicate more time to core UX, documentation and support projects, WordPress Foundation education programs (kids! girls! underrepresented populations! everyone!), and working with local meetup organizers to help grow the WordPress community in new ways. If you have any questions about this transition, feel free to get in touch or leave a comment on this post. Otherwise, please join me in welcoming Andrea to her new role!

*When we met in 1992, we worked together at Greenpeace in Portland, OR.

** So did I. See previous note regarding where/when we met.