Speaker Russell Heimlich Talks Caching
(Photo Credit: Drew Poland)

Baltimore: the largest city in Maryland and the 26th largest city in the United States. It was also a city that on September 21st played host to a packed WordCamp event. Ask anyone at WordCamp Baltimore, and you’ll still hear the excitement in their voices as they relived the event. Who can blame them? It was a memorable day as people from both the Baltimore area and from other parts of the country gathered as a community to talk WordPress, web design, and other topics.

Brad Parbs talk on SASS
(Photo Credit: Will Schmierer)

I had the joy of touching base again with Andy Stratton, who (along with Drew Poland and others) helped organize WordCamp Baltimore this year (and the previous). I asked him the usual question of why he helped start and continue WordCamps in Baltimore… as usual, it starts with the meetups. “The meetup has been active for years… It kind of made sense as the meetup organizers, we thought it’d be a fun and interesting challenge and great way to give back, foster and promote the WordPress community in this area.” Andy then talked about his goals for this particular WordCamp: “Just like our meetups, we like to make sure people have a few strong takeaways they can use to better their experience with WordPress or foster further ‘nuggets’ of knowledge/wisdom.”

Every WordCamp is unique, and Andy reminded me what ways WordCamp Baltimore stand out from the multiple of other WordPress events: “We’re in Baltimore! Home of The Wire!” Andy pauses here, and you can hear the small laughter as he quickly follows that up with: “Actually, Baltimore is much safer than that show makes it seem – and there’s some great locations that people visit when they come down. WordCamp Baltimore is at the University of Baltimore’s Thumel Business Center (same location as one of the first WordCamp Mid-Atlantic events). We have our after-party and attendee social right on the harbor in Fell’s Point.”

This year, WordCamp Baltimore brought in a bit over 200 attendees. Impressive, considering this is only Baltimore’s second official WordCamp. About a dozen volunteers were on hand to help. And good news – thanks to a local volunteer firm, it looks like videos from the event will be appearong on WordCamp.tv in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out for them so you can watch (or relive) many of the presentations, and then maybe make sure you’re in Baltimore next year. :)

Back on September 13th, New Mexico played host to WordCamp Albuquerque 2013. It was a three day event located at the Albuquerque Convention Center. As you would expect from any successful WordCamp, it brought the local WordPress community together for an exciting and fun social event (not to mention bringing in lots of interesting out of town speakers).

Happiness Bar at WordCamp Albuquerque was popular and well-staffed.

This year’s WordCamp Albuquerque was the third so far, and this year brought in about 180 in attendance. Karen Arnold, an organizer for all three years, was kind enough to touch base briefly with me after the event. “The response to the community has been huge. I’ve been so pleased to see how many people have come out of the woodwork over the last three years. We have really amazing WordPress people in ABQ.”

Whenever I ask organizers about WordCamps, I’m always interested in the meetup as well – since that’s where many WordCamps get their start. Karen told me that the meetup has been active since early 2011. “There was no WordPress community in this area and I was essentially starving for a community.” As Karen said this, it’s good to note how a few people (or even one) can start a movement like this.

Another common question I like to ask of WC organizers is their favorite WordCamp story. “We realized we could contract with a local sandwich shop for lunch to save on food services costs.” Karen relates. “Now, we are in New Mexico, where rain is a rarity, but as it happened it rained pretty much every day leading up to WordCamp and the forecast called for rain all day the day of WordCamp. I was so nervous; we had people scouting out other locations where we could fit 200 people comfortably with sack lunches away from the rain. About an hour before lunch the sun came out, the ground dried up enough for our purposes and we ended up with the most amazing outdoor community experience. It was beautiful.”

WordCamp Alburquerque also had great support from over 15 volunteers as well. Big hand to those who helped out! Also big hand to those who supported the WordCamp kid’s workshop, which has been something of a tradition for Albuquerque.

Karen tells me that we should see some videos of the WordCamp appear on WordPress.tv. Can’t wait!

Over 1100 attended WordCamp Tokyo 2013. (photo by @me_me_sheep)

When you think “largest attended WordCamps” – what cities do you think of? San Francisco? Phoenix? Miami? How about Japan? This past weekend (on September 14th) WordCamp Tokyo rocked the house with over 1,100 attendees! That’s no typo. That’s about two large WordCamps (at least from the United States) put together! Not only that but this year marked the 6th annual WordCamp in the Metropolitan Tokyo area (including one in Yokohama, 2010) – which would also make it one of the longer running WordCamps.

To get a good idea of how everything went that Saturday, I had a pleasure of touching base with Naoko Takano, one of the organizers of WordCamp Tokyo. For starters, what improvements or changes were made compared to last year’s event? “This year, we included more sessions for contributing to WordPress.” Naoko related. “So talks focused on the Codex, forums, how to start meetups, and so forth.” I also asked about how you make a WordCamp of this size (and in Japan) unique. “This is the second year we’ve held WordCamp Tokyo along with another PHP conference. Even though it’s a relatively large WordCamp, we try to make it very community oriented and not too commercial.”

Happiness Bar? (photo by Keiko Shinoda)

WordCamp Tokyo went to great lengths to ensure attendees don’t feel left behind in the community and to make them feel welcome and involved. To that end, there many “games” and interactive sessions were included throughout the day. For starters, there was a WordPress Typing Game (here’s a link explaining it in detail) that was immediately fun. There was also a photo booth (you can tell just by looking at the photos how popular that was) and “WordPress Karuta” (a type of card game) which was not only entertaining but also educational.

This WordCamp didn’t disappoint in the swag department either. A unique aspect of this camp were the stickers – collecting series of stickers at sponsor booth to win a t-shirt, special sticker or set of Karuta game cards. There were even stickers of Wapuu, which is the Japanese WordPress mascot! Yep, Japan has a WordPress mascot.

WordCamp Tokyo 2013 T-Shirt

A great line of speakers helped make the event more memorable. There was a variety of fantastic local speakers – and there also some that traveled from great distances to attend. Among those out-of-town speakers was Konstantin Obenland – Theme Wrangler at Automattic and WordPress Core Contributor.

One of the many unique things about this particular WordCamp is that it is completely free, with expenses of the event offset by sponsors and other means. To accommodate an event of this size, one has to imagine a formable volunteer force. Thankfully, WordCamp Tokyo had over 100 volunteers that day, with half that number actually acting as nearly full time organizing team members.

WordCamp Tokyo 2013 Staff (photo by @yorozu)

So after all the planning and all the efforts made for attendees to feel welcome and able to contribute, I asked Naoko what the most rewarding parts of WordCamp Tokyo have been so far. “I’ve seen many new find new friends and business partners because of face-to-face events like WordCamps. This contributes to the growth of local communities because then people feel comfortable sharing information and working together. I love seeing people building great relationships in WordPress community.”

Sessions were recorded and should be available on WordPress.tv in the coming weeks!