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Tag: events

  • WordPress Confirms 8 Pilot Events to Launch the Next Generation of WordCamps in 2023

    In May 2023, WordPress’ Community Team announced that it would be evolving the WordCamp format to promote adoption, training, and networking for professionals, leaving the flagship events to focus more on connection and inspiration. This major shift opens the door for more experimentation through varied formats. In a recent update, the team shared that progress on the discussions has generated 64 ideas with 59 organizers who are willing to follow up on their ideas.

    There are also eight pilot events that have been confirmed and six of them will launch in 2023. These include some of the most creative concepts that WordPress has ever officially entertained, as the previous WordCamp format had become predictable and requirements somewhat inflexible. These pilot events offer a glimpse of what events could look like going forward.

    The WordPress community in Leipzig, Germany, is planning the first ever Low-Cost WordCamp for July 1, 2023. Organizers will host 90 attendees and keep costs low with no swag, no social dinner, and no after party. They will offer just one track of presentations.

    “The goal is to motivate and help new and veteran organizers to create a lighter, impactful event that is low cost and requires less time, financial resources, and fewer organizers/volunteers,” Automattic-sponsored Community Team contributor Isotta Peira said.

    Contributors in Sevilla, Spain, are planning a “WordPress Day” on July 2, 2023, where the focus will be engaging 50 attendees in three different areas of contribution.

    “The goal is to bring new contributors to the community and retain them by organizing multiple events every year,” Peira said. With these small numbers and limited goals, this effort could easily be organized as frequently as they anticipate.

    The community in Tegal, Indonesia is planning a “Scale Up” Workshop for October 22, 2023. A group of 50 participants will join in a 1-day training event that will expand their WordPress skills by “diving into the world of WordPress for enterprise.”

    The three other approved pilot events for 2023 include a Rural event for small towns/villages, a WP for Publishers in Bangalore, and a Community Day in Rome, Italy, designed for WordPress community organizers, scheduled for September 29.

    All of the confirmed events fall within the new purpose for WordPress events that the Community Team identified earlier this year:

    WordPress events spark innovation and adoption by way of accessible training and networking for users, builders, designers, and extenders. We celebrate community by accelerating 21st-century skills, professional opportunities, and partnerships for WordPressers of today and tomorrow.

    Prospective event organizers who are inspired by the confirmed pilot events can submit their creative ideas via a dedicated form. The Community Team is still accepting pilot events for 2023 and is also scheduling into 2024.

  • WordCampers Demand Changes to Q&A Format

    Q&A segments at a live event are a valuable point of connection where attendees have the opportunity to gain the undivided attention of the speaker or panelist and get answers to important questions. Inevitably, people who abuse the format can lower the quality of the experience for everyone. A Twitter thread addressing this chronic problem is gaining momentum today following the conclusion of WordCamp Europe 2023.

    “One problem is that they often add very little value – although they’re supposed to achieve the opposite,” WordPress Core Committer Felix Arntz said. “Unfortunately, those who ‘ask’ are often telling stories, promoting themselves or their business, [or] mansplaining the speaker.

    “Sometimes they’re not even asking any question at the end which is ridiculous. If that is you, you may not even notice it, but you are seriously wasting people’s time, potentially harming the speaker, and preventing folks from actually learning something.”

    Arntz suggested that those asking questions longer than a minute should forego the Q&A time and ask the speaker informally at a later opportunity if it is relevant.

    “Just to clarify, while some of the issues apply especially to sessions with more exposure, like a Matt Q&A, they all also apply to any other session,” he said.

    “While these problems mostly occur due to individual folks in the audience, I think the WordCamp organization needs to take action to improve the situation as it’s been happening for years.”

    Arntz proposed a number of actionable ideas, including submitting questions to a central platform where they can be upvoted by community members, discarding lengthy questions, and providing mandatory training or documentation for emcees on how to handle problematic Q&A situations. He also noted that having questions in writing can assist non-native English speakers in understanding other non-native speakers.

    Arntz also contends that Q&A should be optional, depending on the speaker’s preference. This may also have the added effect of creating a more inclusive environment for speakers.

    “Particularly for new speakers, it can cause lots of distress or anxiety, especially because, as mentioned before, it very often isn’t questions but any of the aforementioned problems,” he said.

    “All of this can be another blocker for folks from underrepresented groups to even apply to speak, which came up in the session on women & non-binary folx of WordPress.

    “Making Q&A optional is a great and simple way to at least improve the latter issue while working on addressing all the other problems. It’s literally just a decision to make, so I urge the community and organizing teams to make it.”

    Arntz’s thread has received positive feedback and support, and other WCEU attendees have joined in with suggestions for improving the Q&A format.

    “Many other open source conferences use apps that do more with Q&A, rating speakers, and even helping attendees schedule networking,” GoDaddy Developer Advocate Courtney Robertson said. “The favorited events export to iCal/gCal.”

    Raymon Mens, a first-time-attendee at WCEU, said he was “negatively surprised by the Q&A part” for every session. “I would have preferred some more time for the speaker to go more in depth and not have a long Q&A that doesn’t add a lot.”

    Jon Ang, an organizer for WordCamp Asia, said he is taking Arntz’s feedback into consideration for their next event, and future global leads for WCEU said they are also discussing these ideas for next year.

    “At WordCamp San Francisco 2011 there was a Q&A session with Barry and it used a P2,” WordPress core committer Aaron Jorbin said. “For the off topic questions, others often chimed in. I think an MC with knowledge of the subject matter asking questions off this would be perfect.”

    Changes will likely originate from WordCamp organizers who can recognize the existing problems with the current Q&A format and depart from tradition with a better way of bringing quality questions to speakers who wish to entertain them. Getting Q&A right may also become a stronger priority as WordPress’ community team evolves the WordCamp format to promote adoption, training, and networking. Based on the feedback on Arntz’s Twitter thread, it’s past time to update the Q&A format and WordCampers are eager to see it happen.

  • WCEU 2023 Publishes Schedule, Reaffirms Commitment to Diversity

    WordCamp Europe 2023 is just under three weeks away from happening in Athens on June 8-10. More than 2,700 tickets have been purchased and 527 remain, along with 49 micro-sponsor tickets.

    Speaker announcements have concluded and the official schedule was published today. WCEU will be running three tracks of presentations and two tracks for workshops. Organizers have also announced a Wellness Track that will feature different activities throughout the day, including a Yoga class, a Tai Chi class, and a group hike.

    “The Wellness Track is an important addition to WordCamp Europe because we need to find a balance and be more focused on taking care of our minds and bodies, taking care of the whole community and in turn the one world we have to live in,” organizer Ohia Thompson said.

    “This means seeing our interconnectedness and moving forward with a focus on wellbeing, diversity, and sustainability. The Wellness Track this year is just the beginning of a more intentional future for everyone connected to WordPress.”

    Last year the team hosting the event in Porto was called out for a lack of diversity on the organizing team, which performs critical tasks like selecting speakers and managing a speaker support program. In what appears to be an echo back to that controversy, a public interaction on Twitter earlier this month caused community members to question the organizing team.

    WCEU was once again forced to reaffirm its commitment to diversity after Sjoerd Blom, one of the Global organizers, accused StellarWP’s Director of Community Engagement, Michelle Frechette, of “being prejudiced” when she questioned the lack of diversity in the first few rounds of speaker announcements.

    Blom has since publicly apologized for his response to the criticism this week, reiterating that diversity matters to the team, but only after WCEU received overwhelmingly negative feedback regarding the incident.

    WordCamp Europe has not yet published anything to mitigate the effects of this public altercation but damage control measures are likely in the works, as Blom indicated a more official response will be coming from the team.

  • WordPress Community Team Evolves WordCamp Format to Promote Adoption, Training, and Networking for Professionals

    WordPress’ Community Team hailed a new era of WordCamps in its recent announcement outlining a significant shift in the purpose for the events.

    In the past, WordCamps have had a mostly predictable format of presenting inspirational talks on exciting things people are doing with WordPress, business topics, and the latest trends, with short networking opportunities and a contributor day appended to the event.

    “Connection, inspiration, and contribution are undeniably important to WordPressers,” Automattic-sponsored WordPress community organizer Angela Jin said. “However, as events have returned, communities see that people are much more selective about what events they attend and want to know what they will gain by participating.” 

    After the pandemic, the number of WordCamps dwindled to a fraction of what they had been, as different areas of the world grappled with their own unique public health situations. The Community Team had loosened some of the requirements for WordCamps in order to foster a more welcoming environment for people to want to host in-person events.

    In an effort to modernize these gatherings moving forward, the team has proposed the following update to the purpose of WordPress events:

    WordPress events spark innovation and adoption by way of accessible training and networking for users, builders, designers, and extenders. We celebrate community by accelerating 21st-century skills, professional opportunities, and partnerships for WordPressers of today and tomorrow.

    Jin said she hopes a “period of innovation and experimentation will follow this critical shift in the purpose of our events” where events will be curated for more narrow audiences and have a focus on a specific type of content or topic.

    This shift also opens the door for more varied event formats, such as workshops, unconferences, job fairs, and pure networking events – which would have definitively been outside the traditional WordCamps of old and not officially supported by the project.

    Jin emphasized that WordPress will continue encouraging local meetups. Currently planned WordCamps (there are currently 14 on the schedule for 2023) can continue as before but new WordCamp applicants will be encouraged to experiment with new formats.

    “Flagships (WordCamp US, WordCamp Europe, WordCamp Asia): These will remain our largest, broadest event that fully capitalizes on the energy of a large crowd,” Jin said. “They will be the place to highlight the latest, greatest, and coolest in WordPress and where we are going.” 

    Reactions to the change in the purpose of WordCamp have been mostly positive but the community has some questions about how it will work. David Bisset, who helped run WordCamp Miami for over a decade, asks how this will impact smaller communities:

    I certainly would love to see more formats being tried, more standout content, etc. However, I’m trying to view this from a local and smaller WordCamp organizer mindset – what if I have a varied community and therefore a varied audience? Will having a particular audience in mind in setting content and promoting local WordCamps unknowingly not attract a more diverse audience? Many people come to conferences and WordCamps for certain talks and speakers and stay around for the rest.

    WordPress plugin developer David McCan commented that the new purpose statement reads more like educating and preparing a workforce in contrast to how WordCamps previously leaned towards empowering volunteers.

    Participants in the discussion are heavily in favor of giving more freedom to event organizers, but many have had irreplaceable experiences at WordCamps in their current format that they are reluctant to see it go. WordPress developer and contributor Ross Wintle commented that he hoped the change in purpose would not diminish the diversity at WordCamps.

    “While I think there’s some value in focussing on an audience, please don’t throw out the current WordCamps,” Wintle said. “I genuinely believe that one of the best things about these events is that I get to experience the diversity of the WordPress community and see the many, many different ways that WordPress is used, extended and developed for, and I get to meet the many, many talented people from across the spectrum of contribution who possess ideas, skills and experiences that I do not.

    “I’ve met so many amazing people who have different roles in WordPress, and I think the value of this is far higher than sitting in my bubble with the people that do the same things as me.”

    Marketing contributor Sé Reed asked Jin what team meeting, GitHub issue, or other documented discussion was available to follow the decision-making process for this major change to WordCamps, as no discussions were linked in the announcement.

    “To my mind, this kind of change (affecting the entire WordPress community and apparently effective immediately) is something that would make sense to discuss at the Community Summit,” Reed said. “As that ship has sailed, I’d like to at least see the discussion that led to it.”

    Jin has not yet responded to these questions but said in the announcement that as event organizers experiment with different formats for WordCamps, “the community team can reevaluate our full events program and how events coexist happily.”

  • First Round of WordCamp US 2023 Tickets Sold Out

    Tickets for WordCamp US 2023 went on sale this morning and quickly sold out within a few hours, leaving many hoping for another opportunity in the next round. WCUS, WordPress’ flagship event in the Western Hemisphere, is happening August 24-26, 2023, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.

    Tickets cost $50 and include access to 40 speaker presentations in the main event, workshops, networking meetups, lunch each day, snacks and beverages, the WordFest party, a t-shirt, and a surprise gift. Contributor Day tickets are separate and will be available soon.

    WCUS organizers have confirmed that there will be additional rounds of tickets released in the future. Those who missed this opportunity can follow @WordCampUS on Twitter to be notified of the next ticket release.

    Despite the high demand for tickets, the event’s August dates prevent some from attending, including families sending their kids to school and European community members who may still be on summer holidays.

    WCUS will also be hosting a Community Summit this year. Applications for attendees are still open and contributors are also welcome to submit topics for the event.

    WordCamp US has updated its website with a design inspired by the colors and mood of the local area’s springtime cherry blossom blooms. Organizers are also updating the programming this year with a call for outside voices. The hurdles placed on potential speakers in previous years were not inclusive of those who haven’t been speaking at local WordPress events and this tends to lead to a stale pool of speakers.

    WCUS organizers are trying something new this year in order to enrich the community with more diverse voices:

    We are targeting experienced, seasoned, professional speakers at the top of their industries who are not currently active members of our unique community to speak at this year’s WCUS program. There are WordPress agency owners who have never been to a local meetup; plugin developers who don’t know what a WordCamp is, and there are scholars and academics who have never heard of Matt Mullenweg.

    WCUS organizers may do a bit of recruiting to make this happen. They are collecting suggestions for speakers and programming topics in order to invite industry-leading speakers from outside the WordPress community. This will not replace the traditional call for speakers, which should be forthcoming.

  • Atarim to Host 4th Annual Virtual Web Agency Summit April 25-28

    Atarim is hosting its 4th annual Web Agency Summit from April 25-28. The virtual event is geared towards web agencies and WordPress professionals, with topics focused on web trends, scaling an agency or freelance business, attracting high-paying clients, and building recurring revenue.

    Web Agency Summit was born out of the organizers’ frustration with the first WordCamp Asia getting canceled at the beginning of the pandemic.

    “When WordCamp Asia was first canceled, I had a lot of thoughts, of course,” ScaleMath founder Alex Panagis said. “Something that we were somewhat really hoping would help us make a big splash in the industry was pulled away from right under us. 

    “But, instead of letting this setback get to us – we decided we had to do something. We decided to step up and host what was then the first (and went on to be the biggest) virtual summit in our industry. Sponsors like GoDaddy, WordPress.org, and many more were quite quick to step in, to the point where we were overwhelmed by the support we received and how well-received the entire summit concept was.”

    This year’s lineup includes representatives from Microsoft, Google, Yoast, Hubspot, XWP, Elementor, and more, including 40+ WordPress experts. Web Agency Summit includes individual speaker sessions, such as “Headless WordPress – does this approach make sense?” and “The Role of AI in Content & SEO.” Attendees will have the opportunity to join sessions on boosting client acquisition on LinkedIn, growing a freelancing business, productizing designs, launching a podcast, managing contractor teams, and more.

    This year’s event will also feature seven expert-led panels:

    • Changing Tides: How Industry Acquisitions & Investments are Shaping the Future of WordPress, and What It Means For Your Agency
    • From Connections to Clients: Building Communities for Web Design Agency Growth
    • From CMS to Digital Powerhouse: The Expansive Power of WordPress and How It Can Reshape the Tech Landscape
    • Building The Future: Exploring the Power of Next Generation Website & Page Builders
    • Cracking The Code: How to Choose the Best Web Hosting for Your Business
    • Embracing AI in Web Design: Unlocking Profitability for Agencies & Freelancer
    • Beyond Viral Videos: Maximizing YouTube for Agency Growth & What Comes Next

     Attendees will be able to meet sponsors in a virtual festival village to win prizes, and join breakout rooms to network and make new industry connections.

    Registration for the Web Agency Summit is free but seats are limited. Every presentation will be recorded and will be available to watch for free live and for 24 hours following the event.

  • WCEU 2023 Announces Free Childcare and Workshop for Kids

    Preparations for WordCamp Europe (WCEU) 2023 in Athens are moving forward as the team will soon be contacting speakers selected for the event. Organizers have launched a Speaker Support Program aimed at encouraging more diversity on stage by connecting speakers with companies that are willing to financially support them.

    WCEU has also opened registration for Contributor Day, which will take place on June 8, kicking off the event. Those who are unable attend in person can join in the #contributor-day channel on Slack as well as the specific channels for the contributor teams.

    Alongside Contributor Day, WCEU has announced it will be hosting an interactive Workshop for Kids on June 8, to introduce future generations to WordPress. It will cover the basics of WordPress, how to create a website, choose a theme, and publish content. The workshop is open to kids aged 13-16 and all materials will be provided.

    WCEU will also have free childcare available during the Contributor Day and the main conference from June 8-10, to make the WordCamp more accessible for parents and guardians. Children aged 16 and younger are eligible to attend but must register by May 20, as there is limited availability for childcare.

    The call for volunteers is still open with a variety of roles available. Volunteers will receive one or two collectable volunteer t-shirt(s), a free ticket, and an invite to the Social, as well as the experience of contributing back to the WordPress community at one of its largest events.

  • CloudFest Hackathon 2023 Kickstarts Innovative WordPress Projects: VS Code Extension for In-Browser Development, WapuuGotchi Gamification Plugin, and More

    More than 6,000 people are attending CloudFest in Europa-Park, Germany, this week. A strong contingent of WordPress developers and contributors are among them. During the Hackathon portion of the event, web professionals gather for a friendly competition, tackling problems for existing not-for-profit, OSS projects, creating solutions with a concentrated effort at a quicker pace than remote collaboration usually allows.

    Several WordPress-related projects have been put into action at the Hackathon, including the following:

    Automattic engineer Daniel Bachhuber published a preview of the in-browser WordPress development environment enabled by an experimental VS Code extension that uses WebAssembly to run WordPress entirely in the browser.

    “Forget spending hours setting up a local development environment at your next Contributor Day,” Bachhuber said. “Simply install the WordPress Playground VS Code extension, run ‘Launch WordPress Playground’ from the command launcher, and you’ll have a fully mostly functional WordPress installation right inside your editor.”

    Bachhuber emphasized that the extension was built for demonstration purposes but is available on GitHub for anyone who wants to contribute or report bugs. A more in-depth tour of the extension is available on Automattic’s developer blog.

    In addition to the VS code previewer for WordPress plugins, the Hackathon team working with WordPress Playground is also experimenting with using the block editor in the browser and working with the Terminal and PHP, wp-cli, and PHPUnit – all in the browser.

    The WapuuGotchi project, which aims to gamify WordPress with a customizable Wapuu, notifications, and rewards, has its own Twitter account and website where those interested can follow along with their progress.

    image credit: WapuuGotchi Hackathon Wrap-Up

    “The audience was captivated as we demonstrated the customizable Wapuu assistant, which can be tailored to suit individual preferences by selecting unique outfits and accessories,” WapuuGotchi design contributor Dennis Hipp said.

    “We also highlighted WapuuGotchi’s backend interaction capabilities, showing how it can guide users through updates, provide helpful tips, and offer reminders for important tasks. The presentation concluded with an invitation for Plugin authors to collaborate with us and integrate their Plugins into the WapuuGotchi ecosystem.”

    The Wappspector project, which aims to create a CLI utility to analyze the file structure of a web hosting server and identify the frameworks and CMS used in the websites hosted on it, made significant progress during the Hackathon. The app added seven more CMS identifiers and will soon be ready for testing on control panels. The app focuses on CMS and e-commerce applications but will also have an extendable mechanism allowing hosting providers to customize it to suit their needs.

    CloudFest 2023 added a new WordPress Day, dedicated to helping internet infrastructure professionals learn more about WordPress’s footprint and ecosystem, and hear from some of the top WordPress plugin developers and security experts. The event was held earlier today on March 20, and featured 12 sessions on WordPress.

  • WordCamp London In Early Planning Stages for September 2023

    The organizers of WordCamp London are in the early planning stages for an event that would take place in September 2023. It has been nearly four years since London hosted a WordCamp. The event was cancelled in 2020 and scheduling was not resumed until recently.

    Organizers have created a survey that respondents can take anonymously in approximately 2-3 minutes. The questions were created to help them know how to shape the event. In 2019, WordCamp London brought in 768 attendees and sessions were livestreamed for the first time. Organizers are asking how many people attendees would like to see at WordCamp London, with options ranging from fewer than 400 to more than 800. A few popular WordCamps in recent years have elected to keep a smaller number of spots available in order to better manage uncertainties and ensure a sold out event.

    The survey also attempts to gauge potential attendees’ preferences on the number of conference days, as well as interest in volunteering, organizing, sponsoring, or speaking at the event. There is an option at the end for respondents to leave their contact information to stay in the loop on opportunities to participate in and support the WordCamp.

    For many in Europe, and especially the UK, WordCamp London was their first WordCamp experience. Those interested to attend can sign up for updates on the placeholder website, or follow the camp on Twitter or Mastodon. For those in the local area, the WordPress London Meetup has opened registration for this month’s gathering at The Liberty Bounds. They plan to discuss WordCamp London and reconnect and will resume having speakers and pizza at future events.

  • Watch WordCamp Asia 2023 via Livestream February 17-19

    WordPress enthusiasts from around the world are beginning their journeys to attend the inaugural WordCamp Asia, which is happening in Bangkok, Thailand, February 17-19. Organizers are expecting 1,500 attendees at this new flagship event. For those who cannot attend in-person, there will be a livestream broadcasting the sessions from the conference days after Contributor Day, which kicks off on Day 1.

    The livestream schedule shows dates and times in visitors’ local timezones. Depending on where you are in the world, it may be tricky to catch some of the sessions but the event will also be recorded. Virtual attendees can favorite the sessions they are interested to watch and print or email them to keep track.

    There are topics for every experience level – from starting a WordPress blog to advanced performance and scalability for PHP developers. Attendees can learn how to start a subscription business with a no-code SaaS and FSE (Full Site Editing). Theme authors can learn how to monetize in the era of block themes and website owners can explore using AI translation to translate their websites to find a wider audience. WordCamp Asia will also feature a few sessions on careers, including non-technical careers in the WordPress market and career changes from the medical field to WordPress. This is just a small sampling of the interesting topics that will be discussed at WordCamp Asia.

    Matt Mullenweg will join for an AMA on February 18, in Track 1, which will also be livestreamed to Tracks 2 and 3.

    During the event, organizers plan to announce the location of the next WordCamp Asia coming in 2024. Naoko Takano, one of the organizers, joined the WP Tavern Jukebox podcast last week to discuss the organizing process and the importance of WordPress hosting its first flagship event in Asia. Check out the episode for more perspective on the event, which has been in planning for years after getting cancelled and postponed multiple times due to the pandemic.