Earlier this year, Andrea Middleton of WordCamp Central kicked off the first of several online chats for WordCamp organizers.
The online chats are intended to provide help, support, and tips for WordCamp organizers as they plan their events.
I was able to attend the first chat on organizing WordCamps and found it really helpful, not just for WordCamps, but for planning any type of conference.
Here are my notes from the chat.
WordCamp Background
WordCamps are locally organized casual events focusing on anything about WordPress. They’re for people who are new to WordPress, as well as for WordPress users, designers, developers, bloggers, writers, social media specialsts, or anyone else interested in using WordPress.
The first WordCamp was organized by Matt Mullenweg and held in San Francisco in 2006. Since that first WordCamp, more than 300 WordCamps have been held around the world.
Many organizers experience the same problems and issues as they plan WordCamps. In 2011, WordCamp Central published WordCamp Planning: A Guide for Organizers to provide a handbook for basic guidelines and standards.
WordCamps are an official WordPress event. In past few years, WordCamp Central has instituted steps to help organizers and avoid an audit by IRS.
Thinking of Organizing a WordCamp?
If you’re thinking of planning a WordCamp, read the documents for organizing WordCamps. From my past experience on WordCamp planning teams, I’m amazed how few of the planning team members read the organizing documents. Surprising, since the planning guide is a goldmine of information.
As your WordCamp lead organizer, you should be an active member or leader of a local WordPress meetup group. Submit your application to organize a WordCamp, it will be reviewed. Andrea will interview all WordCamp organizers.
Once approved, your WordCamp event will get added to planning list for WordCamps on WordCamp Central.
Preplanning
In the preplanning stage, you’ll be finding team members to join the organizing team, booking a venue, and filling out the budget template in Google Document. Andrea will review the budget with you.
Best practice: find a venue before you schedule a date for your WordCamp event. It’s much easier to locate a venue before you nail down the date.
Upon approval, you can book venue and announce date to the world.
As you discuss budget with Andrea, she’ll talk with you about multi-event sponsorships, where sponsorships have already been worked out through WordCamp Central.
(My additional tip: contact your local community visitor’s center first to check for other major events. You don’t want to schedule your WordCamp the same day as a major national conference in your city.)
Tips for Finding Organizing Team Members
When building organizing team, invite as many people as possible. Have a “deep bench” so you can call on members to step up where needed. Many hands make for light work, and allows for many different skill sets.
Offer community to work together on a project, get WordPress community more involved and more united.
Don’t give one person responsibility for more than one of these areas:
- Budget
- Speakers
- Sponsors
- Venue logistics
Lead organizers should start planning process with empty hands, meaning the lead organizer will not have responsibility for main items, but will have the ability to pick up tasks when other team members leave.
Venues
Finding a good venue can be challenging. Reach out to your entire organizing team and community members for suggestions, and hopefully a connection to a local venue. Avoid hotels and conference centers, which are expensive and have lots of added costs.
Universities and colleges can be great places to hold your event with their conference centers, large auditoriums, and classrooms. Find someone on staff and get sponsorship for free.
Other venues to consider: community centers, public high schools, churches/synogogues (inclusive), public libraries, and coworking spaces.
Again, find the venue and find the date that works for you and the venue (not the other way around).
Your WordCamp Website
All WordCamp websites are hosted on WordPress.org by the WordPress Foundation, which allows archiving of previous WordCamps. In the past, several WordCamps were hosted privately and disappeared after a few years.
Selection of themes on WordCamp.org: WordCamp base theme, _Underscores. You can customize the site with CSS. No child themes allowed on WordCamp.org. No custom PHP or JavaScript code is allowed.
If there’s some feature or functionality you want on your WordCamp site, ask!
Unique Tools for WordCamp
Custom Post Types have been set up for speakers, sponsors, sessions and organizers.
The session Custom Post Type has a meta field for time, date and track. You can automagically build a schedule with a shortcode. Yay!
Display speakers, sponsors, organizers using shortcodes (once all the info is entered into Custom Post Types). The attendee shortcode will show who’s attending your WordCamp on your website.
Sessions
Keep your sessions short. People start to lose attention after 30 minutes.
Andrea said WordCamp evalutions show shorter sessions with longer breaks get better reviews. The sweet spot seems to be a 30 minute session, 10 minute Q & A with 15-minute break. Make it easy for attendees to meet and talk as well as learn.
The CampTix plugin built for handling WordCamp ticket sales makes it easy to create tickets, set up registration, manage coupons and refunds. It also integrates with PayPal.
If you’re outside US, and don’t want to/can’t use PayPal, you’ll need to write a payment gateway plugin.
Attendees can ask and give themselves refunds. As organizer, you can turn on refunds and turn off on a certain day. Consider timing for refunds.
If you think you’ll sell out of tickets, you can create a reserved ticket block, which adds additional tickets to CampTix that don’t show up on public interface. You can send special URL to those people you reserved space for. Be aware this doesn’t make the ticket free, you’ll need to include coupon code for free ticket.
Budgets and Financing
Budget transparency is critical. Andrea has asked all organizers to post budget publicly, which allows the community to see what you’re spending money on. It will also encourage members to help out or contribute.
Keep your budget lean so you can focus on the event and not spend as much time fundraising.
Consider casual venue spaces that offer ability for attendees to meet. Ask attendees at WordCamp to offer suggestions for next year’s venue.
Review the baselines in the budget template on the WordCamp planning site (Google Doc). Keep tickets to no more than $20/day.
WordCamp ticket price is intended to cover lunch and t-shirt. Fixed costs and variable costs are identified in budget template. Keep variable costs to inside your ticket cost, fixed costs can be covered by sponsors.
The goal is to not put you in position of having to sell more tickets to make your budget. The Big Mac index is used for figuring cost for non-US WordCamps.
Multi-Event Sponsors
Multi-event sponsors provide money/attendee for multiple WordCamps. Money from multi-event sponsors comes through the WordPress Foundation, so you don’t have to worry about IRS tax issues.
Multi-event sponsorships are offered to WordCamps outside of US through wire transfers or PayPal. Variable success rates depending on your country’s money policies.
As of 2014, all multi-event sponsors are loaded into your WordCamp as a draft post. Pick which ones you want to accept and then publish post.
Always reach out to local sponsors. You want to stay connected with your local community. Keep your requests low (you’ll probably only need a few thousand dollars).
Speaker Gifts and Attendee Swag
Be fiscally responsible. If you have an overage, consider a small speaker gift. Remember, WordCamps don’t pay speakers or cover travel costs.
Some examples of speaker gifts include a printed piece of swag, gift card ($10-$20), commemorative card, or a speakers dinner.
Instead of a speaker dinner, consider a happy hour so people can mingle, eat, drink before they go out to dinner.
In-Kind Sponsors
Consider in-kind sponsors for something you normally planned to give to your attendees (wifi, badge) but doesn’t require you to give attendee information.
Remember, attendee personal information is not shared with sponsors. Only attendees can agree to provide personal information.
In-kind sponsors can’t put their logo on things you would normally provide. Don’t put sponsor logos on t-shirts. Always focus on attendees. It’s not an opportunity for advertising.
Miscellaneous Information
WordCamps are locally organized, locally focused. Show off your city and community.
Use your WordCamp to share your local experts and local speakers. The goal is to have 80% local speakers, 20% out-of-town speakers.
For speakers, consider what makes your local experts great. What is their strength? If you have a security expert in your area, invite them to speak rather than invite someone from out-of-state.
Involve everyone in your local community including local sponsors. Have a diverse pool of local WordPress sponsors.
Smaller sponsorship levels allow more local sponsors to contribute. And you don’t depend on one or two major sponsors to return in following years.
Always vet speakers, sponsors, and volunteers. They all need to abide by principles on the WordCamp Planning guide (Google Doc).
Always review speaker slides before their talk. You need to make sure they’re not violating GPL, trademark in any way.
Swag doesn’t always have to be t-shirts. Consider a coffee mug, bandana, or something else.
If you do provide t-shirts, include both men and women styles. (If you don’t include women size, the underlying message is that you only expect men at your event.)
Video
Record sessions and post them on WordPress.tv. Video equipment is provided by WordPress Foundation. If you don’t have people available to edit video, contact Andrea. She has a group of people available.
Food and Beverage
Remember that not everyone eats meat and many of your attendees may be vegetarians or have gluten-free diets. Think about different options.
Always get coffee for your attendees. Think about an afternoon snack for attendees.
What other tips do you have for organizing WordCamps? Share them in the comments.
