Category: Events

WordCamp US 2022 has concluded after two days of presentations and a contributor day last weekend. Some attendees are still making their way home with hearts full of good memories until the next time they can gather in person again.

Outside of the main event, attendees had many opportunities to network, connect with new friends, and finally meet people they have been working with on the web for years.

Happy Friday from #WCUS 2022! pic.twitter.com/6SE30ZBm0z

— WordPress Women of Color (@wpwomenofcolor) September 9, 2022

Spent the weekend in San Diego doing my first WordCamp after several years of being away. I am totally overwhelmed realizing how much I missed doing these.

Can't wait to start jet-setting around again with my WordPress/travel crew. See y'all next time…#wcus pic.twitter.com/mpJcGg3Mgr

— Robby McCullough (@RobbyMcCullough) September 13, 2022

The event’s organizers have invited attendees to share their photos in the WCUS Community Photo Album on Google Photos.

The Job Posting board is back in business and shows several dozen agencies, product, and hosting companies hiring for roles across the WordPress ecosystem. Many of these companies were also sponsors of the event.

A lot of companies are hiring in WordPress! #WCUS pic.twitter.com/lE2SaIhf2h

— Brad Williams (@williamsba) September 11, 2022

All the sessions from WCUS were recorded and will be coming to WordPress.tv soon. In the meantime, sessions can be viewed through the livestream recording on YouTube. There are separate videos for the Sun track (Friday and Saturday), and the Palm track (Friday and Saturday). The recording of Matt Mullenweg’s Q&A is available on WordPress.tv. He answered questions about improving contributor experience, accessibility, the timeline for multilingual features in core, and more.

At the end of his Q&A session, Mullenweg announced the location of the next WordCamp US. In 2023, the event will take place on the East coast at National Harbor, Maryland, a waterfront convention center located along the Potomac River, 20 minutes from Washington, D.C. The dates are set for August 23-25, which will include contributor days, presentations and workshops, and a WordPress Community Summit. Organizers said the event will focus on learning and creation.

WordCamp US 2022 is underway in San Diego, California, following last night’s welcome party for speakers, sponsors, organizers, and volunteers. For many attendees, this is their first in-person WordPress event since 2019, before the pandemic began shutting down conferences.

Good times tonight at the Sponsors / Speakers / Volunteers / Organizers welcoming party. Took the time to practice some photography for this week. #WCUS pic.twitter.com/g8fJPtz3Mi

— Daniel Schutzsmith (At #WCUS WordCamp US) (@schutzsmith) September 9, 2022

Unlike previous events, where attendees numbered in the thousands, this year tickets were capped at 650. They were sold out the first day they went on sale. A smaller crowd should make for a more intimate event where attendees have a higher chance of bumping into the people they hoped to meet.

Opening remarks are expected at 9am PDT. WordCamp US’ schedule includes 41 sessions over the span of two days. Those who are not able to attend in person can still catch the livestream for both tracks, without any special ticket required. Access is free and presentations will be shown live as they are happening on the two tracks:

Sun Track: https://us.wordcamp.org/2022/livestream/sun-fri/

Palm Track https://us.wordcamp.org/2022/livestream/palm-fri/

Virtual participants can use the #WCUS hashtag on Twitter to join in the global conversation.

On Saturday, September 10, Matt Mullenweg will deliver an address at 4:45 pm -5:30 pm PDT and answer live questions from WordCamp US attendees. This will also be streamed live as the last session of the event.

WordCamp US (WCUS) kicks off one month from today in San Diego, CA, and organizers have published the full schedule for all sessions. The three-day event will feature three tracks with a combination of lightning talks (15 min), standard talks (45 min), and workshops (1 hr+).

This year’s lineup is heavy on educating professionals on building with blocks. Attendees and livestream viewers can expect to learn how to customize core blocks for clients and create a custom block in 15 minutes. Speakers will also offer a glimpse into the future of designing themes for the block editor, the foundational concepts of the new era of block themes, and demonstrate how to build a block theme.

Block themes and plugins aren’t the only things on the menu for WCUS attendees. The event will include a diverse range of topics, including WordPress and the creator economy, accessibility, multichannel e-commerce, performance, community, and creating editorial experiences.

The sessions begin on September 9, and continue through the next day, capped off with a chat with Matt Mullenweg, who will also answer live questions from the audience. Contributor Day is scheduled for Sunday, September 11.

Unfortunately, for many hoping to attend, all 650 of the available tickets sold out within the first day. Everyone else across the world of WordPress will need to tune into the livestream, which organizers expect will be fairly popular this year due to the limited in-person tickets. The sessions in Sun track and Palm track will be live streamed, but the Surf track workshops will not. The livestream page is already published and no special tickets will be required.

In-person WordPress events are ramping up again, with in-person meetups happening all over the world and WordCamps back on the schedule. A sampling of the upcoming major events include the following:

• WordCamp Vienna, Austria (April 23, 2022)
• WordCamp Irun (May 21–22, 2022)
• WordCamp Europe (June 2–4, 2022)
• WordCamp Warsaw, Poland (June 11–12, 2022)
• WordCamp Montclair, (June 25, 2022)
• WordCamp Netherlands (September 15–16, 2022)

WordPress’ Community Team published an updated set of COVID-19 guidelines today ahead of a the five WordCamps that will be happening over the next few months. There are a few notable changes from the previous guidelines, which mandated that organizers select a venue with staff that can check temperatures and vaccination status and remind attendees to wear masks. This removed the enforcement burden from volunteers.

The updated guidelines require organizers follow local guidelines, provide masks and hand sanitizer, and provide a sticker to attendees that indicates if they prefer others to wear a mask when conversing in close proximity.

The Community Team strongly recommended the following for attendees:

• We still recommend that you wear a mask while at in-person WordPress events.
• If you see that someone is wearing a sticker requesting people wear a mask near them, please wear a mask while within 6 feet (2 meters) of them or keep your distance.
• A request that you only attend in-person if you are vaccinated or have recently tested negative.
• Please stay at home if you are sick or have recently come in contact with someone who is ill.

Ten days prior to publishing the updated guidelines, the Community Team requested feedback in a post that asked the question, “What is keeping you from either organizing or attending an in-person event?“

WordCamp Birmingham organizer Ryan Marks responded, saying his team was restricted from organizing in-person events (under the previous guidelines).

“My location doesn’t allow for the checking of vaccination status,” Marks said. “So we must answer yes to all of the In-person safety checklist items. It hasn’t been possible to answer yes to the first two questions yet.” The checklist required the area’s average positive case rate to average under 4% for 28 days, and to have under 50 new cases reported per 100,000 people for 14 days, among other requirements. 

Marks and his team were forced to postpone WordCamp Birmingham in January after Omicron hit Alabama and local infections began rising. The camp had previously been criticized for its initial masking policy, which stated “Masks are required for entry and preferred throughout the event.” This set off heated discussions on social media, where concerned community members condemned the gathering as “irresponsible.” The camp revised its masking guidelines to require masks indoors but ultimately had to postpone due to local conditions.

The updated guidelines from WordPress’ Community Team bear a striking similarity to WordCamp Birmingham’s original masking policy – if the local authorities do not have requirements in place, masks are optional but recommended. It has been well-documented that indoor masking can significantly reduce transmission, so the Community Team must have witnessed a major change in pandemic conditions to amend the guidelines to make them optional. With the exception of a handful of flagship events, WordPress has ultimately decided to leave the requirements to local authorities.

“As flagship events are larger and draw an international crowd, both WordCamp Europe and WordCamp US organizers were asked to view these as minimum requirements and are expected to have a more comprehensive plan in place,” WordPress community organizer Angela Jin said in today’s announcement.

WordCamp Europe will require masks indoors and social distancing at the speakers dinner. They are creating self-service registration booths and trying to put more activities, like WP Cafe, outdoors.

WordCamp US will be following San Diego’s local guidelines in September.

“We will require all attendees to be vaccinated or have recently tested negative,” Jin said. “Additionally, due to the size and nature of this event, masks will be required to be worn over both the mouth and nose while indoors. Hand sanitizer and masks will also be available and some activities, such as lunch, will be outdoors.”

Atarim is launching its 2nd annual Web Agency Summit in a couple of weeks. The free event will run from March 23 – 26. The goal of the event is to help agencies and freelancers in the WordPress space grow sustainable businesses.

Atarim is the company formerly known as WP Feedback. In February, the business rebranded because its primary product had grown beyond a mere feedback plugin into an across-the-board agency solution.

“While I’m a big fan of WordCamps and a big believer in the value that events can bring to personal growth, we found that most events in our space focus on the technical Aspect of building a website,” said Vito Peleg, Atarim’s founder. “We take a more business-oriented approach. From finding the first clients through building solid recurring revenue and all the way to lessons from some of the biggest agencies in the world at full scale.”

The event has 36 sessions, which are broken down into four categories that focus on:

• Build: Best practices for performance, SEO, accessibility, and the future of building websites.
• Expand: Building recurring revenue and maintaining profits.
• Scale: Project management, completing services, payment, and getting projects unstuck.
• Thrive: Hiring, community building, profitability at scale, and exit strategies.

Peleg hopes that attendees can glean some knowledge in the sessions while saving years of trial and error.

“All are delivered through our own summit platform, so attendees don’t need to jump around between Zoom calls, YouTube Lives, and Slack channels,” he said. “We brought it all into our own interactive platform.”

Atarim has made several sessions publicly available from 2020’s event. For those on the fence, it should provide insight into the types of talks they can expect.

• Lee Jackson: Mastering Content Creation and the New Work Environment
• Clifford Almeida: Blueprint To Building a Six-Figure Recurring Revenue Business
• Alex Panagis: Developing a Simple and Replicable SEO Strategy for Your Business
• Alison Rothwell: The Path To Selling Profitable WordPress Care Plans
• Kristina Romero: Remotely Managing Projects and Your Team

This year, each session will be running live — last year’s sessions were pre-recorded. This will allow attendees to be involved in real-time. There will also be a designated Q&A time for each session.

The event is free to attend through the last week of March for anyone. However, the sessions will eventually fall behind a paywall, which helps cover costs.

“We offer an All Access Pass for those that want to watch the replays for $97, which is the investment for those that get it before the event,” said Peleg. “This also includes 30+ sessions from last year’s event for a total of 50+ hours of expert advice, specifically designed to help web freelancers and agencies build a solid business.”

Success and Lessons Learned From 2020

Last year’s event kick-started as a response to the changing nature of conferences in the Covid-era. Peleg described the initiative as a way of “licking our own wounds” after his company had planned to attend, sponsor, and have its own retreat at WordCamp Asia in Thailand, which was canceled in 2020.

“This drove me into action, wanting to lift some spirits in the community,” he said. “I didn’t know that we would end up with the biggest event in the WordPress space and have such incredible partners that came along for the ride.”

Last year’s event had 5,725 attendees from 126 countries. In total, they watched 53,945 hours of videos. They also won 1,000s of prizes at sponsor booths that included iPads, board games, and more.

“This was way more than what we expected, and the summit platform even broke on the first day when we were getting more than 240,000 requests to the server in an hour,” said Peleg. “Luckily, there isn’t a better community for something like this to happen. Very quickly, some of the sponsors joined forces with some of the speakers and our team and got us back on the air for a full week of action. While they were working to get this sorted, I was mostly pacing back and forth in my office like a headless chicken, but this year we’ve come prepared, with load balancers, auto-scaling processes, and a much leaner platform to sustain the scale.”

There are no plans to switch to a physical Web Agency Summit in the coming years. For now, the virtual model is working.

“I’m very much looking forward to the return of WordCamps as physical events when [Covid-19] blows over, but I believe that virtual events are here to stay, so for the foreseeable future, once a year, we’ll bring back our summit as a celebration of the business side of the WordPress industry.”

Jan Koch, the founder and host of WP Agency Summit, is kicking off his second annual event on October 12. The five-day event will feature 37 speakers from a wide range of backgrounds across the WordPress industry. It is a free virtual event that anyone can attend.

“The focus for the 2020 WP Agency Summit is showing attendees how to bring back the fun into scaling their agencies,” said Koch. “It is all about reducing the daily hustle by teaching how to successfully build and manage teams, how to work with enterprises (allowing for fewer customers but bigger projects), how to build sustainable recurring revenue, and how to position your agency to dominate your niche.”

This year’s event includes three major changes to make the content more accessible to a larger group of people. Each session will be available between October 12 – 16 instead of the previous 48-hour window that attendees had to find time for in 2019.

After the event has concluded, access to the content will be behind a paywall. Koch reduced the price to $77 for lifetime access for those who purchase pre-launch, which will increase to $127 during the event. Last year’s prices ballooned to $497, which meant that it was simply not affordable for many who found it too late.

Some of the proceeds this year are going toward transcribing all the videos so that hearing-impaired users can enjoy the content.

This year’s event will also focus on a virtual networking lounge for attendees. “I’ve seen how well it worked at the WP FeedBack Summit — we even had BobWP record a podcast episode on the fly in that lounge!” said Koch. “I’ve seen many new friendships develop, people connecting with new suppliers or getting themselves booked on podcasts, and sharing experiences about their businesses.”

The lounge will be open during the entirety of the summit, which will allow attendees to jump into the conversation on their own time.

A More Diverse Speaker Lineup

Koch received some backlash for the lack of gender diversity last year. The 2019 event had over 20 speakers from a diverse male lineup. However, only four women from our industry led sessions.

When asked about this issue in 2019, Koch responded, “I recognize this as a problem with my event. The reason I have so much more male than female speakers is quite simple, the current speaker line-up is purely based on connections I had when I started planning for the event. It was a relatively short amount of time for me, so I wasn’t able to build relationships with more female WP experts beforehand.”

The host said he paid attention to the feedback he received. While not hitting the 50/50 split goal he had for 2020’s event, 16 of the 37 speakers are women.

Koch said he strived to get speakers from a wider range of backgrounds. He wanted to bring in both freelancers and multi-million dollar agency owners. He also focused on getting people from multiple countries to represent WordPress agencies.

“I did reach out to around 130 people four months before the event to make new connections,” he said. “The community around the Big Orange Heart (a non-profit for mental well-being) also helped a lot with introducing me to new members of the WP community.”

Koch said he learned two valuable lessons when branching out beyond his existing connections for this year’s event:

Firstly, don’t hesitate to reach out to people you think will never talk to you because they’re running such big companies. For example, I immediately got confirmations from Mario Peshev from Devrix, Brad Touesnard from Delicious Brains, or Marieke van de Rakt from Yoast. When first messaging them, I had little hope they’d set aside time to jump on an interview with me – but they were super supportive and accommodating! The WordPress community really is a welcoming environment if you approach people in a humble way.

Secondly, build connections with sincerity. Do not just focus on what you can get from that connection but how you can help the other person. I know this sounds cheesy and you’ve heard this quite often — but it is true. Once I got the first response from new contacts and explained my goal of connecting fellow WordPress community members virtually, most immediately agreed because they also benefit from new connections and being positioned as a thought-leader in this event.

WP Agency Summit? WP FeedBack Summit?

For readers who recall the Tavern’s coverage of the WP FeedBack Summit earlier this year, the article specifically stated that the WP FeedBack Summit was a continuation of 2019’s WP Agency Summit. The official word at the time from WP FeedBack’s public relations team was the following:

Last year’s event, the WP Agency Summit has been rebranded under the umbrella of WP FeedBack’s brand when Jan Koch the host of last’s year WP Agency Summit joined WP FeedBack as CTO.

Koch said that it was a standalone event and not directly connected to WP Agency Summit but had the same target audience. However, the WP FeedBack Summit did use the previous WP Agency Summit’s stats and data to promote the event.

“The WP FeedBack Summit was hosted under the WP FeedBack brand because I joined their team as CTO in March this year,” he said. “Vito [Peleg] and I had the idea to host a virtual conference around WordPress because of WordCamp Asia being canceled — we wanted to help connect the community online through our summit.

Koch left WP FeedBack soon after the summit ended and is currently back on his own and has a goal of making WP Agency Summit a yearly event.

WordCamp Denver begins Friday this week and tickets are free for anyone who wants to join June 26-27. The event has been running since 2012, but like many other conferences, it is going virtual in 2020, as the pandemic continues to worsen around the globe. Attendees will have to forego the city’s extraordinary landscapes, friendly summer climate, and legendary beer scene this year, but organizers are adapting to make it a memorable event.

In previous years WordCamp Denver has attracted roughly 300 in-person attendees. Sponsor Wrangler and co-organizer Maddy Osman reports that this year the event has 1,696 people signed up and could reach 2,000 by the weekend.

“There were so many challenges that came with flipping to a virtual event — the biggest one being that the WordPress community loves to be physically together and COVID-19 shutdowns have obviously prevented that in a big way, starting with WordCamp Asia,” Osman said.

“Another big challenge for us was preserving a Colorado feel while opening the event up to people across the world. But we have quite a few surprises planned that feature local individuals and brands that I’m excited to share with attendees.” 

Osman said that although the team didn’t sell as many sponsorships as last year, they had no problem attracting the necessary sponsors to make the event happen. WordCamp Central covers the livestreaming costs, which was the most expensive ticket item for hosting the event virtually.

Sponsors will still have the opportunity to connect with attendees and offer their own unique digital swag. Organizers are planning on doing a password-protected swag bag with exclusive offers for WordCamp Denver attendees.

“Even though we can’t hand out fun swag, this is the next best way to make win-win connections between attendees and sponsors,” Osman said. “Attendees who have signed up for a free ticket will be emailed access instructions prior to the event.”

The WordCamp will kick off on Friday with a yoga session hosted by Denver yogi Lauren Moon of Yogiful who will help participants leave behind the stress of the work week. The schedule features three tracks that will run simultaneously: Beginner, Marketing/Content, and Power User/Developer.  Topics span the whole range of WordPress user experiences, from client relationships to creating blocks and understanding React.js.

“We have speakers from all over the US (and some international) but we prioritized speakers with diverse backgrounds and speakers who represent the local community,” Osman said.

“We tried to prioritize sessions that were super actionable and relevant to the current situation that so many businesses are facing – adapting to the COVID-19 economy. In general, when going through speaker selection, we always try to dig deeper than the surface to provide topics that people wouldn’t necessarily find elsewhere.”

The schedule for Saturday morning includes a unique session called “Brew the Perfect Cup of Coffee,” hosted by Fort Collins-based WordPress community members, David Hayes and Ann Pohl. They will discuss bean selection, grind methods, and alternatives to brewing, with a live demonstration. They will also be sharing a surprise offer from local sponsors, where attendees can redeem a free cup of coffee from one of three coffee shops in Boulder, Denver, and Fort Collins. Those attending from further away can redeem a coupon code for $10 off a bag of beans from Harbinger Coffee.

Registration for tickets to WordCamp Denver is still open. The event runs Friday (3-7pm) and Saturday (9am-1pm), June 26-27. It will be hosted on Zoom with live captioning managed by White Coat Captioning.

The 8th annual WordCamp Europe is only 9 days away and organizers have just announced the schedule. Friday and Saturday sessions are split into two tracks that will run 30-minute talks simultaneously. Each talk is followed by a 10-minute Q&A. The schedule also mixes in a few 10-minute lightning talks, with 15-minute breaks every hour.

The WordCamp will feature a variety of topics of interest to WordPress professionals and enthusiasts, including freelancing, code review, art direction with Gutenberg, website security, growing communities, and the challenges of headless WordPress. The online schedule allows users to save their favorite sessions and then email them, share a link, or print the customized schedule.

In converting the event to be fully online, WCEU PR Team co-organizer Evangelia Pappa said they had to re-work some of their original plans for speakers. Not all previously scheduled speakers were available for an online session. The organizers also had to start from scratch in planning the event, determining the platforms and tools to use, as well as figuring out a new routine for working together from home.

For the first time in WCEU history, both the networking activities and sponsor booths are going virtual using Zoom. Organizers are planning to have two networking rooms, which can also be used for speakers who want to continue Q&A times with attendees following their sessions. Sponsors will have their own schedule of activities and webinars, expanding the event to 3-4 total tracks.

Pappa said the organizing team was inspired by WordCamp Spain, which has so far been the largest online WordPress event. The camp used Zoom to support 5,515 online attendees.

More than 5,650 people have already registered for WCEU 2020. Tickets continue to be released in batches, and organizers say they have an unlimited number available. Tickets for the virtual Contributor Day, which precedes the camp on June 4, are also still available. Attendees can indicate interest by checking the box for Contributor Day during the regular ticket signup process.

One of the exciting things about WordCamps going virtual is the community gaining access to more events and presentations than ever before, from anywhere in the world. Even in this new online-only format, local camps still retain their unique character as they feature speakers from their respective communities.

WordCamp Kent (Ohio) is one of these upcoming events that has been forced online by the pandemic. Organizers will be broadcasting all sessions on the weekend of May 30-31, and tickets are free for anyone who wants to attend.

The schedule for this particular event runs heavy on the business and marketing side of working with WordPress, with very few talks geared towards developers. If you are a freelancer, run an agency, or have a WordPress product business, you will find WordCamp Kent’s program more tailored to topics that help you improve client services.

The schedule on the first day of the event is divided into two tracks: Freelance/Business and User/Marketing. These sessions will run alongside live Q&A and a Help Desk managed by volunteers in the #wp-help-desk channel in the NEO WordPress Slack workspace. The second day of the event will be also be split into two tracks: Freelance/Business/Developer and WordPress 101/User.

Topics include designing websites for generating leads, improving your business model for freelancers and small businesses, client consultations, content marketing, and customer support.

This Kent, Ohio, WordCamp may not have made it on your radar in the past, but the pandemic has opened up events in some ways. It forces a greater number of camps online and allows attendees to join any event without the travel expenses that would ordinarily be prohibitive. In the past, many people who were not local would simply opt to save their money for the bigger camps. The WordPress community has a greater potential to accelerate their learning opportunities, as more smaller camps gain a global audience online.