Angela Jin 6:05 pm on May 8, 2023
Tags: next-gen-events ( 15 )

The Next Generation of WordCamps

Since 2006, WordCamps have been a staple way that WordPress enthusiasts meet. The Community team has long held that the purpose of all WordCamps, and WordPress events broadly, was to connect WordPressers, inspire them to do more with WordPress, and encourage them to contribute back to the project.

Especially in recent years, how the WordPress community meets has fundamentally changed. And, as more and more events are organized, several challenges have emerged, some we experienced even before the pandemic. To address these challenges, organizers, community deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook., and mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. have begun to discuss different ways of meeting.

To that end, let’s embrace these challenges and modernize our events by making some big shifts to why and how we meet.

A new purpose

Connection, inspiration, and contribution are undeniably important to WordPressers. 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.

The following proposed purpose of WordPress events is based on conversations with various community members:

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.

What does this mean for our events?

The hope is that a period of innovation and experimentation will follow this critical shift in the purpose of our events, with the following outcomes:

Events curated for clearly defined audiences, resulting in a clearer idea of what attendees will gain from participating. For example events for students, for designers, for contributors, etc.
A more precise focus around event content type or topic. This also will help further clarify who the event is for. For example events on AI and WordPress, user experience, enterprise, etc.
A variety of event formats that are freshly exciting and engaging to attendees. For example workshops, unconference, job fairs, pure networking, etc.

But wait, where does this leave current WordCamps, meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook., and flagships?

While experimentation of “Next Gen WordCamps” is strongly encouraged (someone, please help me come up with a better name than that!), meetups, currently planned WordCamps and flagships will continue. Here’s what the Community Team anticipates:

Local meetups: I strongly recommend that we continue encouraging local meetups. These are our most easy-to-access events because they can be organized by anyone and are started fairly quickly. They provide consistent, local, in-person connection and are a great, lower-barrier way to build community management and event organizing skills. With that in mind, let’s continue to meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook.!
Currently planned WordCamps: All currently planned WordCamps can continue as is and the Community Team will continue to support them. New applications for WordCamps will be encouraged to experiment with different 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. They’ll be the place to highlight the latest, greatest, and coolest in WordPress and where we are going.

As we experiment with “Next Gen WordCamps,” the community team can reevaluate our full events program and how events coexist happily.

Some suggested next steps

This change will inevitably generate a lot of excellent discussions. Let’s embrace a period of experimentation and lean into the ingenuity of the WordPress community.

To that end, organizers who want to try out a “Next Gen WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more.” are invited to begin pitching their ideas (come chat in the #community-events channel or email support@wordcamp.org). As long as the idea matches the new purpose and aligns well with WordPress community open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. values and community spirit (think five good faith rules, our desire to be inclusive, diverse, and as welcoming as possible, etc.), we approve the idea and provide some financial support from the global sponsorship fund. Organizers will be expected to publicly share the pitch and write a recap of the event, with some evaluation of event success.

With innovation comes the need for revised tooling and logistics, and future posts will request feedback on and discuss those needs. This is also a great opportunity for a beautiful blue sky exercise post on event types and formats.

Share your thoughts

This is a change; change always comes with questions, challenges, thoughts, nervousness, and excitement. Please share everything you’d like! In particular, it would be helpful to hear:

What are your thoughts on the updated purpose for WordPress events?
What do you envision “Next Gen WordCamps” to look like?

Do you already have a specific idea in mind for a new event type? Use this form to share it with the Community Team!

#next-gen-events

David Bisset 7:03 pm on May 8, 2023
This is certainly an interesting – and welcome – approach. After helping to run WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Miami for over a decade it was always challenging for the organization come up with new and interesting formats and niches to keep things interesting (as that was always a top priority). One or more focuses – perhaps including some of the ones mentioned – would tend to keep events focused and (for lack of a better word at the moment) unique to a point.

It does sound like however that now to have a WordCamp it needs to be more by default that what they were, so that leads to a few thoughts.
- “A clearly defined audience”. Does this mean just ONE audience and where/how is this defined in the planning process? If a WordCamp focuses on designers for example, that that mean a certain % of talks and content needs to be focused on content for designers only? What if the audience was “the local community” (as what WordCamps were always were for in it’s genesis)? Does having a “clearly defined audience” mean WordCamps can no longer appeal to a “variety” of different topics and audiences for their event, especially when a goal was to attract as many people to the event as possible? “A more precise focus around event content type or topic” seems to backup that line of thinking.
- Along the same line: “a variety of event formats that are freshly exciting and engaging to attendees”… many WordCamps (pre-COVID at least) had different formats (Friday networking… workshops on weekends… kids camps and job fairs happening throughout). Admittingly some WordCamps were smaller events without some of this variety.
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.

Does this mean WordCamps moving forward – even ones that are only a day – need to have something more or different than X tracks of diverse subject of talks? Many WordCamps have done this and reported success, but this seems to be now a requirement of all WordCamps with a reasonable finite amount of formats and focuses.

Finally, to know if something is a success it has to be measured. What are the proposed metrics that will be able to be examined (say after a year?) to see if this has been a success? I think this is important to establish.

Still have to digest this, but that was my (admittingly not incredibly helpful) $0.02. 😉 I am overall excited about the efforts made to make WordCamps more exciting and creative while making sure WordCamps stick to the spirit of a “low friction way of strengthening my local WordPress community”. 👍🏻
- Angela Jin 7:06 am on May 10, 2023
  
  Thanks David! Lots of great questions and thoughts in here.
  
  First thought, I love this line about making sure that WordCamps stick to the spirit of a low friction way of strengthening my local WordPress community. Our community has numerous values that I hope to preserve FOREVER, like reducing barriers to participation and providing equitable access to opportunities. So while the Community team’s goal is to help people have as many cool events as possible, proposals for new event formats will be evaluated against how they celebrate our shared values.
  
  My other overarching response is that this is encouraged as a period of experimentation. Therefore, we’ll learn a lot! A smaller community might want to continue with a smaller event catered to a varied audience. On the other hand, it’s really hard to be everyone for everyone. My hope is that people will create the events they want to see, including the ones they feel are currently missing. Community team members like yourself have a lot of experience and familiarity with event audiences, and we can work together to define them for new event formats.
  
  As for proposed metrics… great question. That could be a huge topic for discussion resulting in a fresh post, but some common event metrics would be good to track, like number of distinct event formats or topics, overall attendee/organizer/sponsor satisfaction, attendance rates, metrics around diversity, number of returning or first time participants, etc.
dmccan 7:33 pm on May 8, 2023

Experimenting with focusing events on different segments of the community, topics, or formats sounds very worthwhile.

To comment on the shift in “purpose.” Perhaps it is just phrasing, but the established purpose was:

“The Community team has long held that the purpose of all WordCamps, and WordPress events broadly, was to connect WordPressers, inspire them to do more with WordPress, and encourage them to contribute back to the project.”

And now it is being changed to:

“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.”

The phrase “21st-century skills” has meaning in educational circles related to preparing for the workforce. That together with “professional opportunities” and “partnerships” would seem to change the focus from empowering volunteers to professional networking.
- Angela Jin 7:12 am on May 10, 2023
  
  We do always want to empower volunteers! At the same time, I do think that all event participants (speakers, sponsors, organizers, volunteers, attendees) are looking to events to build skills and find professional opportunities, and do come to WordCamps for that purpose.
  
  Personally, I think we can do all of this!
Ross Wintle 10:24 pm on May 8, 2023

While I think there’s some value in focussing on an audience, please don’t throw out the current WordCamps. 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.

In fact, I’d argue that I’m normally in that bubble day-to-day, and WordCamps are the events that bring me out of it.
- Angela Jin 7:14 am on May 10, 2023
  
  I love this, Ross, thanks for sharing! We’re keeping the current WordCamps as planned. The hope is to iterate and experiment on our event types. If we discover we don’t like them and they aren’t working well (to David’s point earlier, those metrics will be helpful!), we can always stop or change the experiment.
Dave Loodts 5:42 am on May 9, 2023

I like the concept of more subject based WordCamps. I suggested it during the yes/no debate of WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. NL around 2018/2019.

But in reality for “smaller” countries, it won’t be doable cause off a lack of large enough speaker/audience batch, certainly when the topic is too narrow. But they can have a focus-tracks on that subject, that in fact will be doable.
About the naming, i am all for simplicity. Keep naming it WordCamp but adding a tagline on to it. For example:
WordCamp Belgium: Focus-edition on pagebuilders and e-commerce

So to answer on the questions:
What are your thoughts on the updated purpose for WordPress events?
Like it. It also comes with more freedom for WordPress events organizers.
One point that is not brought up: the age-thing. I think we can’t deny the average higher age on meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. and WordCamps. I’m also 47y, in my head i am waayyy younger. 🙂 But more topic based events can be a steppingstone for younger audiences between 20-30. I am from the generation where we have to buy books to learn htmlHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites., there were no online courses. In skillset i am a generalist.
With the current knowledge spread all over the place; then the new generation is maybe no so a generalist, more focussed in a few skills. So, yes: one more reason for more focussed events.

What do you envision “Next Gen WordCamps” to look like?
I like having the option of “publishing” WordCamps as (partially) topic based. By the way: i also likes what Joost & Marieke is going to do on WordCamp Europe: people can pitch projects in their booth for funding. Hearing on stage a yes/no. That is very innovative in our ecosystem where “money” is/was a taboo. And that’s also very Next Gen: which is also the generation of “immediate availability”: i want to hear that music => go youtube or spotify. Me 35 years ago: fingers on pause/play button hoping the radio presenter won’t speak during the song. Saying: Next Gen innovation can come both ways. Meaning: also ask sponsors/speakers about their Next Gen ideas.
- Angela Jin 7:21 am on May 10, 2023
  
  Thanks Dave! I know many WordCamps and MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. have challenges in getting enough speakers/audiences. One curiosity I have is if more specific topic/audience will actually bring out people in those areas who aren’t already in WordPress. And, by better defining the audience, I also think we more intentionally seek out that group. For example, if we did an event like “WordPress for University Students”, I think we’d have an easier time reaching that audience.
  
  And yes! Let’s hear all the Next Gen ideas!
Jason Rouet 9:24 am on May 9, 2023

This is refreshing and very welcome! Thanks Angela for making this insightful summary!

I digress a little to discuss a transversal topic that is related imho:

I would like to point out that I personally think that a WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. could be organised even if there is no local meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook..

Actually, building local communities is a good idea and a laudable intention. I’m 100% in favor of continuing the current support to local groups as they are essential!
However, the systematic conditioning of a WC’s existence on the existence of a meetup is a questionable approach that is mainly applicable to large cities which is not representative of the diversity of the community. Not all cities have the capability to start a meetup, not all cities have web workers, freelances, agencies, product companies etc… willing to attend and/or organise meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook..

On the other hand, an active local meetup does not necessarily lead to a WC (I know several local meetups here in France that are among the more actives but never “evolved” into the organisation of a WordCamp for several reasons).

In the end, a WC doesn’t have the same dynamic as a meetup (yearly event vs monthly/quatterly event) and it has very different goals (regional to national generic audience vs tiny specific local audience).

In some cases, you have a strong local tech community in which WP topics are diluted in very regular local meetups, but that shouldn’t prevent a WC from being organised.

We could also imagine the inverse situation: a small group of people living in a small to medium city (or even a rural region), organising a recurring WordCamp every year and from this event, starting a local community

We could also imagine that organising a regular WordCamp every year (or every other year) could federate local participants who would then want to organise themselves as a local community organising a more regular meetup. It is sometimes easier to motivate people for an impactful event and then build bridges with other local communities to develop a vibrant local ecosystem than the other way around.

Also, sometimes the local active meetup isn’t a generic WP meetup but a local chapter focused on a specific builder, framework or another specific part of the WP project. Does it count as a local meetup? It’s not a diverse one, but it is nonetheless dedicated to WP.

Like you said Angela: since Covid, it is clear that small local communities has fundamentally changed (and it’s not specific to the WordPress community, it’s the same on other opensource communities). Their organisers are struggling to recruit people, find new format and stay active. I think that the classic “meetup” format has been, at least temporarily, overused as it has been used a lot online during the . So only allowing a WC to be organised in cities with an active meetup also limits the organisation of WordCamps.

Besides, in France (to talk about what I know well), meetups should be more regional than city by city, it would make more sense. It doesn’t make much sense to have a meetup for each small city, when they are 1 hour drive from each other and could host meetups in turn easily to motivate more people.

The same fatigue is setting in around the main WordCamp format, which is why this announcement is so interesting. Following discussions at a local WordCamp here in France, many of us agreed that the classic format should continue, but that it should be extended with more theme-specific events or with more innovative formats to energize the WordPress scene.

Don’t get me wrong, I love meetups and (especially) WordCamps as they currently exist, but the format hasn’t evolve that much in recent years (especially for WCs) and I think that, without renouncing to these classic formats, loosening the organisational requirements and supporting other forms of events, would infuse new momentum within the community.
- Sé Reed 8:37 pm on May 9, 2023
  
  I am interested in how this proposal came to be! @angelajin can you (or someone else!) please direct me to any team meeting, GitHubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ issue, or otherwise documented discussion of this topic?
  
  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. As that ship has sailed, I’d like to at least see the discussion that led to it.
  
  Also, the post indicates that this is effective immediately, but also says that this is a “proposed” change to the purpose and format of WordCamps. So can you please clarify if this is a change that has already been decided or a proposal for change?
  - Angela Jin 7:46 am on May 10, 2023
    
    This is a proposal to iterating on WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. formats. It is something that I strongly believe we need to do, and I hope we experiment and have fun with it! That being said, I do not expect this to be a discussion stopper, if anything, this is a starting point that I hope will generate a lot more discussion.
    
    To be super clear, the community team isn’t removing anything we currently support (MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook., WordCamps, Flagships, do_actiondo_action do_action hackathons are community-organised events that are focussed on using WordPress to give deserving charitable organisations their own online presence. Learn more on doaction.org. events, Kids or TeenCamps, WPDiversity workshops, etc.).
    
    As to how this came to be, I’d say it’s a conversation that started before the pandemic (and continued during). More recently, Community DeputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. were receiving applications from organizers who wanted to experiment with event formats (here’s a good example of such a conversation). I also spend a great deal of my time speaking with speakers, sponsors, organizers, volunteers, attendees, with a wide range of experience levels, to hear about what they like/don’t like about our event formats. It was with all this in mind that I gut checked this with our community deputies and global sponsors (as we need them to fund our events!) before posting here. I’m sure that this post will be discussed at future Community Team meetings!
    
    The Community team doesn’t currently use GithubGitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/ as a project management tool, but there is a proposal for that!
- Angela Jin 7:25 am on May 10, 2023
  
  Ooh, lots of good stuff in here, Jason. I am a strong proponent of MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. before WordCamps for many reasons, primarily around consistency in connection and the opportunities to learn and grow from MeetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. to WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more.. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t iterate and experiment. Lots to think about here, maybe we can talk more outside of this post?
  - Jason Rouet 7:38 am on May 10, 2023
    
    Many thanks for your reply, Angela. Indeed, my comment provides much food for thought! 😉
    I know there are many reasons to push MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. before WordCamps not all of which can be listed here.
    Like for your proposal of experimenting with new formats for the events, I’m not saying we should abandon the connection of Meetups to WordCamps, but that this bond, which is currently required, could be relaxed depending on the project to facilitate these new formats, that you are calling for, to emerge.
    I’d be very interested in discussing this further, what would be the ideal meeting or platform to pursue this thinking?
Margherita Pelonara 1:18 pm on May 11, 2023

Hi, there. Here is Italian community! We are working on planning an in person daylong event in next September, focused on Community and engaging new people to contribute in community team as meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. organizer o speaker. We are organizing workshops to diversity & inclusion training, a sort of learn by doing for (new) meetup organizer, ecc… The event will be a kind of a “prolonged meetup”: not a simple meetup of a single city community, nor a wordcampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more.. We are thinking of something practice: we saw both in our city meetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. and in our WordCamps that people want to meet again after pandemic, but there is a sort of bored mood for “classical” confercence.
We are planning to announce officially this next event within the end of this month and publish it via meetup.com.
No swag, no t-shirt. We’re documenting all the steps so we will be able to share with the community team the entire process and outcomes.
- Angela Jin 4:21 pm on May 18, 2023
  
  I love it! And, I really appreciate that you’ll be documenting process and outcome, this is really valuable information to share with the rest of the community team!
Torsten Landsiedel 6:46 pm on May 11, 2023

This is not about WordCamps per se, but we (the German community) are missing an event for long time contributors. Organizing a locale, including coordination and decision-making about how to do things (Rosetta sites, WordCamps, MeetupsMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook., Translations, etc.) – there is a lack of discussing and decision-making for things like that.

We talked about this on one of the last WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. pre-pandemic in a metaMeta Meta is a term that refers to the inside workings of a group. For us, this is the team that works on internal WordPress sites like WordCamp Central and Make WordPress. meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. talk (many meetup organizer and community organizer attended). Working title was “Community Summit DE” or “Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/. without onboarding people”. I talked with Andrea Middleton about it in those days and she liked the idea.

Other events that happened before/after classic WordCamps in Germany, I like to see more on the event itself, are gatherings for specific topics like “maintenance of WP sites” (we called it “Admin day”) or the developing of Community powered plugins (not really covered by the main areas on a contributor day) (“Hackathon” from the pluginkollektiv for their plugins (Antispam Bee, Statify, etc.) – because there is a need for those tools in Germany).

Things in WordPress get more and more complex over time, and on flagship events I see important topics discussed in gatherings for those topics that shape the ideas for the future. Like meetings of all translation-pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party makers, all page builders, all antispam tools, all FSE theme maker, etc. – maybe we could focus the whole event around one of those topics (like WordCamp Netherlands is doing it this year).

Another event that was happening in Germany was something between a Meetup (one evening, about 3 hours) and a WordCamp (1-2 days, maybe with a Contributor Day following some specific guidelines) – it was called “Meetup Day” and was easier to organize. Target group is the Meetup audience, but for one whole day. For example, one room (or more, but small) without catering or just simple snacks/coffee/softdrinks. Costs are smaller, easy to organize. Fills the gap between those event types.

Edit: Splitting the target audience (theme devs, plugin devs, blogger, designer, SEO, etc.) could make sense, but also doesn’t bring the diversity of topics to a camp which is a great advantage of WordCamps.

Has anyone mentioned WooCamps? 😉
DeveloperWil 1:05 am on May 12, 2023

This is a great discussion and lots of ideas for a next gen WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more..

While there is some interest in a WordCamp in Australia, my focus is to build up the grass-roots local communities that were devastated by the pandemic. Once these are established, we’ll better understand what our community is looking for.

Also, many of our organisers stepped back, so we have to encourage new, younger community talent to step up as leaders and organisers.

There’s a definite move away from watching presentation slides and more willingness to get hands-on with workshops.

Focusing on a niche/target audience is a great idea. Maybe run two days with a different focus on each day rather than run the same two tracks over a couple of days?

There is still interest in WordPress, but the community focus has changed to implementation. More hands-on training and workshops would definitely be my focus for a future WordCamp.
- jominney 11:37 am on June 8, 2023
  
  Agree with Wil on this one – we are also really impacted by how very far away we all are from literally everything here in Australia. For example, Wil and I (two meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. organisers) are over 3000km from each other with no other meetup organisers in between. My city just held our first moderately successful meetup since the pandemic a few weeks ago, and we had a grand total of 2 attendees who had previously been to an event.
  
  We’re having to rebuild our communities from scratch! I am currently the only organiser in my state, and have nobody else jumping up and down to help organise, get involved, contribute…
  
  Part of the reason I think we’ve lost a lot of our old community is because we had worked really hard leading up to the pandemic to hold our own WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. (we’ve never had one in Perth, ever) and when we were finally approved the pandemic hit and it was no longer a possibility. A lot of us, myself included, felt burned out and disheartened by that. Most people here in Perth have never heard of a WordCamp, don’t realise WordPress is open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL., and aren’t even aware that our community exists. It’s an uphill battle!
Jon Brown 4:16 am on May 13, 2023
I’m glad someone is thinking about this. I think David has some good points above about the variety that existed pre-covid.

The most useful camps I’ve attended over the decades are ones with a focus. I think about BuddyCamp (Vancouver), PluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party-palooza (Orange County), Business tracks (Orange County, Maui, Vegas, Miami)…

Exciting as well are the non-WordCamps with focuses, like LoopConf, WPCampus, etc… It used to be some of the “best” parts of WordCamps were when niche groups got together around a topic. Like GenesisCamp before WC San Fran, and at WCUSWCUS WordCamp US. The US flagship WordCamp event. (Nashville), or Yoast, BeaverBuilder, Elementor, etc… but then that’s become nearly impossible to do in the last 10 years. Camps have too many restrictions against doing that thing, object to “overlapping” schedules, and won’t coordinate with outside events, etc…

I think we need to consider who came to WordCamps in their heyday, versus now.

From 2006 to around 2016, blogging was HOT, and bloggers were coming to WordCamps en masse, along with those building blog type sites for folks that made WordPress as popular as it has become.

Is anyone still blogging? Not really. We need different focuses.

Back then having WordCamps talks that talked about “image editing” and “writing content” or “getting ad sponsorship” were great topics. I miss that diversity of talks. I also recall WCPhilly had an amazing design track and amazing content track one year (Temple Univ, I think around 2010).

I go to other non-WC conferences and am amazed at how well they CURATE their speakers to really appeal to attendees. They create coherent tracks of content. WordCamps too often seem to “take what we can get” in terms of speakers and the quality isn’t there. Quality speakers are rare and the curation of tracks/content tend not to be cohesive since calls for speakers tend to be a “free for all”. WordCamps end up feeling like a bunch of random disconnected talks.

So… what makes sense to me?

1) Drop thinking about WordCamps as “local city based events”.
2) Currate WordCamps around focuses:
- Enterprise WordPress (Large scale, high traffic, highly customized)
- E-Commerce (More than Woo, focus on store owners/managers, not just devs)
- Plugin Developers
- Theme Developers
- Education (Both for high ed, as well as LMS)
3) Organizers should outline focus tracks and THEN ask for speakers to fit into those tracks.

To be clear I’m talking about different WordCamps, not just tracks, for each of these focuses.

Just like attending BuddyCamp in Vancouver years ago, I’d gladly fly to a focused camp wherever it was held.

While I still enjoy seeing my friends at WordCamps, Id way rather loose half the city camps (already have really) in favor of professionally useful ones.
Takis Bouyouris 3:24 pm on May 16, 2023

Thank you for sharing this, Angela! For one thing we definitely do need to ponder on the future of WordCamps as many things have changed. Apart from the pandemic some signs that were becoming visible already were what we could call an “ecosystem fatigue”: organiser burnout, speaker rotation, sponsor depletion.

By doing a quick read here what resounds to my ears is “specialisation”. The need for WordCamps to be more specialised in an effort to provide clearer and higher value content to their attendees. I do understand this and I do miss the years when I visited WordCamps and longed to learn new things from the presentations.

But it also sounds a bit like a turn from “community oriented” events to more “economy oriented events”. Hope this sentence makes as much sense in English as it does in my head! And of course economy is not a bad thing

So the fear here is how to we preserve the community aspect of WordCamps, which has undoubtedly been a huge drive so far. How can organisers, who are volunteers, sometimes not too experienced in the community or even in their field, how can the everyday organiser fit into that and not be intimidated. Because this proposal raises the bar for all of us even higher.
- Jason Rouet 10:11 am on May 17, 2023
  
  I second this Takis, current WordCamps are generalist and are best for newcomers. Once you are more experienced, a refreshed format with more specialized talks/activities could help people keep learning things while continuing to attract new people to our beautiful community with “classic” WCs.
- Angela Jin 4:39 pm on May 18, 2023
  
  Thanks for sharing this, Takis! I can see where this feels like we’re leaning towards more meeting economic needs.
  
  From my perspective, there is a need to provide events that meet business and economic needs AND WordPress can do that in a community-first way. I think there is strong alignment! In my experience, the WordPress community is excellent at sharing knowledge, information, and creating opportunities together. I hope to see us do that in more focused ways, while preserving our community spirit and values.
  
  I also do hope that by being more experimental in how we meet and the topics, we bring fresh energy and excitement for everyone involved.
Marta Torre 9:28 pm on May 18, 2023

I love this post and constantly think about this.

For me, one of the things to keep in mind is smaller events, the WordCamps I usually go to, are usually many people, and the organizing teams are 10 months working on them, some even have to stop working for months in order to get the event off the ground. this is terrible!

I think doing smaller, but more frequent events might be a good idea for this.

I also think that even two-day WordCamps are too much, and you could do morning-only or one-day events.

I’m also thinking about WordCamps specific to a particular type of audience. In Seville it was for developers and it is the WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. that I really enjoyed the most as an attendee.

I think that creating WordCamps for one type of audience enriches everyone.

Thanks, Angela!
Isotta 6:49 am on May 19, 2023

Hello everyone! If anybody wants to share specific ideas about new event types with the Community Team, you can use this form.

It’s a short form where you can share details about the event type you have in mind. In addition, you can indicate if the community team can reach out to you to follow up on your idea.

Feel free to share it with your communities as well! Thanks a lot for your precious contribution!
idearius 10:43 pm on June 21, 2023

Hello, @angelasjin and everybody.

This comes a bit late, but we’re slowly rebuilding the WordPress community in Uruguay and yesterday we began seriously considering organizing our second WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. later this year. Coincidentally, a WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each. email arrived just hours ago with a link to this article.

I find it strange that there are only thoughts and opinions in this discussion. While well-intended, they may not necessarily reflect reality… and can even be awfully wrong.

Is there’s any hard data about attendees and users’ expectations? Have any basic metrics / KPIs ever been recorded?

Has a global poll of past WordCamp attendees ever been done?

Hard data would be key to help us organize better events and make better (more responsible) use of volunteers’ time and effort.

It’s hard to believe that @dimensionmedia is the first one to mention the subject.

Best.
Stephen Dumba 6:24 pm on August 17, 2023

This is a great idea. I first attended WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. at WordCamp Kampala 2018 and I managed to get what I wanted because I had a brief list of questions for those who new WordPress. I had struggled with web design in previous years and I was advised by a colleague that WordPress would be a good choice for me.

In the WordCamps that followed, i.e. Entebbe, Jinja and Kampala the attendance of teachers of IT increased so much. This brought about the issue that their expectations were not met because not much of the content was aligned to their needs.

Next generation WordCamps will help define the overall theme of the event so that attendees get the best out of the 2 days.

This is absolutely a brilliant idea
Devin Maeztri 11:08 am on February 1, 2024

Hello, folks. You might have received a notification about the same post that I published: https://make.wordpress.org/community/2024/02/01/the-next-generation-of-wordcamps-2/.

It was created by accident and has been deleted. I apologize for the inconvenience. 🙏🏽