Howdy there! Just a heads-up that WordCamp Paris is coming on May 14th. Free for all, full-day barcamp, and limited to 100(-ish), so get’em seats while they’re hot! 🙂

We’ll be launching a new organizers’ site over on wordcamp.org later this week. We’ll ultimately be tying it to the wordpress.org user profiles so that WordCamp activity (organizing, speaking, volunteering, sponsoring, attending) will show up on your profile at wordpress.org as a contribution to the community (we feel these activities are important contributions and deserve recognition just as much as participating in forum threads and contributing patches). If you have never posted to the wordpress.org forums, Codex, etc then you should head over there some time soon and create a username/password so you’ll be all set to log in when we launch the new system.

Howdy everyone! Just dropping a note that WordCamp Miami is coming up soon.. March 5th, 2011. Would love to have your help in spreading the word about it. Check out our site (we just confirmed @nacin, @markjaquith, and @ptahdunbar as speakers).

http://wordcampmiami.com

Would love to hear feedback and suggestions. We are also still looking for sponsors. Last year we sold out at 220+. This year we plan on doing the same, with even more attending!

We are having our first WP meetup tomorrow and will be announcing the date for WordCamp Albuquerque. Shhhh…don’t tell anyone. Yet.

WordCamp Victoria 2011

We have a WordCamp coming up on January 22, 2011 in Victoria, British Columbia. This is the third one here, and the last one attracted 130 WordPressers.

I’m keen to find a great keynote; we budgeted for this. Any suggestions? Otherwise I’ll blow the budget on cool t-shirts!

Hello fellow WordCampers! I made a post here a few months ago about WordCamp Birmingham 2010. It’s now less than two weeks away (September 18 & 19) and we’d like your help in spreading the word about it. We’re also still seeking sponsors. Please check out the site (and if you can help us out – contact us through the form on the site).

http://wordcampbirmingham.org

I hope all of you are doing well and that all of our camps are successful. I’d be great to be able to hear about what others are doing again…

Hi guys, it seems this blog hasn’t been active lately, but the thing is we’re organizing a WordCamp at Curitiba Brasil and I’m trying to contact people at wordcamp.org through the contact form, but I’ve got no answer yet and I need it as soon as possible. Could somebody help me, please?
Thanks

This will be re-announced soon, but planning for WordCamp Atlanta 2011 has started. We’re sticking to our date of 11-12 February 2011.

I’m wondering about this site. Is our point of contact now only via Jane and not this P2? Where’s this mass email?

Upcoming WordCamps: if you want me to tweet about your event from the official WordCamp twitter account, shoot me an email at jane/wordcamp/org. I can tweet when you’re looking for sponors, speakers, venue, attendees, whatever.

I’ve had a few conversation with various WordCamp programmers recently, mostly stemming from “how do we do ______”, “how did you do __________”, and I wanted to cover how we accomplished them cheaply, quickly. I know Jane is coming out with some extended help guides. Plus, I am more than happy to offer help to anyone with specific questions.

Budget
We recently threw a 500 person camp in Boston for just shy of 20k. We’re budgeted 30k for 600 people for Phoenix, and that’s with some massive padding. I know some people get worried about having to raise a ton of money, but generally its a good idea to start with “if ticket sales cover 50%, I should raise that much in sponsorships as a goal.”. If what you’re doing costs more than that, start cutting.

Sponsorships
Remember, you’re really giving sponsors access to a very hard to reach and highly desirable demographic: the upwardly mobile geek. If you make the sponsor levels reasonable, it allows smaller companies to be involved. Provide them a sponsor sheet, and think about going to local companies. I think you can give sponsors great coverage at the event without tables, an expo, or overbranding. A few mentions is enough. And never, ever trade sponsorships for speaking slots.

Venue
Since this is the first thing you’ll go looking for, be creative in finding a venue. Free is optimal and should preempt all other needs. If the only venue you can find will fit 200 people, that’s the size you might want your camp if the alternative is spending 30k on a conference center. Some would say wifi isn’t neccesary, but its surely desireable. Consider colleges (who do you know there?), high schools, community centers, movie theatres, corporate spaces, any kind of community space possible, even open realty. Once you find such a space, try working with the venue- this is a “self supporting event” that serves the community. Can you make the rate more reasonable, we only have XX to spend. Remind venues that this is a crowd of bloggers, twitterers, and foursquarers, and will bring a great amt of coverage to the venue.

Food
the biggest mistake I think you can make is locking into a venue with a catering contract. that is the budget killer. a surprising number of college campuses now have catering locked down. without a contract, you have options to allow people to venture into the city they’re in which is great for lunch, or to work with local vendors. for instance, consider local markets, pizza places, etc. even if they won’t donate lunches, you can normally work with them to bring the price down dramatically as a mix of sponsorship & cash. We had great luck with Whole Foods & Sprouts. Try to remember your vegans &v egetarians.

Shirts
Try finding a local vendor to work with on shirts. You don’t have to brand the shirts with logos, just keep them simple. Figure on spending 5-10$ per shirt, and be sure to get a few quotes. This is another great opportunity for an exchange of cash + sponsorship.

Grab bags
It is absolutely unneccesary to have swag bags. If you do have them, they can be had for literally 1-2$ a piece from major bag producers. Consider going to sponsors and asking for them, or perhaps your food sponsor.

Badges/programs
printing can be done at kinkos easily, but you can also consider Moo, who would print badges and programs for free. Contact me for our templates we used.

Video
Basically, be in contact with the Foundation (jane). Its essential we get these sessions videotaped, but massive technology isn’t needed, and Jane will work to ensure you can videotape. Some flips is more than sufficient, and the Foundation will likely help with cameras & rendering videos to wordcamp.tv if you ask.

Parties
A reception just means you tell everyone where to meet. You don’t have to secure a room, etc…. you can certainly talk to the venue and warn them about the crowd and ask for some drink specials, etc. If you can’t find one venue, consider a “bar hop”.

Hotels
Getting a hotel discount is a big boon to attendees, but the first thing a hotel will tell you is you need to guarantee a block of rooms. This is likely not true. You want to direct traffic to one hotel, they can give you a discount code, and in return, you won’t receive the “perks” of a hotel guarantee (free rooms or points for organizers, shorter hold times, etc).

Misc.
Always, always have 10% in your budget for the things you don’t expect:) When there are no surprises, simply give the money to charity!

I know this is a quick overview, but hopefully this would be of assistance in aiding people to orchestrate an affordable but great wordcamp experience for their city. I’m always available for questions if you’d like.

That was wise advice to start planning six months out. WordCamp Fayetteville, albeit only about 90 folks, still would have been a monster to organize in less time. May 29 and 30 will be here in just a moment or two. Thanks for all the support!

To be announced publicly in the next few days: WordCamp Denver is moving to Boulder this year (Sat, July 10 2010).

To avoid confusion we’re going to call it ‘WordCamp Boulder’ this year. If we decide to come back to Denver next year, then we will call it ‘WordCamp Denver’. If the community in Boulder is irresistible and more easily maintained, we’ll remain there with the same name. Either way, the metro area and user base is the same, it’s all about where it’s being hosted.

Worth noting, since many WordCamps are becoming highly-local, we avoided (per discussion with Jane) naming it ‘WordCamp Colorado’ as there are a few other “big” metros (Ft. Collins, Colorado Springs) in the state.

FYI, I’m taking over as central liaison for WordCamps from Maya. I’ll be emailing all of you in the next couple of weeks to let you know about what this will mean for you and your events, and what kind of support we hope to introduce over the next 6 months to make planning WordCamps an easier, more enjoyable experience. In the meantime, for anyone currently in the process of planning a WordCamp, please note that we have posted revised guidelines at http://central.wordcamp.org/about.

One thing that we didn’t used to spell out but has become necessary to codify is that WordCamps are meant to promote the philosophies behind WordPress itself. Lately there have been a number of WordCamps accepting speakers, sponsorships, door prizes, etc from people/companies acting in violation of the WordPress license (GPL v2) with regard to their themes/plugins. It is the official policy of WordCamp that WordCamps not provide publicity/a platform for such individuals/businesses. They are welcome to attend, but WordCamps may not have non-GPL-compliant people as organizers, sponsors, or speakers. Events that want to move forward and include such individuals in these roles may need to use a name other than WordCamp if the appropriate adjustments can’t be made. This is because WordCamps are seen as the place to gather for the official word on all things WordPress; providing a public platform and publicity in an official capacity for people acting in direct opposition to the official word just causes confusion.

In addition, moving forward all WordCamps must be standalone events, not part of a larger event or hosted alongside another tech event such as BarCamp. While we encourage WordPress tracks at such events, it will reduce confusion for WordCamps to always be standalone events. Again, we encourage integrative events, they just can’t be called WordCamp moving forward.

If you have any questions about an event that is coming up sooner rather than later and don’t want to wait for the mass email, feel free to contact me at jane at wordcamp dot org.

We’re getting underway for Wordcamp Philly! Checkout the new site http://www.wordcampphilly.com. If you’re in the area on Oct 30th come on by!

WordCamp Savannah has posted a survey to find out what potential attendees are most interested in seeing.

WordCamp Savannah will be August 20-22, being held at SCAD River Club.

WordCamp Paris is just around the corner (this Saturday), but I’m gonna let you in on a little secret. Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone 🙂

WordCamp Yokohama signup opened: http://yokohama2010.wordcamp.jp/
The site uses a custom-built plugin to show attendee list & their attributes based on WP signup. The plugin author will be releasing it soon 🙂

Official announcement to come next week (most likely), but WordCamp Philly will be happening at the end of October 2010. Cheesesteaks, baby.

WordCamp Orange County is going down this weekend. We’re streaming our entire event live so be sure to tune in at http://ocwordcamp.com

WordCamp Victoria is coming together nicely for May 15th.

http://www.wordcampvictoria.ca/

WordCamp Phoenix 2010 planning is underway for fall 2010.

Not announcing anything officially just yet, but WordCamp Iowa will be held in Des Moines (most likely downtown) on August 7th. I will make sure I continue to update you guys. I’m eager to learn from you all!

Yay: http://2010.sf.wordcamp.org/2010/03/25/negotiated-hotel-rates-now-available/

The new Wordcamp Detroit site is live!

http://www.wordcampdetroit.com

Early Bird Registration is being taken for October 9th-10th too!

WordCamp Fukuoka 2010 T-shirts and cake!

WordCamp Fukuoka 2010 reports in English.
http://blog.detlog.org/2010/03/07/wordcamp-fukuoka-2010-wrap-up/

WordCamp Fukuoka 2010 finished!

After our plans got shaken a bit, tomorrow (Thursday) we’ll announce WordCamp Chile for May 8th. Yay!

There is going to be WordCamp Yokohama on 29th May.
http://yokohama2010.wordcamp.jp/

There’s going to be a WordCamp Denmark in mid-May, very exciting stuff!