- Make your voice heard and create new business opportunities.
- Speaking at WCEU helps with personal and professional growth.
- The audience is passionate and inclusive.
“It might have been the most effective 45 minutes of work I’ll ever do.”
That was Heather Burns, a digital law specialist who focuses on legislation that impacts the crafts of web design and development, recounting how worthwhile speaking at WordCamp Europe 2017 was for her.
Heather’s talk was called ‘Making your voice heard’, but she had her voice heard too: “Since the talk, people have told me they’ve done things like gone to town halls, met with elected representatives, and become involved in tech politics as well as ethics,” she said. Heather’s experience is one example of many. WordCamp Europe (WCEU) fuels this through the energy of the event that sweeps up everyone in it, allowing the knowledge you will share to go much further.
WCEU provides speakers with a platform in front of an engaged audience who are already community enthusiasts and contributors.
You can speak at WCEU by applying to deliver a talk or applying to host a workshop.
The talks are either 40 minutes in total, breaking down to around 30 minutes for the talk and 10 minutes for questions; or a lightning talk for 10 minutes, grouped with other lightning talks on related topics.
Open source enthusiast and Drupal developer, Gábor Hojtsy, who spoke on open source management at scale at WCEU 2017, talked about showing the human side of software. He explained that people are looking for stories and real world experience to guide them.
Workshops will be delivered over a 90 minute or 3 hour period, where workshop hosts will be able to work closely with attendees to share in-depth knowledge.
Collaborating with fellow WordCamp attendees can lead to exciting things. UK-based WordPress developer, Mark Wilkinson, wrote about how he began doing freelance work with Keith Devon, partly thanks to a WordCamp, and afterwards, they formed a company together. Mark says that speaking at a WordCamp can help get these relationships started, because people know who you are, what you do and the extent to which you are knowledgeable on a particular topic.
He explains that “whilst doing research on a topic you are going to speak on, you gain a more in depth knowledge of the subject that you would not have, if you had not spoken and this makes you more knowledgeable and better at it, helping your professional development.”
With talks being published on the highly-visited WordPress TV, you are able to share yourself with much more than the attendees at the conference, thereby expanding your audience.
WordCamp Europe 2018, the largest WordPress event in Europe, takes place on June 14-16, 2018 in Belgrade, Serbia. To inspire you, the organising team have shared key topics that attendees are looking forward to; so go ahead, read through and apply to speak or host a Workshop at WCEU 2018 before the deadline on January 15, 2018.