News

WCEU stage showing WCEU hashtag and a few organisers behind

After Event Video and Final Post

It’s almost 2 months since WCEU2022. It was a great event and we had a great time! Our Photography Team has published an amazing number of event photos on Flickr. The Production Pool recorded and streamed the entire event on our Youtube Channel. And as an extra for you, they have made a great After Event Video:

We’re closing down the 2022 edition. All Volunteers and Organisers are enjoying a well-deserved rest. After the summer holidays, the preparations for WCEU 2023 will start. The Call for Organisers is still open, make sure you don’t miss it!

Thank you once more for attending, sharing, participating and getting involved!

See you in Athens!

Big shoutout to PR Team for WCEU 2022

WordCamp Europe’s organising team consists of smaller groups of organisers with an explicit purpose. It is easier for the teams to work more focused and specialised and add to the common goal.

One of the teams is PR Team. 

You all have in mind what PR means, and you may be guessing what the PR Team does yearly for WordCamp Europe. The PR Team’s responsibility is to ensure the news about the event is delivered to as many people as possible around the globe. The Public Relations Team is the publicity strategist and campaign planner aiming to increase awareness around the event and keep building the WCEU brand by working closely with the Communications Team.

Every year the PR Team’s tasks include:

  • Updating a media list with media outlets from around the globe around the WordPress ecosystem and not only
  • Sharing newsletters and press releases with the media outlets, including the most important or breaking news
  • Selecting the Media Partners and Supporters that are helping us spread the news and get the word of WordCamp Europe out there
  • Updating the Press Page on the WCEU website for anyone willing to share the news
  • Dealing with enquiries from the press and the public as well as other media outlets
  • Arranging interviews among the media Partners and Supporters and members of the organising team, speakers and sponsors
  • Facilitating the interviews at the Media Rooms during the event
  • Live Stream Studio interviews around the Community
  • Co-operating with all the teams to find the most interesting news.

Meet the PR Team:

Many thanks to the people that gave their best shot for PR Team this year and made it happen. People from all around the world, WordPress Community enthusiasts, volunteered to make the WCEU 2022 dream come true.

Thank you Afshana Diya, Reyes Martinez, Silva Nazarian, Tiago Vasconcelos, Kostas Vrouvas and Evangelia Pappa.

Do you want to be part of the team? You can apply now as an organiser for WordCamp Europe 2023 and enjoy the backstage vibes. Athens is waiting for you. 

WCEU stage showing WCEU hashtag and a few organisers behind

Meet the Content Team

The Content Team is responsible… Well, for the content at WordCamp Europe: all the talks and workshops. 

We started our work back in October 2021 with a simple question: 

After 3 years of not seeing WordPress friends in person, what is the kind of presentation that would make me leave a Hallway track and go attend the talk or participate in the workshop?

As a team, we analyzed previous years’ feedback and applied our own expectations (as we all are the target audience representatives as well), and formed the vision of what such presentations have in common.

We had this idea in mind when preparing and promoting Call for Speakers — to make sure we receive as many applications that aligned with our vision as possible.

We were thinking about this when selecting talks and forming the schedule.

We designed processes and workflows for us, organizers, speakers, workshop hosts, and volunteers to bring the WordCamp Europe schedule to life in Porto.

Here is us, Content Team at WordCamp Europe 2022:

Sajjad Usmani, Pedro Mendonça, Radu Constantin, Livio Vilela, Nikola Mihajlovic, Rúben Martins, Anjana Vasan, Luke Gedeon and Sabrina Zeidan.

It was a-l-o-t of work, before and during the event, but it was even more fun, joy, and honour from it.

If you have a creative mind, enjoy working hard, and love to be proud of the results of your work, apply to join Content Team in 2023 — you’ll be at the right place!

Thank you Sales & Sponsors Team

Some of you may know that WordCamps are non-profit, volunteer-organised and community-oriented events. What you may not know is that almost the entire budget of a WordCamp comes from sponsors! For 2022, WCEU aimed to raise 1 million euros to offer the best experience possible and to start a new dynamic of in-person events after 2 years of interruptions. The sponsors are what makes WordCamp Europe’s tickets very affordable, even though it is the world’s most significant event in our community.

This is where the Sales & Sponsors come in! They are in charge of the entire fundraising process and work closely with the other organising teams as well as deputies at WordPress Community Support (WPCS).

Here are the main tasks which the Sales & Sponsors Team manages:

  • designing the sponsorship packages,
  • setting up the pricing strategy with the Budget team,
  • handling the invoicing with WPCS,
  • sourcing potential sponsors, relationship building, all things related to packages selling,
  • GPL and trademark checking,
  • Code of Conduct training for new sponsors,
  • communication and assistance to sponsors on administrative, visa, financial, logistical, community, editorial issues,
  • expo area floorplan design with the production team, booth positioning on the floorplan,
  • expo area sponsors activities guidance,
  • helps other teams identify sponsorship opportunities and collect funds to develop their projects and mini-events.

Many thanks to Anne-Mieke Bovelett, Carole Olinger, David Pérez, Jason Rouet, Marko Tanaskovic and Valerio Vaz.

And big up to all our sponsors! See you next year in Athens! <3

Next year, WordCamp Europe will be hosted in Athens/Greece. If you want to be part of the organising team of 2023, please, do not hesitate to apply

Communication Team walking outside, Steve giving directions

Thanks to the Communication Team Members

Most of the WCEU attendees don’t have English as their first language, and the same goes for the members of the other WCEU organising teams. The Communication Team does the proofreading for these people, in order to make the English texts sound like real English texts. 

Together with the Local Team, the Communication Team is one of the busiest teams:

  • proofread, write and publish website pages and posts
  • write and post on social media channels (5 social media platforms)
  • monitor social media
  • monitor, route and reply WCEU email boxes
  • proofread and improve signage, banners and menus for the event
  • proofread and assist with mass emails

Thank you, Hacer Yilmaz, George Gkouvousis, Matt Ross, Mike Johnston, Steve Mosby and Sjoerd Blom! You were amazing! It was great to have you be part of this hectic team!

Next year, WordCamp Europe will be hosted in Athens/Greece. If you want to be part of the organising team of 2023, please, do not hesitate to apply

Meet the Community Team

The Community Team worked diligently for months on the goal of raising awareness of contributing to the WordPress project, but also on enhancing the event’s community-building element and, ultimately, making it more fun. And it was a fun process in its own right! 

More specifically, the team’s tasks during this year’s WordCamp Europe were: 

  • The Contributor Day, a whole day dedicated to contributing to the WordPress project, which this year reached a record number of 800 participants. 
  • The WP-Cafe, a vibrant space for attendees to meet, connect and chat about a range of topics that interest them. 
  • The Community Booth, a 60 square metres “town centre” right at the heart of the expo area, dedicated to the WordPress Community and its activities! 
  • The Wellness track, designed to help and encourage the WordPress Community to be more active and stress free. 
  • The Side Events: help promote events organised by WCEU participants who want to bring together other participants. 
  • And a ton of other tiny, unavoidable little stuff that cannot fit under a category with one label! 

Here are the amazing people who made this happen:

José Arcos, Ángel Moreno, Penny Anderson, Elli Mouchtari, Dan Soschin, Eduard Milushi, Wendie Huis in ‘t Veld, Nicholas Garofalo and Takis Bouyouris.

Next year, WordCamp Europe will be hosted in Athens/Greece. If you want to be part of the organising team of 2023, please, do not hesitate to apply

Local Team

Thanks to the Local Team Members

The Local Team has the arduous task of organising all the logistics at the event venue, including in the city and country, looking to build a dynamic, lively and engaging WCEU to be an engine for the entire WordPress community.

After Porto was chosen, in 2019, to host WordCamp Europe 2020, we were expecting a lot of work, several challenges and some obstacles. Still, we were not expecting what happened in March and April 2020. With the world in a frenzy, the one-year’s journey has turned into a three-year adventure.

The goal has remained the same: to honour the WordPress community with the best possible WordCamp Europe.

On this journey, the Local Team has dedicated the utmost effort to ensure:

  • Diverse, inclusive catering that would bring a bit of Portuguese flavour to the event;
  • Covid-related protective measures to ensure a safe environment;
  • Support for all the needs of the different teams and event components;
  • Community Team support on the Wellness track;
  • Childcare service with a pro team that could take good care of future WordPress users;
  • Organise and take care of merchandising items;
  • Chose and worked to have (part of the) nice swag to offer to participants;
  • Involvement of the city, for the first time, WCEU ‘left’ the venue and was communicated in various parts of the city;
  • Informative content about the city and region to help attendees enjoy Porto;
  • Animation, including a joyful after-party;
  • Immaculate cleanliness;
  • Adequate and attentive security;

And many other little (and some big) things, details that one by one built the blocks that made WCEU 2022 a success for the WordPress community.

Here are the fantastic people who made all this happen:

Carlos Miguel Silva, Toze Vasconcelos, Pedro Fonseca, Daniela Costa, Jorge Costa, Marco Pereirinha, Ricardo Correia and José Freitas.

Crowd cheering outside at WCEU2022

Thanks to the Budget Team Members

The Budget Team is in charge of the budget of WordCamp Europe, keeping track of all expenses needed by any team, submitting all vendor payment requests and reimbursements, approving any extra costs, setting the goal of the Sales Team… and anything related to the WCEU money.

We are also known as the ‘No Team‘ because we try to keep all our spreadsheets with green numbers and cells, and saying ‘no’ is the best way not to get red ones! Jokes aside, we remind everyone that we must spend responsibly and make WCEU a sustainable event and an example for all the rest of WordCamps in the world.

Does it sound boring? It is not! We had so much fun in our weekly meetings, we were aware of all the stuff that the rest of the teams were planning for the event, and we were lightening other organizers by handling all their invoices and payments and thinking about the global balance.

Here are the lovely people that made the weekly meetings fun and worked hard to say ‘no’ –and many ‘yes’– to our friends:

Justina Baskyte, Sandro Lucifora and Juan Hernando