Introduction

During the planning process for WordCamp Europe 2023 in Athens, the Communications, Marketing, and PR team developed a process for selecting Media Partners and Supporters.  Our objective was to have a process that was

• Objective
• Based on data
• Transparent
• Explainable
• Repeatable

For WCEU2024, we have refined the process, using the experience from last year, input from the community and suggestions from new team members.  

One change from last year

For 2024, we have eliminated the position of Media Supporter.  All selected applicants will be designated as Media Partners.  

We made this decision to streamline our support offering to Media Partners as one package – and to allow our team to provide equitable access to information (through regular news updates), opportunities for collaboration through our media centre at the venue for interviews or podcast recording, and continued publicity through our website.

Selection criteria

Here are the criteria we will be considering as we review all applications. These are listed in order of their importance – most important to least.

Support for diverse audiences

We are looking for a mix of partners – some who speak to a global audience, others who target specific regions (including our host country, Italy), and some who reach emerging or underrepresented segments of the WordPress community.  Higher scores are awarded for media outlets which reach emerging / underrepresented communities.  

Quality of coverage plan

We are asking applicants to provide detailed descriptions of how they plan to cover WCEU2024 – something more than just a few sentences.  Higher scores are awarded for detailed plans.

Publication quality

We want to ensure that publications representing WCEU2024 are of high quality / professional grade. We will review all applicants’ sites / podcasts / platforms.  We will also ask applicants for examples of the type of coverage they have provided in the past, allowing them to highlight the items they think are the best.  

Size of audience (circulation)

We will request information about audience size in ranges (Small, Medium, Large, etc.) and will give higher scores to organisations with larger audiences. This provides some balance to the “Support for diverse audiences” item above.

Media platforms

We will give higher scores to organisations that publish on multiple platforms – blogs, websites, podcasts, social media, etc.

Past Year Participant

We will give higher scores to partners who have performed well in past years, but will also give careful consideration to new applicants.

Frequency of Publication

We will give higher scores to organisations that publish more frequently. This will provide some balance with the Publication Quality item above.

Language

We want to attract some partners who publish in languages other than English, so we will give higher scores to partners who publish in other languages.

Audience geography

We want to attract organisations that reach broad audiences, as well as those that focus on regional and local audiences.  Higher scores will be given to organisations with broader audience geography.

WordPress-specific

We want to understand the focus of the publication. Are they a general interest news site (lower score), a publication that covers the broad technology landscape (medium score), or a WordPress-specific outlet (higher score)?

How we will evaluate applications

Each application criterion is assigned a weight from 1 to 10.  The most important criterion has a weight of 10, the least important is weighted 1.

Each applicant’s response is evaluated for how well it addresses the criterion, and is given a score of 0, 1, 3, or 9, where 0 indicates the response does not address or addresses minimally and 9 indicates the response addresses all aspects of the criterion.

The applicant’s score for each criterion is calculated as 

Criteria weight X Applicant score

The scores for all the criteria are then combined into a total for that applicant.  All applicant scores are listed in descending order, with the highest scores at the top of the list.  

We expect to select 15 to 20 of the top scoring applicants as Media Partners for WCEU2024.  

We welcome your questions and suggestions

Our intent with this document is to provide insights into our process for evaluating applications for Media Partners.  If you have questions about the contents or suggestions for how we can improve in the future, please send them to europe@wordcamp.org.  A member of our team will follow up with you shortly.

Apply now!