Organising WordCamp in the open: how you can get involved

As we edge closer to announcing the schedule, it’s the perfect time to remind everyone that we welcome your feedback, ideas and participation.

We’re organising as much of this event as possible in the open, so the best place to suggest ideas is on Slack. You can also send us your ideas via the website or via email (brighton@wordcamp.org).

If you haven’t already, you can join the UK WP Community Slack by following this link.

We’re organising in the public channel #wordcamp-brighton. I hope to catch up with you there!

We welcome all your ideas

We welcome every single one of your ideas – big or small.

Unfortunately, we can’t make every idea reality.

If we don’t implement your suggestions, it’s usually for one of the following reasons:

• It isn’t inclusive and/or accessible
• We can’t afford to do it (solution: help us find more sponsors!)
• We’re too busy right now (solution: offer up your time to help us!)
• There isn’t enough time before the event to organise it (solution: we could do it next year!)
• We need to prioritise other more important things (solution: offer up your time to help us!)
• There are rules about what systems we can use (one example is the fact we can’t use any plugins on this site)

There’s no such thing as a bad idea, so keep them coming.

We welcome all your constructive feedback

We also 10000% encourage your feedback. After the first WordCamp Brighton we sent out a survey. We received some very helpful feedback, which we’ve taken on board.

We also regularly receive and welcome feedback via Slack, email and this website.

Sadly, we sometimes get the odd piece of not-so-constructive feedback 😭

Definitely let us know if we could be doing something better. But I do ask you try and empathise with us if we do something you don’t agree with, or if we make a mistake. We’re only human and we’re all volunteers.

Organising a WordCamp is a lot of work – even a relatively small WordCamp takes a huge amount of time and effort.

There are a massive number of things we take into consideration when organising and making decisions, not least the many nuances of being inclusive and making people happy.

Our motivation comes from wanting to create a WordPress event people really enjoy and feel comfortable attending. So we ask that all feedback comes with equally kind intentions.

Become an organiser or volunteer

Did you know you can join us on the organising team? It’s a big commitment and a lot of work, but it’s also really fun. You get to bring your ideas and feedback to life. And you get to try out lots of new things.

The WordCamp Brighton organising team isn’t a closed group – it evolves over time depending on people’s availability and interests. If you’d like to join us, either this year or in future, let us know.

If you live somewhere there isn’t already a WordCamp, you can even apply to start one up yourself. Check out the WordCamp organiser handbook to get an idea of how to get started.

Don’t have time to get that involved? Consider becoming a WordCamp Brighton 2017 volunteer instead! We’re doing a call for volunteers next week and are aiming to find around 20 people eager to help out throughout the event.