Devin Sears is one of the coolest guys I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with at WordCamps in the past. He works for Bluehost and finds himself at a lot of events. Along with a few colleagues he made it out last year for WordCamp Ann Arbor and has some very kind comments to share about our event.
In this video I connect with Devin to chat about what he and Bluehost are up to lately and what attendees can expect from them at WCA2 2017.
I’ve you’ve been to a WordCamp Ann Arbor, you’ve seen Ross, and you’ve probably talked to him more than once. He was the first to organize a WordCamp here, taking on the challenge after the lead organizer for WordCamp Detroit stepped down. With over half a decade’s experience organizing WordCamps, he has a lot to share about getting the ball rolling in Ann Arbor, and what it takes to launch a WordCamp in a new community.
I got started through WordCamp Detroit, which I first attended as a speaker in 2010. The lead organizer, Anthony Montalbano, wanted more help in subsequent years so he reached out to a number of people, and I joined in.
I helped organize WC Detroit in 2011 and 2012, however the WordPress Foundation has a rule which says that two to three years is the longest time that someone can organize the same place. So, by 2013 Anthony’s time was up, and he put it out to see if anyone else wanted to do that year. I decided to take a stab at it, but when I talked to the foundation and they suggested I do one in Ann Arbor instead.
In a weird way, the first year I felt stronger than the second year. It was my first time as lead organizer, so I put more time into detail. The newness of the first year created more tension, because it was a creative challenge, whereas the second year I was maybe too comfortable. But both years exceeded my expectations: they both sold out, we had waiting lists, we opened up extra tickets, and received almost nothing but great feedback. It’s hard to please everyone, particularly when you’ve got hundreds of people, but we heard a lot of positive things about it afterward.
I think the biggest thing we realized going from first to second year is that the venue is so important. I think our venue the first year was better than the second one. Things fit in better, it had a more centralized meeting area, it had better ventilation, and the support staff the second year wasn’t as attentive. Even moving into the third year, our essential first step was finding a really great location.
Another thing that we learned year after year is just the importance of volunteers. You do a lot of pre-planning, but that aspect is pretty easy when you have 6-12 months to do it in. But on the day of, there’s a lot of things that need to happen all at once. You don’t realize it at first, but when you think about everything from handing out tickets and T-shirts to making sure the rooms are set up, it takes a lot of work getting people up to speed. Our volunteers have always been amazing, but we’ve realized we could do a better job with training and orientation.
The other lesson we’ve learned that’s helped improve the event is to focus on the quality of speakers, because that’s what most people come for. A lot of times, when organizing an event, you can get carried away on all sorts of side items, like a bacon bar, or a magician, or karaoke. And those are all great things to have, but they’re secondary concerns that should wait until you’ve secured high-quality speakers. Your speaker lineup is the ultimate attraction because it provides the best value to attendees. If you have a great lineup, people are going to learn a lot, and they’ll want to come again next year and bring others along as well.
The reputation that we’ve gotten. I’ve heard from a handful of people outside Michigan that it is one of the must-go-to, small-town camps. The bigger ones have the resources to do a lot of things, and they have this huge draw of talent from organizers and a lot of sponsors, which means people are more likely to travel to go to these. But Ann Arbor is a pretty small college town, so to hear people say that you can’t miss it is really gratifying.
Well, as I said before, the WordCamp Foundation puts a cap on 2–3 years in a row for one person to be the lead organizer. I think they want to be sure one person doesn’t monopolize the area, and in general it’s good to give other people a shot at it, bring in new blood so that the community stays engaged, and let in new ideas so that the event doesn’t become stale. I was the lead organizer in 2014–15, so by 2016 it was time for someone else to take over and that job fell to Kyle Maurer.
I’d have to say the transition has gone really well and that Kyle has done an amazing job. I think that the first two years were establishing we could pull off a good camp. They were almost proof of concept. After my second year, handing things off to Kyle, I got to watch him take it to a whole other level.
I’m still involved in the organization, but not as the lead. Last year I did a lot of design work, but this year Ian’s handling that. So this year I’m focusing on volunteers, events, parties, and content, because that’s an area where we always said we could build better buzz.
I think the first thing I would say is make sure that there is some demand. You don’t have to have a giant WordCamp—I think WC Jackson proves that it’s not about how many people come. You can have a small, local camp where everyone’s glad they came and they all look forward to the next one. But it’s good to know that there’s interest, even if it’s only 50–100 people, and one of the ways to do that is to start a Meetup group.
Actually, I would be hesitant to say anyone should start a WordCamp without having a Meetup group first. It’s a great way to learn about your audience and get a finger on the pulse as to how many people will show up regularly and what topics they find interesting. It’s basically market research which you can use to inform decisions about what size of an event you should plan, and what kind of speakers you should look for.
The next major thing I would recommend is to start early. This has benefited us enormously: start small and focus on the core things that make a WordCamp successful, such as great content, great connections, and a great atmosphere. Then build. This is important because, in my head, when I was planning the first two, it didn’t seem like planning one day was a lot of work or a lot of logistics to manage. Essentially, there were two tracks with six speakers per track, so 12–15 speakers, then dinner for them and dinner for everyone else. But in practice, a lot of this is very time consuming. And if you have a job related to technology or WordPress, there’s a lot of ongoing things that can take a lot more time and energy than you expect.
Starting early can keep you from feeling behind and under pressure, and it gives you some space to adjust if certain aspects take longer than you thought they would. For instance, with the first one, I think we started eight months early, and the next one ten months early. After the last one, Kyle and I only waited a week before we began talking about securing the venue for the next event.
And of course, if this is your first WordCamp you have to work with the WordPress Foundation to get started, because otherwise you can’t legally use the name. And because of that association, they want to work with you to make sure that your values are in keeping with their code of conduct, and that it will be successful so that it provides a positive experience with those who attend. So, to get approval, they ask you about previous experience, why you’re organizing a WordCamp, and what kind of a budget you have to make it work. They offer funding, particularly for events in smaller towns who might otherwise have difficulty with sponsors, and then once that’s all approved they set you up with a website. So, as you can see, those are some fairly long first couple steps that you have to do before you can plan anything else. And because this can take up to a month or two, it’s just one more reason to start early.
I think starting to see the evolution of the community in Ann Arbor and the surrounding areas has been a great byproduct of getting involved. When I planned that first WordCamp, I met a lot of people involved in the WordPress space, which has opened my eyes to all the different ways people use WordPress. There’s also been a real spirit of collaboration in this community, which I can see in the way our organizing team keeps growing and growing.
I also get the impression that WordCamp has been a tremendous benefit to a lot of people, which is why so many of us continue to participate. I can’t correlate an increase in my own business to organizing these events, but I’ve met a lot of friends and colleagues through it, which has made the whole thing worth the time and the effort.
In fact, I would offer the sense of community as a key reason for why anyone who is thinking about joining in on a deeper level should do it. Just try it out. Be a volunteer for the Camps and the meetups. I know so many people who were very intimidated at first, because they don’t think they belong. They’re too new, or they don’t think they have anything to contribute. In fact, I’ve met a lot of people who know almost nothing, who attend just because they have heard the word “WordPress” and almost nothing else. They’re looking for an introduction to the community, someone who can explain to them what WordPress is and how they can use it. And after a little more time I see those people begin to join in more, and soon they’re part of the community too, and are in a position to help out.
Kyle Maurer was last year’s WCA2 Lead Organizer, but it wasn’t his first time working behind the scenes with WordCamp. Kyle also volunteered on Ross Johnson’s organizing team for the previous two years, and he’s been particularly active in the Midwest region. He describes himself as “a true aficionado, if there ever was one, of WordCamps,” and brought his experience to bear with last year’s event. Here’s how he plans to raise the bar for WCA2 2017.
Well, I’ve attended a lot of WordCamps—probably more than almost anyone else involved in our event. And over that time, I’ve gotten to be particularly engaged in the Midwest region, which has given me an opportunity to learn a lot and form opinions about what makes a quality WordCamp. There’s a lot overlap between WordCamps, because some things are known to work well. But I like looking for interesting changes, even little things, that help to make the WordCamp a better experience, or that reimagine a way to do something that’s not just a copy of what everyone has done before.
When I approach a WordCamp, I like to think about how to raise the bar and improve the experience, even in the details. I think we’ve done that pretty well at WordCamp Ann Arbor, striving to achieve consistent levels of quality with every event. A lot of the status quo isn’t that way because it needs to be, but because that’s what everyone does. So, we try to break the mold a little, particularly in Ann Arbor.
I think some of my top priorities are informed by my experience at other events, by feedback from surveys over the last few years, and personal feedback. From this, we’ve made sessions our number one priority, because we know a lot of attendees look at them very carefully to inform their decision about whether to attend. We’ve gone out of our way to extend offer to speakers who we know will bring great presentations to the event, and we provide opportunities for speakers to practice their presentations ahead of time. We also preview presentations and set deadlines for speakers to send us their slides for review. And we try to make the event run smoothly by assigning speaker helpers to every room, and generally doing everything we can do to make the best quality experience for both the speakers and attendees.
Ann Arbor is particularly unique. I personally know a lot of WordCamp organizers, and I do go to quite a few every single year, and can say with a lot of confidence that Ann Arbor is special, primarily because we have a great organizing team, year after year, who take on strong rolls and just crush it. As a lead organizer, that means I can be hands-off in a lot of key responsibilities. I have to give my team a lot of credit, because I believe we have one of the best organizing teams in the country.
It would be hard to narrow it down to just one, so maybe I’ll give more of a top 5. We tried to raise the bar in a lot of areas last year, and it was the first of the three years where we all agreed we found what we were looking for. We think that a lot of what we did last year are going to be traditions moving forward.
I was ecstatic for our speaker lineup. I did a lot of outreach talking to people I wanted to come speak, and it was great to see the response we got. We got great feedback from Cory Miller doing keynote, and the rest of the speaker lineup was pretty impressive. It might be something that the average attendee may not fully appreciate if they didn’t know who everyone was, but I was excited to see our lineup.
The venue worked out really well. We will probably continue to use the Rackham Building for future WordCamps. And our coffee guy was well received, so we’re going to bring him back.
The lunch groups for restaurants have been a big success, and are something we’re uniquely equipped to do. We’re privileged to be right in the heart of Downtown Ann Arbor, so we can walk out and have our pick of dozens of restaurants. We’ve been stunned in some ways that a few things we’ve tried, like the lunch groups, have been imitated by other WordCamps. We consistently get a lot of great feedback for that, and not paying for lunch saves a lot of money that we can put toward other aspects of the event.
We also had a WordCamp Warm-up organized by Rebecca Gill, and that went well. We did some ice-breaker stuff and had a lot of conversations with new people who were kind of introverted, or wanted to meet with people and didn’t know how. We value that as an organizing team. We want newcomers to feel welcome, but we know they often feel dumb asking questions, or they feel like other people know more than they do, and that detracts from the experience. The warm-up event was a great way to help people not feel that way.
Our activities on Friday were also well received. We did a scavenger hunt, and I was blown away by how much people really went for it. And it gave sponsors more of a chance to engage attendees, because they were the ones handing out the prizes. The tour of the Big House was exciting for me because I’ve been a Wolverines fan my whole life and that was my first time going there. We know that not everyone was able to attend, but we found that those who participated appreciated them. It was a great time for people to get out and explore the city and meet people outside of a noisy bar environment.
We’re a little early in the process, so I don’t have many specifics yet. But we’re having some initial discussions about ideas. In 2016, we felt as a group that a lot of what we did worked. We’re going with the venue because we loved it, and we’re going with the coffee guy because we loved him, and the activities—a lot of what we just talked about. We’re going to do a lot of the same things this year, but try to do them better, like moving the sponsors into a bigger room to give them more space. I’m excited about getting to that point with this group because I think we’ve found our groove. We may continue to do the WordCamp warmup, and Friday afternoon activities, and cider and donuts, because these things are unique to Ann Arbor, and we’re excited to see them become our traditions.
We say this a lot, but it’s worth repeating: there really is something for people at all levels. A lot of people may feel that they are at a very high level and won’t learn much, or that there may not be content specific for their applications. Or, more commonly, they may feel they are at a beginner level and everything will be over their heads. Maybe they just got a job and this is now their responsibility, or someone has heard about freelancing and is trying this for the first time. All these kinds of people are profiles I have encountered over and over again, and I want to express to people in these situations that there’s a lot you will get out of an event like this. Rest assured, this is for every person who interacts with WordPress in some way.
You don’t have to necessarily take it from me, but I feel confident that if you were going to ask other attendees who’ve been to WordCamp Ann Arbor, they have made it clear that Ann Arbor stands out in a number of ways. It raises the bar in some areas, and steps out of the box in others. We hold our speakers and sponsors and volunteers for high standards, we polish the event in areas that you wouldn’t expect, especially if you’re a veteran WordCamp attendee, like myself. I’ve spent a lot of time talking to other organizers about what they do, and that’s made us serious about doing something special here.
We say it a lot, but we should probably be constantly expressing that the value you get out of WordCamp makes attending a no-brainer. The ticket cost is incredibly affordable. In fact, I think we even still have an early-bird special going on for a few weeks. Just consider that the food we provide will cost more than your ticket price—and that doesn’t even account for the shirt, and the coffee, and the extremely valuable experts who are just there, waiting to help you solve your problems for free! The value of attending and bringing your problems to WordCamp is mind-boggling. If you were hiring someone who volunteers at a Happiness Bar, you would pay hundreds of dollars for that expertise. So there’s no question the value is incredible, and that’s something I think we need to consistently express to those curious about the event.
WordCamp Ann Arbor 2017 is over. Check out the next edition!