What I Took Home from WordCamp US

This week I went to WordCamp US in Phoenix, Arizona. And I want to be honest about my experience, because two things are true at the same time. I had a great time. And I don’t think WordCamp US was a great success.

Since the pandemic, I hadn’t been to WordCamp US in a while. It had been hard for me to get back into WordCamps, as I think has been true for many people. But last year I went, and it felt smaller than I remembered. I thought, all right, we’re still recovering from the pandemic, we’re still getting back into the swing of things. Totally understandable. And then I went back this year.

Before I say anything else, I want to make something extremely clear. Nothing here that sounds critical is meant to throw shade or cast aspersions on the amazing volunteers who put on WordCamp US. They did a fantastic job. If you talked to any of them, you understood the amount of passion, care, and work they put into it. Really, really well put together, as always. My guess is that most of the shortcomings I felt come from the constraints they’ve been given, not from what they would have loved to have done themselves.

And maybe what I expect from WordCamp US is different from what other people want out of it. That’s fair. This post is entirely my experience, and other people may have very different perceptions of the event. I just want to be honest about mine.

The people are still the best part

Just like everyone, the thing I love most about WordCamp is the people.

Our product, Ninja Forms, came into the space in mid-2011, 15 years ago. We had worked on projects with WordPress before that, but we didn’t really understand the WordPress ecosystem until we actually launched a product. The product is what brought us into the ecosystem, and I’m so glad it did, because I met so many amazing people. I still do.

First, the reconnections. I got to reconnect with people I’ve known and built relationships with over the last 15 years. Some of them are competitors, and I still really enjoy hanging out with them. They’re good people, and I like learning from them. And I can only hope they like reconnecting with me too. You make friends, you don’t see them for years, and within five minutes it’s like you’ve been seeing each other at conferences all along. That’s something truly special about the WordPress community.

Second, the new people. A lot of the folks I met were at their first WordCamp, either just getting started on something or just trying to figure out what this whole WordPress thing is. We had some really long conversations, and it was fun to share 15 years of experience in this space and to kind of see myself in them. Because when I was getting started, there were several people who were super kind and willing to share their experiences with us. It helped us grow as a business and as a part of the community, and I could never thank them all by name because there were just so many.

Because of that encouragement we received, we’ve always strived to be that for others. Being a cheerleader is one of our core values at the company, and chief among our values is to be people first. We want to help others succeed, cheer them on, encourage them, help them avoid the mistakes we made, and help them navigate the new mistakes they’re going to discover on their own. There’s nothing more fun than helping other people succeed, especially when there’s absolutely nothing in it for us.

The last night of camp says it all. It was 9 o’clock, the camp was pretty much over, and some new friends we’d made on the first night, at their first WordCamp, asked if we wanted to play some games down in the lobby. So we joined them. Other people joined us as we played, and it turned into a night of just laughing and enjoying each other’s company. It wasn’t about business. Nobody was promoting anything. We were just getting to know each other.

Nothing else I’m about to say should detract from how impactful that part of WordCamp is.

But the camp itself was another story

Walking into the camp was a little weird.

It used to be that WordCamp registration meant a badge, a welcome packet, a t-shirt, all of this stuff. Maybe that was still a thing, but when we checked in, we were given a badge and headed off to the sessions. It didn’t feel like there was a lot of energy at registration. It felt kind of like a non-event.

Now, I should say I missed the first two days of camp and didn’t check-in until the morning of the main sessions. I heard so many amazing stories about those first two days, and I’m sad I missed them.

The opening keynote was genuinely good. The few sessions I sat in were interesting, the speakers were great, and you could tell they put a lot of work in. I can’t really critique the sessions much, because most of my time was spent out in the vendor hall or the hallways talking with people.

Which is where the problem showed up the most. My biggest critique of this event is the energy. When I got into an individual conversation, the energy was great. But the energy of the event itself was underwhelming. And I’m not the only one who felt this way. Everyone I talked to, before I had a chance to say anything, would say some version of: this is weird.

The vendor hall felt like it had about a dozen sponsors. I don’t know the exact number, and I wasn’t trying to make a log of everything in there. I’m telling you the perception walking through it. About a dozen sponsors, most of them hosts, maybe two that weren’t, spread out in a room. And just uninteresting. There wasn’t a lot of conversation to be had at the booths. There wasn’t anything really fun going on. There were some cute little things, like people painting their own Wapuus. But mostly it was people standing in booths waiting to talk to someone. It was like a trade show.

A very thin trade show.

There were signs on the floor that said, “Warning. Swag Ahead. Proceed With Excitment.” There wasn’t any swag at this event. And the excitement might have been a little overstated. A water bottle, some socks, a bag. I realize that’s hyperbolic, and there were a few things. But I remember going to camps in the old days and leaving with practically a suitcase worth of stuff from all of these different brands. Fun, interesting things. Not this time.

Maybe my expectations were set years ago, when even the old WordCamp Atlanta or WordCamp Miami had more energy than this. You’d walk through the vendor hall and there wouldn’t be a dozen sponsors, there’d be dozens. Hosts, plugin shops, theme shops, agencies, people from all over the community. They’d all bring their own take to their booth to try to do something special, because they wanted to show up and demonstrate they had something to offer. They came with their teams, and they came creative. It feels like that’s being discouraged or disincentivized in some way now. None of that energy was there.

And with fewer sponsors, it felt like fewer people. I know people said attendance was good. It just didn’t feel like it. The venue was way too big for the event, so we were all spread out, and unless you were in one of the main sessions where everyone was in the same room, the event felt mostly empty. And I wouldn’t say it felt intimate, like it was crafted that way on purpose. It felt like a symptom of a bigger problem. I’ll come back to that.

Then came the closing session

The last session of WordCamp US is the always-anticipated presentation from Matt Mullenweg. Notwithstanding past drama, which I’m not going to try to litigate here, that session has historically been inspirational. It showcased new things we’re thinking about, it encouraged the community for what’s next, and it was always well polished. Beautiful slides, technically spot on, on time. It always felt solid.

This year it punctuated the low energy of the whole camp.

I don’t know what led to this. I have no inside information. I’m not important enough for anyone involved to tell me what happened. I can only tell you what it looked like from a seat in the audience.

The speaker countdown ran down to zero, and nothing happened. No big walk-on music. No MC coming out to greet the crowd. We just sat there and waited. Five minutes in, I thought it was odd. The session ended up starting 25 minutes late.

When they came out, it was clear they were off book. Matt came out with two laptops. There were all kinds of technical difficulties getting his laptop to present up to the screen, which is the kind of thing that’s supposed to be controlled from the back of the room. From where I sat, the only reason it wasn’t is that whatever was supposed to happen got pulled at the last second, and Matt remade his slides on his own laptop to present something different. It was supposed to be a Q&A, but there was no real Q&A, no real fireside chat. It was Matt talking with the person sitting next to him, and you could tell it was really uncomfortable. Maybe for both of them. Certainly for all of us.

Again, I don’t know why. I don’t know what led to it. All I know is the last session of the camp punctuated what I’d been feeling about the whole event.

And I don’t think any of this had anything to do with the volunteer organizers. The MCs, the speakers, everyone was doing their best, and you could tell they were doing it with passion and with love. But the constraints they were working under really limited how good this camp could have been.

The bigger problem

So what’s the bigger problem? I think it’s an alignment problem.

It used to feel like the direction was the community. How do we better the community? And the software was there to serve the community. Now it feels like the goal is the other way around: the community is there to serve WordPress and the project.

I think those can ultimately lead to the same place. But the focus feels different. When the idea is that it’s about the world and the community, and WordPress is simply the tool we use to accomplish it, there’s a positive force pulling more people into the fold. When the project is just about serving the product, that pull isn’t there.

Maybe that’s an intentional leadership focus. Maybe we’ve just lost the thread. I don’t know. I’m not sure.

How I’d bring the energy back

I don’t like being somebody who just complains. I like to offer suggestions. And I don’t think anyone cares what I think WordCamp should be or could be. But if I’m going to critique, I want to offer a way forward too.

Being a part of the US WordPress community, I would love to see more energy, more excitement, more activity. And I admit there is more I can do to play a part in that. This community has done a lot for me and given me an opportunity I might not have had otherwise. I want to be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.

What follows is what I wish would happen. Maybe not what should happen, maybe not what’s possible, maybe not even the right thing. Just what I would love to see.

Make sponsorship affordable again

Every WordCamp is kind of a hub-and-spokes event, and the hub is the vendor hall. It’s all of the businesses that have helped make WordPress what it is. WordPress as software is amazing, but it doesn’t do what it does in a vacuum. It does it because of the great community that came around the product and took it even further to solve problems. That’s hosts, yes. But it’s also agencies, freelancers, designers, plugin shops, and any number of other businesses that touch WordPress and its customers every single day.

Part of the problem is sponsorship cost. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but I remember looking at them, and they are astronomical. A small plugin shop like mine can’t even think about sponsoring WordCamp US. So we just attend, because sponsoring has priced us out, along with so many other shops and agencies like ours. Which means the only people who can afford to sponsor are large hosts, big plugin or theme shops, or subsidiaries of Automattic. And that’s exactly what the vendor hall looked like.

If you want more people to be involved, you have to make it accessible for them to be involved. I know sponsorships pay for the event. I totally get that. But instead of a dozen high-paying sponsors, why not 40 or 50 low-paying sponsors? Bring the cost of a booth way down. Yes, it’s more work. It’s certainly easier to land 12 big sponsors than 50 small ones.

But here’s the thing. Those small sponsors will bring the energy to the event. They’ll bring their customers. They’ll talk about it online: we’re going to be at WordCamp US, come see us. And if you have 50 different companies doing that, you’re going to bring a lot more people and a lot more energy.

And let’s be honest, smaller shops get creative about how they engage with people in a vendor hall. That means more excitement, more energy, and different kinds of swag.

Give WordCamp US a permanent home

There’s a lot of administrative cost and overhead in rotating WordCamp US to a different city every year. Propping up a new volunteer team, figuring out a new venue, figuring out everything all over again. I honestly don’t know that it’s worth it.

Pick a central location in the US. One that has the venue we want, the hotel infrastructure, the airport, the restaurants, the after-party spots. And make that the home of WordCamp US every single year. Most conferences do this. What’s the real benefit of rotating? It feels like changing the location has become a crutch to try to attract people in new cities and states, instead of just putting on a great event that people want to go to. If the event itself is the attraction, people could care less what city it’s in.

By staying put, you can dial in the right space and the right configuration. And configuration matters. This year the camp was too spread out. The venue was too big for the event, and you had to hike two floors between the main sessions and the vendor hall. You want the sessions and the vendors close together, so moving between them is easy and accessible. It just didn’t feel that way. It felt like you had to hike to get anywhere at any time.

A permanent home brings costs way down, because you’re not refiguring everything every year. It makes planning easier, because you can nail things down years in advance. And you could still do fun things with volunteers. Keep an on-the-ground team, and bring in a larger volunteer team from all over the country a few days early to do the work.

Re-energize the regional camps

WordCamp US used to be the large event fed by all of the smaller WordCamps. Most of those are gone now. Maybe I’m just not as plugged in as I used to be, but I used to hear about regional camps all the time, and a lot of them were bigger than what WordCamp US was this year.

I would love to see us get back to regional WordCamps, a network of events feeding the community and feeding the big one. Maybe that isn’t feasible. Maybe it’s meetups that need the revitalization. But we need some way to bolster the community that ultimately feeds WordPress as a whole, and WordCamp US as an event.

I don’t know exactly what that looks like. Nobody’s asking me to be a part of that conversation. Of course, I’d be willing to be.

I want to leave inspired

Ultimately, I want to be anticipating and excited to show up for WordCamp. I’m already excited for the people I’ll see and the conversations I’ll have. That’s what keeps me coming today. But I also want to be excited to see new businesses, creative ways WordPress is being used, the different business ideas people are coming up with, the problems WordPress is helping individuals and communities solve. I want to be excited to learn where the project is going, why it’s going there, and what I can do to be a part of it.

And most importantly, I want to leave inspired about our future and what we can accomplish together. That’s the thing I didn’t get out of this camp. I mostly left feeling confused, with no additional clarity on how we can have a greater impact, how we can do more, or how we can be better.

If we don’t send people home from WordCamp US inspired to have an impact, inspired to change the world, that’s a huge missed opportunity.

So here’s my commitment. I’m going to spend some time figuring out what part I can play, and whatever change comes is going to come from banding together with other like-minded people. And the question we need to answer together, from the leadership down to the user, is how we get back to serving people instead of serving a platform.

Because the best part of WordPress has always been the people.