WordCamp London 2016 ended last Sunday, and my mind is still there. It’s been a wonderful 4 month adventure that culminated with an amazing celebration of the UK WordPress community.
When the lead organiser and dear friend of mine Jenny Wong asked me to be her sponsorship person, I said yes without hesitations. Although I volunteered many times at WordCamps, I was never involved as an organiser.
Managing the sponsors has been a great honour for me. It’s a big responsibility—if you don’t raise enough money, the team can’t arrange the WordCamp as they planned—but I always liked challenges. Everything went okay so PHEW! 😅
I learned many things during my journey to the WordCamp. Here are my 7 takeaways.
Be fit (and stay hydrated)
Especially if you deal with sponsors, you may end up carrying a lot of heavy boxes around. When I joined the WordCamp team, I added a fourth day in my gym routine. My shredded biceps thank me for the effort!
Provide hand sanitisers
Because Conf Flu exists.
Raise more money than you need (if you can)
You never know what could happen during the conference, and you might experience a financial emergency. Better safe than sorry 💰
Take good care of your sponsors
If sponsors are happy and everything goes smoothly, they’ll sponsor other WordCamps, and that’s how we close the loop :)
Be ready for the unforeseen
Remember Murphy’s law? 😏
Get a bigger job board
Hiring or for hire? #wcldn pic.twitter.com/I6TCV6HJBf
— Jo Waltham (@JoWaltham) April 10, 2016
The community is growing exponentially and we need a bigger job board!
Get a solid team of organisers
I can’t believe we don’t have a group pic! My immense gratefulness goes to Ana, Barbara Diane, Gary, Jenny, Jo, Tammie—they got my back when I was in distress and have spent with me so many happy (and concerned) moments. Mention of honour goes to the army of volunteers who helped us during the conference—without them WordCamp London wouldn’t be the great success it was.
Loved reading this. As an event organizer I am very familiar with the things you mentioned, so it’s always necessary to plan in advance for everything. I’ve had the following happen to my events: fog in two London airports with delegates that couldn’t arrive from Europe (hence 3 speakers unable to give their talk), audio and visual units packing up at the “New Frontiers in Visualization Conference”, delegates fainting at reception, coffee not being delivered at coffee breaks, this happens all the time! air conditioning not working in the room, chicken being served when you ordered steak!, meat being served to vegetarians, or presenters half drunk while giving their talk. And for some reason, people just look at the event organizer for some answers to these problems, as if it were their fault…
Delegates fainting at reception is my favourite! XD
My favourite was the visual equipment going wrong at the Visualization conference! :D