Should we make attempts to standardize WordCamps?
So, I’ve been thinking about forming an actual WordCamp Foundation to somewhat loosely codify what exactly makes an event an actual WordCamp, and also to provide some legal cover and help organizers with common problems like securing liability insurance, etc.
I’ve also been struggling with what the rules should be, because what I think a WordCamp ought to be might not be what someone else thinks a WordCamp should be. So, I’ll first give a couple of suggestions on rules I think are non-negotiable, then I’ll follow up on a few that are open for debate.
1. The event must be focused on blogging or new media with a heavy emphasis on the use of WordPress software (WordPress, WordPress.com or WordPress MU).
2. All content created must be released under a Creative Commons license.
Personally, I strongly believe few WordCamp organizers will have any heartburn over the previous two rules. It’s when money is introduced that I expect things to get contentious real fast.
I believe, and I’m backed up on this by many others including Matt Mullenweg that WordCamps are meant to teach existing WordPress users and attract new ones, not to turn a profit. I also believe that any attendance fee paid by attendees should be for the purpose of gaining their investment, their “buy in” to the event, and that the bulk of costs should be borne by the event’s sponsors.
If you allow people to register to attend, and keep the admittance free, you run the risk of people signing up with no real investment or interest in attending. Unconsciously or not, many of us have this unspoken opinion that, “nothing offered for free can have any real intrinsic value, otherwise, why would any sane person be offering it for free?” “If it’s worth something”, we think, “They’d be asking fpr something in return.”
For WordCamp Dallas, I chose to offer each attendee admittance to both day’s events, along with lunch each day and a t-shirt, all for $20. Afterward, several people candidly told me they’d paid many times that and received less value at other conferences. Some even chastised me for pricing tickets too low.
So, although we frown on organizers charging too much to attend or even having a profit motive when organizing a WordCamp, should we codify that somehow, or should we continue to strongly suggest future WordCamps remain non-profit and frown on those that do? And how do we decide how much is too much? Should we say no single ticket should cost more than a large pizza? Should we say no single ticket should cost more than the meals that attendee is entitled to and one t-shirt? What about the differences in currency between countries? A large pizza in Tanzania may be exorbitantly high in cost.
So, should rule number three attempt to hard-code ticket prices? For example:
3. A single ticket to attend a WordCamp should be no more than $30
Or, maybe the way to approach it follows a suggestion that I’ve heard Matt mention, and that is to require any profit be given to charity and/or an open source project. For example:
3. At the close of a WordCamp, any and all profits must be donated to either a charity and/or an open source project.
But then, that might require an additional rule:
4. The financial records of a WordCamp must be fully disclosed in an open ledger, except for any donor/sponsor who wishes to remain anonymous.
PodCamp already does this. And it would encourage organizers to set up at least separate bank accounts for WordCamp finances, possibly even forming limited liability companies or the equivalent in overseas legal systems, but is that starting to be too “Big Brother”-ish?
Another thing, related to money, is the idea of paying for speakers, or even “compensating” them. Some people, with very good intentions and reasoned thought, believe that bringing better-known, “celebrity” bloggers in from thousands of miles away, paying for their air fare and putting them up in hotels is a good way to ensure the success of a WordCamp by practically guarantying a turnout, because if you had a chance to pick up WordPress tips from Darren Rowse or Chris Brogan for $20, wouldn’t you come out to a WordCamp?! (I’m not saying either of these would require an honorarium or anything, I just needed the names of two well-known WordPress bloggers.) Even one of these would increase the cost of a WordCamp by several hundred dollars, and would either require existing sponsors cough up the dough or new ones would have to be added. Then again, if Spacely Space Sprockets or Cosmo Cogs are fine shelling out $1,500 to fly Rowse in from Australia to speak for a couple of hours, who are we to say no?
The other side says that WordCamps are meant to be, in the words of Mullenweg, “hyper-local” events where everyone is treated like rockstars and maybe the blogger from around the block could use a place to start his or her own personal marketing campaign, and speaking at a local WordCamp would be a great way to gain exposure as a thought-leader, all while allowing the organizer to keep costs down.
Besides, if Mr. Mega-Blogger (I’ve decided to stop picking on Messrs. Rowse and Brogan… I may need their help one day) decides to speak at your WordCamp, he does so at his own expense, after all, he’s the one benefiting from the exposure and marketing opportunities… He’s the one benefiting from the networking and prospective clients… He’s the one benefiting from his book sales or whatever he’s selling… Why should he be paid on top of all that?
So, my last proposal on rules for a WordCamp would require we decide on whether or not to disallow paying for speakers. I.e.:
6. Speakers and session leaders will not be paid, compensated or otherwise reimbursed in return for speaking.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, you may hear that I recently asked to be paid to speak at WordCamp New York City. That is both true and false. Let me explain:
I was contacted by jonathan Dingman, the lead organizer, and was asked by him first for advice on organizing a WordCamp, then if I might lead a session, possibly recording an episode of The WordPress Podcast live. I explained, that since I’d only recently become fully self-employed, that I had no money budgeted to travel to any events either to speak or to simply attend, and that if I were to attend WordCamp NYC, my flight and hotel would need to be paid. Jonathan initially agreed, but as we worked on the details, we both agreed it wouldn’t be cost-efficient for me to attend, even if sponsors agreed to pay the cost.
I fall into the “Speakers should not be paid” camp, however, this was a special circumstance where I was asked what it would take to get me there, and I gave an honest answer: That I could not pay my own way, and that the only way I could attend is if someone else paid my way for me.
So, in recap, I hope I’ve given you something to consider. Should we form a WordCamp Foundation to assist and regulate future WordCamps, and if so, should we debate and adopt any or all of the following rules?
- The event must be focused on blogging or new media with a heavy emphasis on the use of WordPress software (WordPress, WordPress.com or WordPress MU).
- All content created must be released under a Creative Commons license.
- At the close of a WordCamp, any and all profits must be donated to either a charity and/or an open source project.
- The financial records of a WordCamp must be fully disclosed in an open ledger, except for any donor/sponsor who wishes to remain anonymous.
- Speakers and session leaders will not be paid, compensated or otherwise reimbursed in return for speaking.
Comments
Those rules make perfect sense. I think the idea of anyone trying to make profit off of a wordcamp has already missed the point of wordpress to a large extent.
I agree with all of your rules however I think a “ruling body” that can handle event registration for the smaller locales would be the best solution. Plus a site with plenty of content helping organizers to plan the events around the world would be very useful as well.
I don’t if that is something that Automattic would want to oversee but some sort of overall organization could help immensely. As one of the planners of the Wordcamp Portland event a little over a week ago, there were quite a few things we didn’t anticipate going into the event and if there had been an indepth site to help us out things could have gone quite smoother (not that they weren’t smooth overall).
Speaking strictly with my PodCamp hat on, we figure that the fewer rules the better, and that the rules we have in place are to make the experience similar in greatness for all the people organizing and attending the events.
We don’t have an official rule on carting in big nerds, but if *I* were organizing an event, I wouldn’t shell out to fly some weirdo like me there. I’d just find the local folks.
When we did the first PodCamp, we thought like that, though. I wanted badly for every “big name” I knew to attend. I begged them all. We had some real doozies of names. Big ones. Know who everyone remembered the most? Guido Stein, the only straight male knitter podcast guy.
So yeah, as much as it’s fun to attend all the fun events, and I’d *love* to go to a WordCamp, spend your loot on the locals. That few grand would cover LOTS of beer. : )
With WordCamp Portland still fresh in my mind, here are a few thoughts about, um, your thoughts
I say no.
Does there need to be a set of rules for WordCamp? Is there a problem if different folks and different cities do things their own way?
Here in Portland we featured both pre-planned and unconference segments. We charged a small price, which, coupled with sponsorships, covered our costs but didn’t create a profit. We haven’t disclosed our books (but I wouldn’t have a problem doing so once I reconcile everything in the next couple of weeks).
We compensated the pre-planned speakers by covering their event registration including the t-shirt.
Creating a set of rules and a framework/prescription of “Here is How WordCamp Shall Be Run” will potentially turn away those who might want to take the WordCamp ball and run with it. I had a hard enough time finding folks to volunteer for some things, and giving me more rules to follow will only make it harder.
Perhaps I’m out of the loop with some problems that have occurred, but it seems to me that these rules might be addressing a non-issue, while potentially creating barriers for those who want to do their own thing.
Ultimately I suppose it comes down to the question of if it’s more important to have WordCamps reach as many cities and people as possible, or is it more important that every WordCamp be managed in the same fashion?
I suppose all I’m really suggesting here is, we ought to identify the ideals and principles that makes a WordCamp different from Blog World Expo or GnomeDex (not that there’s anything wrong with those) and form some sort of legal protection.
Maybe we should just adopt 2 simple rules that everyone can agree on:
1. A WordCamp is an event centered around the use of WordPress software.
2. All content created should be freely shared and thus licensed under a Creative Commons License.
If the content is sharable, that pretty much eliminates the profit motive, wouldn’t you think?
And ultimately, if organizers of a WordCamp fail to live up to those two simple rules, they lose the right to call themselves a WordCamp and use of the logo.
Isn’t that reasonable?
I think one of the biggest hurdles I had with organizing the event was exactly what you titled this post, standards.
There isn’t a standard for WordCamps. While I do believe not every WordCamp should have to follow these “standards,” I do think it would be nice to have them in place so people that want guidelines, tips, or suggestions, they are already available and easy to access to help the organizer get what they need.
A couple notes on standards that would be nice to have,
Pre-designed graphics
A set location for the website, either self-hosted or on wordcamp.org
Access to contacts for printing, maybe a community portal of “these print companies have done X work for our WordCamp and we were happy or unhappy”
Or items of a similar nature
Jonathan makes some good points, especially with his notes on things that would’ve been good to know. I’m not sure that having standards is the answer, but what if we setup a wiki and let everyone contribute what worked, what didn’t work, offer up ideas/suggestions to the world, make notes on experiences with certain vendors (postive or negative), etc…
I organized WordCamp Utah which happened just a few weeks ago. I think the thing that would be most helpful is resources for organizing/running the camp (like what Jonathan brought up) and not so much how it must be run. I don’t think cloning WordCamps is as interesting as having a stronger local focus.
What we did was get folks who were interested together for dinner and talked about what we’d like to see in a local WordCamp. I think for the most part we did a pretty good job of sticking to that original intent.
After everything was said and done there’s really only one on big thing that I would have changed, instead of a single track I would have done a two track schedule. One geared more for users and the other geared for the tech folks who really want to walk through real code and spend less time viewing slides.
Overall my experience was a positive one and I’ve had a number of people ask about doing another one next year.
I am the organizer of Charlotte WordCamp. I think the entire appeal is the laid back nature of the event, rules would hinder that. I know personally, with the rules you listed, I would not have taken on organizing a WC.
Profit wise, I think the market will cover itself. If you overcharge, you fail. If you undercharge, you lose money and learn.
I agree that all content of WC’s should be available for free to others and syndicated as much as possible. We plan on streaming our event for free for those that are unable to travel.
To me the less rules the better. If someone is doing something sketchy with an event, I believe that things will get back to WP and they will take care of it.
I think the more important issue is trust within the community and holding onto the organic nature of the growth of these events.
I think the current non-profit suggestions are fine. Feel free to offer the further suggestions of donating profits or rolling them into improvements for future iterations of the event.
Can we at least agree on these 2 simple rules then?
i can handle that.
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