WordCamp Incubator locations announcement

I’m very happy to announce that we have identified the locations for the WordCamp Incubator program — and I’m particularly pleased to announce that we’ve been able to select *three* incubator locations, due to the additional of another deputyProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. to the program. Thanks for volunteering, @hlashbrooke! 🙂

The communities which will host a WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Incubator this year will be:

Denpasar, Indonesia — working with Rocio Valdivia

Harare, Zimbabwe — working with Hugh Lashbrooke

Medellín, Colombia — working with Andrea Middleton

The other locations that were short-listed have been encouraged to explore the idea of organizing a local meetupMeetup Meetup groups are locally-organized groups that get together for face-to-face events on a regular basis (commonly once a month). Learn more about Meetups in our Meetup Organizer Handbook. group and/or WordCamp in their communities, and have been promised extra help from mentorsEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. (like @adityakane, @savione, and @gounder) if they are interested in giving it a shot. Colombo, Sri Lanka and San Jose, Costa Rica have since applied to organize a WordCamp this year, and we hope to hear from a few more groups on that list! 🙂

A rough outline of how this will go (we think):

Denpasar, Harare, and Medellín will work with their respective deputiesProgram Supporter Community Program Supporters (formerly Deputies) are a team of people worldwide who review WordCamp and Meetup applications, interview lead organizers, and keep things moving at WordCamp Central. Find more about program supporters in our Program Supporter Handbook. to start a monthly WordPress meetup group or add their existing meetup group to the chapter account program. Once the local WordPress user group is meeting regularly, each team will work on finding a venue, setting a date, recruiting speakers, and spreading the word about the upcoming WordCamp. I’m thinking all three of these events will happen in the last quarter of 2016, but that’s flexible based on the preferences and needs of each local community.

Each organizing team will meet with their deputy on a biweekly basis. The deputy will act as a sort of a project manager and mentorEvent Supporter Event Supporter (formerly Mentor) is someone who has already organised a WordCamp and has time to meet with their assigned mentee every 2 weeks, they talk over where they should be in their timeline, help them to identify their issues, and also identify solutions for their issues. for the local team, training them to organize a WordCamp and following up on their progress regularly. Deputies who are mentoring incubator WordCamps will report the progress of their teams on a biweekly Incubator Update thread that I’ll initiate here.

In addition to the extra-extra support we’ll provide to the local team around keeping on schedule and thinking of All The Things, we’ll help them find speakers and sponsors.  Our goal will be to feature no more than 3 non-local speakers at each event. As for sponsorship, the global sponsorship grant for these events will cover 100% of the event’s fundraising needs, so that organizers don’t need to spend much time drumming up sponsorship. We’ll accept local sponsors of course, but incubator events won’t be given a local fundraising goal that they need to meet.

As a reminder, the goal for these events is to organize an easily reproducible, one-day, one-track event with about 50-75 attendees. Hopefully by the end of the organizing/incubating experience, members of the local community will feel confident that they can organize an annual WordCamp independently in the years to come.

If you have any question about the incubator locations or our expectations for the program, please ask them in the comments!

#incubator, #wordcamps