WordCamp & WordPress Events Debrief Analysis

Since 2015, local 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. lead organizers have been invited to fill out a post-event survey, called WordCamp Debrief. Since 2024, lead organizers of Events other than WordCamp and MeetupsMeetup 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. also received the same survey. The survey questions have remained unchanged since 2015.

Below are the questions we’ve been asking:

Focused Questions

The goal of this analysis is to better understand organizers’ needs and challenges shared in the WordCamp and WordPress event organizers’ debrief surveys from 2022 through 2024. To achieve this goal, I have prioritized the following questions:

• How many tickets were sold?
• How many people actually attended?
• How did you wind up in terms of budget?
• Which expenses were unanticipated, or cost more than you expected?
• What do you think went really well at your event?
• What could have gone better at your event?
• Did you have enough support from WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each.? If there were things that made planning this event harder or easier, let us know!

Summary

Local WordCamps and Events 

Top 3 Organizers’ Challenges:

1. Budget Issues
   • Unexpected costs (sometimes due to mistakes when creating the budget such as excluding VAT, not requesting updated quotes, etc.)
2. Logistical Issues with Last-Minute Changes
3. Lower Attendance than Expected

Top 3 Organizers’ Needs:

1. Improved Sponsor Outreach and Global Sponsorship Assignments
   • Some organizing teams faced challenges finding local sponsors.
   • Some organizing teams weren’t satisfied with the amount of global sponsorship assigned to their event.
2. Enhanced Promotional Support and Marketing
   • Some organizing teams have asked for help to promote the events.
3. Clearer expectations on the expected timeline to address logistical issues
   • Some organizers faced delays or inconsistencies in responses from Central due to last-minute requests.

Observations

	Number of events (Flagships included)	Debriefs Completed	Completion rate
2022	26	8	30.77%
2023	70	21	30.00%
2024* *as of June 26, 2024	28	9	32.14%
Total	124	38	30.65%

Unfortunately, The completion rate is too low to be considered a fair representation of the totality of organizing teams since 2022.

Despite the fact that the lead organizers receive an automated email inviting them to fill out the survey, the survey link is public and multiple people can fill out the same event survey: we have received one duplicated answer and one feedback from an attendee instead of the organizers. I have eliminated the duplicate and the response sent by the attendee.

While the survey provides us with information about organizational and administrative tasks, and offers organizers an opportunity for retrospective analysis, it does not sufficiently investigate the challenges they faced, or what changes organizers and/or our Events Program need to make to improve their experience.

Recommendations

• WordCamp and Event Debriefs’ original purpose was to check if the organizing team had completed all the tasks needed to wrap up the event. The Community team should discuss if the current information we gather is still relevant, or if we need to ask the organizers different questions.
• Make the organizer debrief survey mandatory for all events.
• Limit the response to the organizer debrief survey to one per event, preferably by the lead organizer.
• Standardize the attendee and sponsor surveys, and make it mandatory for all events.

Request for Feedback 

Community feedback is key to understanding how we can make a better use of our tools, and surveys are no exception. So, please, if you’re reading this post and have been lead organizer for a WordPress event in the past, take a moment to answer the following questions.

• As WordCamp and/or WordPress Event organizer, what prevented you from completing the post-event debrief survey for organizers?
• What value did you find in completing the survey?
• Have you ever organized events for other communities and answered an organizer’s survey? What questions were you asked that were helpful?

One additional question specifically for the Community team program supporters and managers:

• Is the current information we gather still relevant, or should we ask the organizers different questions?

Please, comment on this post answering any, or all, of the above questions, and sharing any other thoughts you have about the Organizer post-event survey topic, before July 31, August 4, 2024.

 The following people have contributed to writing this post: @peiraisotta, @nao, @courtneypk