New concept: National Championships at WordCamps

I’ve been going to WordCamps since 2014, and I genuinely enjoy them — they’re interesting and inspiring. The only thing that sometimes puts me off is the lack of practical, hands-on information. Admit it: you don’t see that much code, and there are very few screenshots or videos of admin dashboards in the talks.

One of the reasons is the ban on product presentations or product mentions, which I understand on one hand — but on the other hand, I don’t. As a web builder, I spend all day tinkering in the dashboard and working with well-known plugins like WP Rocket and WooCommerce. But when I’m at 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., it suddenly becomes “taboo”. All of that made me think.. for years.

Another aspect is how passive the audience is during talks — which is of course logical, they are listening. 😃 But I’m convinced WordCampers want to see more proactivity. That’s why I’m so happy about the rise of workshops. Fantastic! Most workshops are tasks participants apply to their own situation: improving SEO or accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) on their own website. So everyone ends up working on their own little island… Also that made me think how i can get something common.

For years I’ve had the idea of how we could do this better: a concept that’s truly hands-on, proactive, and where everyone works on exactly the same thing.

And that’s how The National Championships Performance Optimization was born.

I built 24 identical sites and deliberately made them extremely slow. The participants’ task: transform this crappy site into a lightning-fast one.

At WordCamp Netherlands, I applied this concept — and the enthusiasm and results were even better than I had dared to hope.

In this blog post, I’ll walk through my approach, workflow, and pitfalls.

Approach:

Keep it light

First of all: the name of my concept, “National Championship,” is purely an idea. My time slot was early on day two of WordCamp — you know, the moment when plenty of people are still in their hotel beds. (Sleeping and waking up gently without kids around… I get it.)

On top of that, my session was scheduled opposite Joost de Valk. Yeah — up against a world-famous WordPress icon. So I had to come up with a grand, attention-grabbing title.

But at the same time, I want to keep it extremely light. Light and funny. When I was co-lead organizer of WordCamp Antwerp 2018, I did the intro while wearing a fries costume. That’s exactly the vibe I want to see more of. Not necessarily fries costumes — but that lightness, without stiffness.

Saving the world through code is interesting, sure. But most WordCamp visitors simply want to build great websites and shops. So just be chill — and every now and then, be a little weird.

That’s also why I made that crazy promo video.

Keep it short and interactive

To be fair: I did the challenge myself as preparation — and I found it pretty tough. After 40 minutes, I ended up with a Google PageSpeed score of 70/65 (mobile/desktop).

Here’s the time plan I used (tight, fast-paced, and with checkpoints):

• 10 minutes — Challenge briefing
• 5 minutes — Super quick performance training (including tips)
• 40 minutes — Participant challenge
• 5 minutes — Congratulate the winners
• 15 minutes — Review performance solutions, where both winners and participants could explain their workflow, share your learnings.
• 5 minutes — Raffle draw for the remaining teddy bears

The most surprising thing for me was that newcomers absolutely loved the challenge — even if their performance scores weren’t high. They still got to work hands-on, and they genuinely learned something by listening to how others had improved the site.

The more experienced WordCampers enjoyed it too, and said it was definitely something worth repeating. A lot of people told me afterwards that this was one of the highlights of their WordCamp. You honestly can’t ask for a better compliment.

Of course I’m biased, but the vibe and tension in the room… it had been a while since I’d felt that kind of excitement at a WordCamp. And that was also thanks to the incredible energy of the MC, and Marcel from Kinsta, who backed me up in case we ran into hosting issues. Both of them gave it 100%: checking in with participants, keeping time, and keeping the momentum and suspense alive.

images by Jeroen Rotty

Practical elements

Hosting was a crucial part of the whole concept. Since Kinsta sponsors a lot of WordCamps — including WordCamp Nederland — they were my first choice. Marcel Boostman was instantly super enthusiastic, just like we all know him.

The funny part was that my “crappy” site actually got pretty decent performance scores on Kinsta. So their support team received a question they’d probably never heard before: “Can you turn off all caching and make my website truly crappy?” 😅

In the end, everything ran perfectly — thanks to the near top-tier hosting package Kinsta provided for free. As i firmly believe in decent thank-yous, the sites had some Kinsta product-placements. Also their logo in my promo video. I know this is against guidelines of WordCamps and i take full credit for that. But Kinsta really delivered it (and more), and they we’re in fact a WordCamp sponsor. So i am reading between the lines here. As long as the outcome benefits waaayyy more joy, fun, hands-on learning, community mindset then commercial interest, i’ll go for it every day of the week – that is my personal opinion.

A few things I specifically wanted from the hosting setup:

• the ability to duplicate sites quickly from the hosting dashboard
• a rock-solid platform — because 24 sites + 40+ people unleashing crazy performance tweaks needs to be able to take a beating

I emailed all the (popular) WordPress tool makers and asked for a free bulk license. Almost every vendor agreed. That way, participants didn’t have to use their own licenses. And since all the sites were deleted the next day anyway, no data was retained.

For the scoreboard, my first idea was to measure performance myself via the Google PageSpeed APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.. But even with 10 API keys running in parallel, it still took way too long.

So instead, I built a dashboard using Lovable where teams could enter their own desktop/mobile scores — plus a screenshot as proof. Beforehand, I clearly emphasized that honesty mattered when submitting scores. Fun aspect: with every score submission, the scoreboard played for 10 seconds the national anthem. Hilarious.

Prize wheel: I built that entirely with Lovable too. Super handy — and I put it together in just 10 minutes. Embrace AI, and you can quickly set up fun little tools like this for challenges like these.

Talk to the WordCamp organizers: this concept isn’t ordinary. Organizers need to know in advance so you get a proper room, the MC is briefed, and everyone understands what’s expected. My very first ideas were even wilder, but after talking with the organizer, I realized it had to be designed in a simpler, more realistic way.

Other ideas for a group challenge?

In a performance challenge, hosting is the most crucial part. On top of that, it’s also harder to scale — for example, it’s not easy to run a performance challenge with 60–70–150+ participants at the same time.

One option could be to build “something” via WordPress Playground — where you let participants spin up a site using recipes and then run a design challenge.

And long live tool creation with AI. Think of a pixel-based measurement and comparison using AI: the participants whose result deviates the least from the original design wins.

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Want to run a performance challenge at your 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. or WordCamp?

I’d be happy to help you get started. I can share the WordPress install, the Lovable scoreboard, and of course all the practical details.

Feel free to DM me on WordPress SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/..