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In a continuing effort to provide some real-time information for event organizers and the community alike, below is a month-in-review post with recaps of the prior month’s events and how they fared financially, in terms of ticket sales and budget.
As we roll into the final quarter of 2023, the month of October was quite active. The month closed out with a total of 13 events.
Updates on WordCamps Held pre-October with Open Budgets
WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. Kerala, India (March 25) Final Tickets Sold: 499 Approved Attendee Total: 500 Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $19,664 USD/1,638,635 INR and cost per person/day of $39 USD/ 3,284 INR. Event closed on budget. Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp Nairobi, Kenya (Aug 16-17) Final Tickets Sold: 160 Approved Attendee Total: 200 Budget Notes*: Initial review of Transparency Report complete. Awaiting response in regards to small surplus. Open Items – Finances: Awaiting response in regards to small surplus.
WordCamp Denmark (Aug 26-27) Final Tickets Sold: 48 Approved Attendee Total: 95 Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $11,002 USD/ 73,347 DKK and cost per person/day of $115 USD/ 764 DKK. Event closed with a contribution to the Global Sponsorship fund of approximately $4,190 USD/ 27,937 DKK Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp Jinja, Uganda (Sept 4 – 5) Final Tickets Sold: 186 Approved Attendee Total: 250 Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $6,290 USD and cost per person/day of $17 USD. Event closed with a contribution to the Global Sponsorship fund of approximately $60 USD to be used towards future MeetupMeetupMeetup 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. expenses Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp Kathmandu, Nepal (Sept 8-9) Final Tickets Sold: 473 Approved Attendee Total: 450 Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $18,288 USD/ 2,438,435 NPR and cost per person/day of $19 USD/ 2,577 NPR. Event closed with a contribution to the Global Sponsorship fund of approximately $1,828 USD/ 243,694 NPR to be used towards future WordPress expenses. Surplus held in WP Nepal account. Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp Finland (Sept 14-15) Final Tickets Sold: 407 Approved Attendee Total: 500 Budget Notes*: Awaiting Final Numbers Open Items – Finances: Several payments still pending (Signage, Audio/Visual, Speaker Event)
WordCamp Pontevedra, Spain (Sept 16-17) Final Tickets Sold: 245 Approved Attendee Total: 300 Budget Notes*: Awaiting Final Numbers Open Items – Finances: Several payments still pending (Audio/Visual & Swag)
WordCamp Vancouver, Canada (Sept 23) Final Tickets Sold: 241 Approved Attendee Total: 375 Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $16,470 USD/ 21,671 CAD and cost per person/day of $68 USD/ 90 CAD. Event closed with a contribution to the Global Sponsorship fund of approximately $550 USD/ 724 CAD. Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp and Events Held in October
WordCamp Biarritz, France (Oct 6) Final Tickets Sold: 304 Approved Attendee Total: 300 Budget Notes*: Awaiting Final Numbers Open Items – Finances: Food & Beverage payments still pending
WordCamp Masaka, Uganda (Oct 6 – 7) Final Tickets Sold: 217 Approved Attendee Total: 200 Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $8,136 USD and cost per person/day of $19 USD. Event closed with additional Global Sponsorship funds used totaling $1,336 USD. The majority of this relates to customs fees for swag. A potential way to avoid this in the future will be to source the swag locally using templates provided by Central. This is in the works. Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp Bhopal, India (Oct 7-8) Final Tickets Sold: 353 Approved Attendee Total: 350 Budget Notes*: Awaiting Final Numbers Open Items – Finances: Still Awaiting final Transparency Report**, and team has responded to say they are working on the final numbers
WordCamp Atlanta, USA (Oct 14-15) Final Tickets Sold: 181 Approved Attendee Total: 500 Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $39,439 USD and cost per person/day of $109 USD. Event closed with a contribution to the Global Sponsorship fund of approximately $5,781 USD after making major budgeting changes due to lower than expected sponsorship and ticket sales. Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp Skopje, North Macedonia (Oct 14) Final Tickets Sold: 254 Approved Attendee Total: 250 Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $6,548 USD/ 385,188 MKD and cost per person/day of $26 USD/ 1,516 MKD. Event closed with a contribution to the Global Sponsorship fund of approximately $1,140 USD/ 67,046 MKD. Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp Taiwan (Oct 14) Final Tickets Sold: 321 Approved Attendee Total: 500 Budget Notes*: Awaiting Final Numbers Open Items – Finances: Several payments still pending (Food, Speaker Event, Swag, After Party, Signage)
WordCamp Germany (Oct 19-21) Final Tickets Sold: 276 Approved Attendee Total: 250 Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $45,743 USD/ 42,220 EUR and cost per person/day of $28 USD/ 25 EUR. Event closed with additional Global Sponsorship funds used of approximately $2,091 USD/ 1,955 EUR. Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp Sevilla, Spain (Oct 20-22) Final Tickets Sold: 243 Approved Attendee Total: 200 Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $28,304 USD/ 26,452 EUR and cost per person/day of $39 USD/ 36 EUR. Event closed with additional Global Sponsorship funds used of approximately $5,785 USD/ 5,407 EUR. Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp Wroclaw, Poland (Oct 21) Final Tickets Sold: 106 Approved Attendee Total: 100Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $5,337 USD/ 23,205 PLN and cost per person/day of $50 USD/ 219 PLN. Event closed with a contribution to the Global Sponsorship fund of $2,064 USD/ 8,973 PLN. Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp Tokyo, Japan (Oct 21) Final Tickets Sold: 424 Approved Attendee Total: 400 Budget Notes*: Awaiting Final Numbers Open Items – Finances: Still Awaiting final Transparency Report**, and the team has been emailed to request the report.
WordCamp Tegal, Indonesia (Oct 22) Final Tickets Sold: 83 Approved Attendee Total: 75 Budget Notes*: Awaiting Final Numbers Open Items – Finances: Still Awaiting final Transparency Report**, and the team has been emailed to request the report.
WordCamp Managua, Nicaragua (Oct 28) Final Tickets Sold: 173 Approved Attendee Total: 200 Budget Notes*: Budget closed. Final cost $3,914 USD and cost per person/day of $23 USD. Event closed with a contribution to the Global Sponsorship fund of $821 USD. Open Items – Finances: No open items
WordCamp Mumbai, India (Oct 28-29) Final Tickets Sold: 495 Approved Attendee Total: 500 Budget Notes*: Awaiting Final Numbers Open Items – Finances: Still Awaiting final Transparency Report**, and the team has been emailed to request the report.
Budget Notes*: If an event was able to raise more sponsorship income or ticket income, or the expenses were less than amounts listed in the approved budget, the additional funds are contributed back to the Global Sponsorship fund. If, on the other hand, an organizing team raises less sponsorship income or ticket income than planned, or expenses are higher than originally budgeted, the additional amount needed to cover all expenses is covered by the Global Sponsorship fund and will be stated as additional Global Sponsorship funds used.
The goal of WordPress events is to provide a space where community members can come together and share knowledge, build relationships with other members and sponsors, and spread love for WordPress. The goal is never to make money. Because WordPress Community SupportWordPress Community SupportWordPress Community Support PBC is a subsidiary of WordPress Foundation. It is created specifically to be the financial and legal support for WordCamps, WordPress Meetup groups, and any additional “official” events organized within the WordPress Community Events program. pays taxes on any income at year end, we strive to hold events where income is equal to expenses.
Transparency Report**: WordCamps that run funds through WordPress Community Support (WPCSWPCSThe collection of PHP_CodeSniffer rules (sniffs) used to format and validate PHP code developed for WordPress according to the WordPress Coding Standards.
May also be an acronym referring to the Accessibility, PHP, JavaScript, CSS, HTML, etc. coding standards as published in the WordPress Coding Standards Handbook.) – meaning WPCS collects ticket income and sponsorship income, and pays vendors directly – are not required to submit a Transparency Report. Alternatively, organizing teams that run money locally collect all or some of the ticket income and sponsorship income directly. The team then uses the collected funds to pay expenses of the event. The organizing team is responsible for completing a transparency report after the event where they submit receipts/documentation for all expenses, support for ticket income collected, and support for sponsorship income collected. More info can be found here.
Imagine with me… a world in which planning a WordCampWordCampWordCamps 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. did NOT require a Google spreadsheet to share or get shared to you. What if your budget lived *right in your WordCamp dashboard*? And what if… your dashboard budget was “automagically” updated with your live ticket sales, sponsor invoice payments, and vendor payment requests?
Guess what? A betaBetaA pre-release of software that is given out to a large group of users to trial under real conditions. Beta versions have gone through alpha testing in-house and are generally fairly close in look, feel and function to the final product; however, design changes often occur as part of the process. version of this Budget Tool is already nestled in your dashboard right now (Dashboard > Budget > Budget), just waiting to be tested and improved by your feedback!
EDIT: Enormous, gigantic, and in all other ways huuuuuuuuuuuge cred to @kovshenin, who worked his fingers to the bone, coding up this amazing new tool. He’s aces in our book.
One of the bottlenecks that has been mentioned repeatedly by both deputiesProgram SupporterCommunity 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. and organizers is the process around WC budgets. The biggest issues as I’ve heard them:
Only Cami/Josepha can create/share a new budget doc, deputies can’t.
Only Cami/Josepha have access to old budgets, deputies don’t and neither do new organizers unless the previous year organizer shared it to the new people.
Having to complete all financial planning (budget review/approval) before announcing a WC date slows things down and reduces the amount of time there is to recruit speakers, volunteers, sponsors, etc.
To address these issues, we’re going to change a few things.
First: Increased DeputyProgram SupporterCommunity 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. Access & Authority
Cami is collecting all the old budgets we have into a folder. All deputies will have access to this folder, so they can pull up previous year budgets as needed.
Deputies should go ahead and create and share budget docs using the existing templates, and then save the budget docs to the new folder once you’ve been added to it.
Deputies do not need to have their budget approvals rubber-stamped by Cami/Josepha/etc. If you have been told you can be responsible for budget review, you can make that call. If there is a budget issue with a WC that you’re not sure about, you can get a 2nd opinion from other deputies in the #outreach channel. If it’s a really big budget issue that all deputies should weigh in on/be aware of, go ahead and post about it to this blog to start a discussion that’s not time-zone dependent.
Second: Public Budgets for All!
We want to have alllllll the old budgets publicly available, both from here and from individual WC sites. However, before we can embed them, we need to do a scrub to make sure old budgets don’t contain protected info (like email addresses, phone numbers, etc). We’ll work out a system for deputies to start scrubbing asap so we can make things public sooner rather than later. Once we’ve scrubbed the backlog, all budget docs in the new folder should be public by default (publicly viewable, not editable, of course).
Third: Change the Rules
This one is a proposal to change the current policy, not a task list. This would be a change from the current policy that requires all budgets to be approved before a WC can be announced.
For a 1st time organizer in a city that hasn’t had a WC before, or that had a WC that didn’t do well sticking to the budget in the previous year, keep the current process and get a definite signoff on the budget, making sure the organizer (and key members of their team who touch money — budget wranglerWranglerSomeone, usually a person part of event organizing team, who looks after certain things like budget or sponsors., sponsor wrangler, etc) are informed and in a good place to pull off an event with a reasonable budget.
For a repeat organizer that did a good job in the previous year with the budget, or a new organizer in a city that had a WC with a good budget the previous year, remove the “approve budget” requirement to announce the event, and instead make “sign venue contract” the trigger milestone if the organizer agrees to stay within 10% of previous budget, or to ask for approval of expenses that would radically change the budget. Work out a system where deputies check in with WC organizers every week or two to see how things are going (previously called the mentorEvent SupporterEvent 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. program), and include looking at the budget in those check-ins to catch such changes.
This basically boils down to: if there’s a budget from last year and they can keep costs about the same, don’t slow down announcing the event while collecting bids from caterers, etc. We’ll need to discuss this a bit more and come up with what we want the new policy to be officially.
Fourth: Better Budgets
We need a better budget template that has columns for estimated vs actual expenses so we can track how well WCs are sticking to their budgets (vs just overwriting numbers).
What do y’all think about these shifts and/or the policy change proposal? Weigh in in the comments!