Thank you all for participating in WordCamp Kent 2020 online this year! We had a great time getting to know you all and spending a weekend learning with you.
Huge thank you to all our sponsors and the WordPress Community Team, who made the online pivot possible. Our day-of volunteers this year were also a phenomenal support – Ahmed, Laura, Yeasin, Lisa, Orin, Al Suzaud, Adrita, Ricardo, Tiffany, Sarah, Tim, and Amanda. And of course, thank you to our speakers for spending their time and energy educating others about their areas of expertise.
Session Recordings & Featured Recaps
All the WordCamp Kent videos are now live on WordPress.tv! You can also browse other WordCamp content on WordPress.tv. Special thanks to Tim O’Haver for uploading all our videos this year.
A couple of folks have written about their experience with WordCamp Kent being online for the first time, along with so many other Camps this year that will need to do the same. We wanted to highlight a couple of those here in case anyone missed them.
WordCamp Kent 2020 Online & Beyond by Stuart O. Smith, Jr.
Kent.WordCamp.org reminded me why I love the tech community in Cleveland and Akron — so many people giving of their time and talent to help others.
– Blog Post by Stuart O. Smith, Jr., Recapping His Experience With WordCamp Kent 2020
Online WordCamps, making conferences more accessible? by Linnea Nordstrom
I hope that WordCamp Kent will offer streaming online next year as well, I would definitely listen in again!
– Blog Post by Linnea Nordstrom, Recapping WordCamp Kent and WordCamp Europe, highlighting the potential of online events.
If you also wrote a recap blog post, please share the link with us via our contact form so we can update this post. 🙂
What We Learned
After the event, we hosted a recap Meetup via Zoom as well as a roundtable discussion for WordCamp Organizers who might be hosting an online WordCamp. It was a great, collaborative experience and lots of ideas were shared on how to make online WordCamps better, as well as ideas on how to increase engagement and community reach through online events.
Statistics & Attendee Feedback
- Online Statistics & 3-Year Comparison (These slides were shared in the Organizer Roundtable.)
- Insights from Post-Event Feedback Survey
- Session Feedback Stats (about the new feedback tool)
Supporting Kent, Ohio
When travel bans are lifted and it is safe to do so, please consider visiting Kent. Or you can order online from their local businesses if delivery to your region is available. Here are a few area favorites:
Specialty & Novelty Stores
- Popped! (ships anywhere in U.S.)
- Kent Cheesemonger (ships Kent + 5 mi radius)
- Squirrel City Jewelers (ships anywhere)
- Troppus Projects (ships anywhere)
- Red Letter Days (ships anywhere)
- Kent Cycle
Check out Main Street Kent for more information about Kent and their local businesses!
Staying Involved
There are a ton of ways to stay involved with our community. We’d love to keep in touch with everyone throughout the year and not just leading up to WordCamp + the 2 weeks afterwards. 🙂
Northeast Ohio
Our local Meetups will be hosted online until further notice; but once we are back in-person, we will still continue to provide online access to our Meetups!
Other Related Area Meetups: We Make the Internet, Cleveland Web Design and Development Meetup, Cleveland #LearnToCode Group, Hudson Software Craftsmanship Meetup, The Writers Group
Area Meetups for Underrepresented Groups: Akron Women in Tech Meetup, Northeast Ohio Women in Technology, Women Who Code Cleveland, We Can Code IT – Cleveland, The Cleveland Area Black Professionals, Ohio Black Entrepreneurs Network (Cleveland Chapter)
Contribute to WordPress
The make.wordpress.org site has information on all of the 18 groups that you can contribute to! These groups include documentation, testing, marketing, polyglots (translation), support, accessibility, design, and more.
Open source software contributions are more than just code! You can even help these groups out with things like taking meeting notes, which can also help get you familiar with the team’s projects.
WordCamp Europe 2020 had a great blog series leading up to their Contributor Day, which highlighted stories from various volunteer contributors.
Be on the lookout for more Contributor Days! WordCamp Europe was a great success story for an online Contributor Day.
WordCamp Kent 2021?
Please subscribe for updates on our site as we will use this site to open a Call for Organizers for next year’s WordCamp!
The organizing team handles a wide variety of tasks. We aim to have each organizer cover 1-3 of the following areas (depending on which ones fit best together). Orientation and training will be provided for any new organizers.
- Venue logistics, food/beverage, A/V, travel details (if applicable)
- Budget
- Design (web, programs, shirts, signs, stickers/pins)
- Publicity/web presence
- Fundraising/sponsorship
- Speaker recruitment and selection
- Volunteer wrangling
- Printing, badges, swag (if applicable)
- After-party
- Speaker event and/or gifts
We look forward to seeing you again soon!
