The WordCamp Sacramento 2018 Recap: A Inside Look At Planning And Hosting A WordCamp

 

WordCamp Sacramento 2018 is officially complete, and it was an incredible weekend of WordPress. This year we had a lot of first time WordCamp attendees and were excited to hear that they found the event helpful to their WordPress education. We also saw many familiar faces from previous WordCamps, and as an organizer, this excites me to know that this is an event many reattend.

Now, as we wrap up the final pieces of this event, we thought we would take a look back at everything that went into this WordCamp. Officially we began discussing WordCamp 2018 right after the closing remarks of 2017.  In January the fun begins, and we gather our team of WordCamp Organizers and start scheduling, planning, designing, and assembling all things WordCamp.

Below you’ll find the details of almost every aspect of the event and even some behind-the-scenes information.

Event Growth

WordCamp Sacramento 2018 is one of more than 120 WordCamps happening throughout the world in 2018. In its fourth year, the event has seen tremendous growth:

• 2015 = 180 tickets sold
  1 day, 2 tracks of sessions
• 2016 = 350 tickets sold
  2 days, 2 tracks of sessions on both days
• 2017 = 504 tickets sold
  2 days, 3 tracks of sessions on both days
• 2018 = 482 tickets sold
  2 days, 3 tracks of sessions on both days, including beginner tracks

Ticket Sales

In 2015, the entire event sold out in just over two hours, and in 2016, we released tickets in three batches, and each one sold out in 24 hours or less. Both years tickets went fast because we had a limited amount to sell and there was scarcity. In 2017, we moved to the Sacramento Convention Center second floor meeting space, which could accommodate 500 classroom style and around 1,000 theater style. This was the needed space that we were looking for.

For 2018, we hosted the event at the Sacramento Convention Center again. Many of our first-time attendees purchased their tickets as soon as they went on sale! Some of our returning attendees knew that there would be space our last month and a half of ticket sales were hopping. Which meant many missed the t-shirt deadline…

If you attend next year, don’t forget to purchase your tickets in advance! This guarantees that you get a t-shirt and a spot for this amazing two-day event. One of the great things about WordCamp is that if you get your ticket early and are unable to attend you can transfer it to a friend.

To bring the ticket sales home, every Organizer reached out through social media and personal connections to get those tickets sold. We even had an official WordCamp Sacramento commercial, created by one of our organizers, Jacob Henderson. He also made sure that all A/V details were taken care of!

Event T-Shirts

Attendees were asking for extras for their family and WordPressers from all over and texting and direct messaging friends asking them to snag an extra shirt! Let’s just say the shirts were a huge hit with attendees!

• Attendees t-shirts were a semi-light green with a white WordPress Logo in the middle
• Volunteer t-shirts were a bright berry pink with WordCamp Sacramento on the front.
• The speaker gifts this year were bold blue sweatshirts with the WordPress logo on the front.

This year we distributed shirts a little differently. Instead of doing it during the registration process we opened shirts at 11 am in the Happiness Bar/Help Desk area. When it was slow with shirts, our volunteers would lend a hand to the Happiness Bar. A special thanks to Mario Cano for making sure the attendee shirts arrived at WordCamp early Saturday morning!

WordCamp Kick-Off Dinner

While WordCamp Sacramento ran Saturday and Sunday, a private Kick-Off Dinner is held on Friday night for the speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and organizers. Everyone involved in WordCamp is a volunteer. Speakers donate their time to create and deliver talks, and they pay for their own travel and expenses. Sponsors pay to be part of WordCamp, and the organizers and volunteers give 100% of their time and efforts for no pay.

The Friday night Kick-Off Dinner is a small token of appreciation and thanks for their efforts, volunteerism, and time, and this year it was held in the Bikes & Gear lounge at HOT Italian in midtown Sacramento. The event included:

• A pizza bar with gluten-free, vegetarian, and dairy-free options
• Gelato and non-dairy Italian sorbet (which was terrific and if you get the chance to stop by, I highly suggest getting some)
• Non-alcoholic drinks

We also set up a registration table at the event, so all of the volunteers and sponsors could get registered in advance and skip the registration lines Saturday morning. Brian Bourn made sure that all details were in place for the dinner and another successful Friday night Kick-off Dinner!

Huge thanks go out to the team at HOT Italian for a fantastic job!

Sacramento Convention Center

There are not many venue options in Sacramento for a multi-track event of this size. Last year we found that the space The Sacramento Convention Center provided was impossible to pass up and chose to host the event at the same location. Though as we look forward towards 2019, we may change things up.

The Venue Upside:

The Sacramento Convention Center fits everything we need for WordCamp perfectly, it’s central to the region, it’s close to hotels and restaurants, and we’re not going to outgrow this space. However, as the convention center is planning extensive renovations next year, it may not be available to us in 2019.

Overall, once we were there, the event was pretty easy! During WordCamp, the convention center setup crew was on site and were very friendly, the A/V staff and the catering staff were easy to work with, friendly, and helpful, and the event ran smoothly and without stress.

The Venue Downside:

The Sacramento Convention Center is very expensive, and you have to use their services, which means we didn’t get to pick the companies we worked with to possibly find services cheaper. Just to give you an idea, here are some of the costs:

• Venue Rental: $6,200.00
• Wifi: $8,000.00
• Saturday Coffee, Water, Tea, Lemonade, and Networking Reception apps: $9,000
• Sunday Coffee, Water, Tea, Lemonade, and Sunday afternoon break snacks: $5,000
• Stages for from of ballrooms: $660.00
• Microphones, projectors, screens, speaker timers: $5,600

While the event was fantastic, we found that keeping our budget was a little tricky with unexpected costs.

City of Sacramento

We are incredibly proud of how far our local Sacramento WordPress community has come in the last few years. The Sacramento WordPress Meetup has more than 1,200 members, we meet every month and have 30-50 people at every meetup, and we hosted an event for 500 people in downtown that brought people in from across the state of California, across the country, and even from other countries.

Sponsor Lobby

Without sponsors, we wouldn’t have a WordCamp, so it’s critical to make sure they receive maximum visibility. One thing we have always tried to do with WordCamp Sacramento is keeping our sponsors front and center, which means a central lobby with high traffic is a critical requirement of our venues.

The second-floor meeting space at the Sacramento Convention Center had a large open lobby at the top of the stairs, and it was perfect for our event and our sponsors because every attendee had to move through it to move around the event.

• We lined the edges of the lobby with the sponsor tables
• Registration was set up in-front so attendees could get registered and get to the sessions they wanted to attend
• Coffee, water, tea, and lemonade were in the middle of the Sponsor lobby which made it a great space for networking and chatting with our sponsors
• The Happiness Bar/Help Desk had an entire room and was located directly off the Sponsor lobby which also hosted the t-shirts on Saturday
• post-event networking reception on Saturday was held in the Sponsor lobby
• The Sunday afternoon snack break was also held in the Sponsor Lobby with pretzels and brownies (I know it sounds like a weird combination, but it hit the spot after a morning of sessions)

A special shout out goes to all of our 2018 WordCamp Sacramento Sponsors, because without their support we would not be able to make the event possible:

• SiteLock
• BoldGrid
• WooCommerce
• Jetpack
• Bluehost
• Qualpay
• Pantheon
• Dice
• Wordfence
• VendorFuel
• DreamHost
• GoDaddy Pro
• Sucuri
• GiveWP
• WPML.org
• 10up
• SiteGround
• StickerGiant
• Beaver Builder
• Media Deduper Pro
• HighEdWeb
• GreenGeeks
• TraitWare

Together, we worked with our Sponsors to make sure that tables were set up, spaces were available, swag was shipped and ready for the WordCamp attendees. Let’s just say some of our organizers had a few extra boxes for a couple of weeks before the event. Josh Smith did an amazing job making sure that the sponsors were well taken care of!

Event Snacks

We’ve been to a lot of WordCamps that have a snack table or a snack room, but two years ago we did something different (found it worked out just as well with the new venue) and it was such a success, we did it again this year. We purchased all of the snacks and gave them to the sponsors.

• We purchased all of the treats, candy, and snacks in advance, mixed them all up, and boxed them up for transport to WordCamp.
• We purchased large clear bowls to hold the snacks.
• We put two volunteers in charge of snacks, and their job was to fill the bowls in the morning, give each sponsor a bowl of snacks for their table, and make sure the bowls were full throughout the entire event. They were full of granola bars, trail mix, mixed nuts, crackers, and fruit snacks in the morning, and cookies and candy in the afternoon.

It wasn’t a big budget item, only about $800, but it helped get more people to the sponsor tables and the lobby, which made our sponsors very happy.

Registration

The universal law of event registration: It doesn’t matter how much you plan or how many warnings you give people to show up early and avoid long lines, almost everyone will arrive at the same time, about 15 minutes before the event begins. And they’ll be in a hurry because they don’t want to miss opening remarks or the first session.

We split up the names into 6 groups which helped to make the registration process quicker.

Beginner Tracks

Last year was our first time doing the Beginner Track, and we only did a single day. This year Speaker Wranger Jennifer Bourn planned two full days of Beginner Tracks since last year was such a success. Yet again, these tracks were very popular and a full half of the attendees indicated that they were interested in the beginner track when they registered for the event. 

Learning Sessions

This year we had 30 learning sessions ( 45 total sessions if you include the Beginner Tracks).

We scheduled one development session in every time block, and if there were two at the same time, we tried to make sure the audience was different, like pairing a front-end development talk at the same time as an advanced back-end talk.

We tried to make sure there was at least one non-technical or semi-non-technical talk at every time slot.

Speakers

Each year we receive amazing support from individuals wanting to speak at WordCamp. From last year, we were able to get a better idea about the content that we were looking for, especially for the Beginner Tracks.

For the third year in a row, we have asked every speaker to provide a link to their sides in advance. This allows us to write the tweets sharing the slides with attendees at the start of each session in advance. Looking for a list of speaker slide decks? Find them at our recent post: WordCamp Speaker Slide Decks.

A special thanks to Jennifer Bourn for making sure each Speaker was ready to present!

Happiness Bar/Help Desk

We thought last year was busy at the Happiness Bar; this year topped that! It was full throughout the entire event, and we heard from several attendees that problems they had been struggling with were now fixed, theme customizations they couldn’t figure out were made, and functionality they wanted to add was added. Attendees loved the free, expert WordPress help included with the ticket price and took advantage of it.

Since many of the attendees wanted to connect with the speakers after their sessions most of them went to the Happiness Bar after their sessions so attendees could ask more questions and speak to them in depth. This also helped vacate the space so the next speaker could get ready for their session. Jackie Garcia, an organizer of WordCamp, did a fantastic job handing out t-shirts and helping attendees who had questions.

A HUGE thanks go out to the volunteers and attendees who spent time helping out in the Happiness Bar! We all appreciate you.

Blog/Website Content, Social Media, Graphics, & Marketing

This year was a group effort as we made sure that we covered all of our channels when sharing information about the event. Each of our Organizers played a crucial part in sharing the information on their own channels which helped to bring in a lot of new faces.

Every post had an image which connected to the content we were talking about. Since we wanted to make sure that our Community Theme stood out in most of our post, these were custom designed by our very own Katie Nash, who was the lead designer. This was very important for our Speakers and Sponsors posts since we wanted to make sure you knew who or what company you were looking for.

We also had Bryan Cole working on new marketing channels, Jennifer Bourn keeping our social media channels live with WordCamp content, and Jessica Roots who worked on the website and blog content.

Facilitated Networking Session

We’ve all been in that awkward situation when trying to network. To make it a little easier we continued our Speed Networking session to help make networking a little easier. We did it right before lunch which was great because a lot of people continued their conversations as they made their way to the food trucks.

Want to learn more about Speed Networking? View our in-depth post about Speed Networking and what it is.

Networking Reception

In Sacramento, we skip the traditional after party. Going to bars or restaurants and being around alcohol isn’t comfortable for all attendees, and making people get in their cars or change locations means that very few people will actually attend, especially when there is a gap between the end of the event and the start of the after party. Instead, we went with a networking reception held on-site immediately following the end of the last session.

We held the networking reception in the Sponsor Lobby on Saturday and A LOT of attendees stayed to hang out, network more, and chat with other attendees and sponsors.

Lunch & Food

With an event like WordCamp, we need to make sure to keep our attendees full and happy.

• Beverages: Coffee, water, tea, and lemonade were provided throughout the entire event.
• Saturday Snacks: Sponsor tables offered attendees a variety of granola bars, crackers, mixed nuts, trail mix, and fruit snacks. To add a little sweetness in the afternoon, we had an assortment of candy.
• Saturday Lunch: We sent attendees off-site for a short two-block walk to capital park and four popular Sacramento food trucks: Chandos Tacos, Squeeze Inn, Hefty Gyros, and Drewski’s Hot Rod Kitchen. We got the menus from each truck in advance and published the menus on the WordCamp site for attendees could browse their options and make a selection in advance.
• Sunday Snacks: Sponsor tables offered attendees a variety of granola bars, crackers, mixed nuts, trail mix, fruit snacks, cookies, and candy.
• Sunday Afternoon Break: The event began at 11:00 am, so no lunch was provided on Sunday, but during the afternoon break attendees could choose from assorted hot pretzels and thick, decadent, fudge brownies.

Print Materials

WordCamp Sacramento’s folded event programs featured a branded front cover and a back cover that listed the Gold Level sponsors, the event organizers, and the event volunteers. Inside was the complete two-day event agenda, along with information about lunch and the networking reception.

Printed Badges and Lunch Ticket Combination: This year we decided to combine the name badges and the lunch ticket. This made it less likely to lose your lunch ticket, and since it was easy to tear off, it didn’t ruin the badges. Plus, printing the same thing on both sides means that no matter what, other attendees can see your name.

8 Vertical banner stands helped brand the event and guided attendees to the right room:

• One vertical banner stand was set outside the entrance of each ballroom that displayed the entire event schedule/lineup for that room so attendees could quickly see what was happening now and up next.
• One vertical banner stand was prominently displayed in the lobby with the code of conduct on it.

Volunteers

We received A LOT of interest from the local community to volunteer at the event, which was amazing! Jose Castaneda, our Volunteer Wrangler, did a fantastic job keeping up with everyone and making sure the volunteers knew what they needed to do! A little inside WordCamp Organizer secret, his hair was the inspiration for the t-shirts this year!

The volunteers who showed up worked their butts off. They hustled all weekend long, doing anything that needed to get done, without a single complaint. They stood out on the street to direct people to lunch before going to lunch themselves, hauled boxes up from the loading docks, they manned the microphones and video cameras, managed the rooms, helped the speakers, took photos, and stayed late to clean up and lock up — and they worked under pressure with finesse, kindness, professionalism, and positive attitudes.

Our Volunteers:

• Natalie Bourn
• Hilda Brown
• Nick Leffler
• Stephen Rosales
• Christian Morales
• Erin O’Toole
• Tirzah Johnson
• Nick Shiplin
• Nicole Freeman
• Matt Kopala
• Roslyn Harris
• Emily Buonauro
• Alaina Roberts
• Chrystal Shamp
• Pieter Hartsook
• Kelly Azevedo
• Kathy Zant
• Anthony Skelton

Extra thanks to fellow organizers who donated their time and energy to make this event possible. 

Another Year of Success

Yes, every year has its hiccups, but even with those hiccups, it was an amazing event with wonderful people. This was an incredible weekend of WordPress, learning, networking, food, and fun — and while we’re exhausted, we’re proud of the event and proud of our local community.

If you are looking for a year-round WordPress community, check out the  Sacramento WordPress Meetup which meets the first Tuesday of every month.

To all of the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and volunteers, thank you so much for your support and efforts. This event wouldn’t have happened without you.

To all of the attendees, that you for showing up ready to learn, for helping those around you, and for helping make WordCamp Sacramento a fantastic experience for all involved. We’re so happy you came to the event and hope you walked away with new connections, new tools and skills, and more WordPress knowledge.