WordCamp Victoria

At the last WordCamp, I received completed surveys from about 1/3rd of the attendees. On that survey, the final question was:

Would you attend a local WordPress Users Group?

The response options were “Monthly”, “Quarterly” or “No”, and totals were as follows:

• Monthly: 14
• Quarterly: 24
• Monthly and Quarterly: 1
• No: 10 (… and 4 indicated they lived too far away)
• Blank: 3

Clearly there is an interest in having a regular Victoria WordPress User Group. As such, I have undertaken the task.

Since there was a split between Quarterly and Monthly, I split the difference.

Dale Gann of Vancouver Island Technology Park has kindly volunteered their space for our meetings. I have booked the 2nd Thursday of odd numbered months, with meetings scheduled to begin at 6:30pm.

This means the first event is 9 days before WordCamp. I timed this intentionally … so people who are interested in coming to WordCamp, but feel they need a bit of a primer first can take advantage of this opportunity. At this meeting, I will be presenting an Introduction to WordPress. We will be charging $20 for this first meeting, to be split 50/50 between (a) funds for future WordPress User Group operations, such as speaker expenses, and (b) the Cridge Transition House for Women.

Why a charitable contribution? I figured this is a good habit to get into from the start. We can discuss whether to continue this as a regular practice at the meeting.

I’ve put some of the digital infrastructure in place, too, as follows:

• I renamed the Meetup group we had for WordCamp to WordCamp Victoria and Victoria WordPress User Group (since the audience for getting together is likely to be pretty much the same, as indicated by the survey).
• I set up a separate Twitter account for the Victoria WordPress User Group, though. I figured that this could eventually be a shared account for people who become active in the group, vs. yyjWordCamp, which we’ll keep specifically for WordCamp Victoria.
• I registered the domain name wpug.ca for potential future use. I figured we’d see what the interest is in having a website/blog for the group. While it seems obvious for a group of this nature, we could always use a section of this website for WPUG, instead.
• I did not set up any other social media (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). I thought we’d wait and see if there is a need/demand.

I’m looking for a team of people who’d like to help out with things. I suspect we’ll keep things pretty “ad hoc” until we see what the real interest is. If you are interested, please reply below or contact me elsewhere.

Like WordCamp, this is an event for everyone in the WordPress community. This includes bloggers, developers, designers and anyone else who is interested.

See you on January 13th!

A big thanks to Juhli Selby who recorded this video at Social Media Camp.

Early-bird registration is now open for WordCamp Victoria 2011 – January 22nd, 2011 at University Canada West.

A huge thanks goes to UCW for permitting us to use their space again for this event!

Please contact me if you are interested in speaking, volunteering or sponsoring.

More details will be shared on this website, and elsewhere…

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Flickr

We have had some great feedback, mostly positive, but lots of great ideas for future events.

Please leave a comment below if you have some ideas you want to make sure we don’t forget for WordCamp Victoria 2010!

One thing we will do at the next event is plan “workshops” out in more detail in advance. Workshops will consist of people sitting around tables facing inward, sharing thoughts on a particular topic, and will be lead by a facilitator. Presentations are great, but adding workshops to the mix will give people more flexibility, and mix up the day a little bit.

Here’s a write up from Ben Ziegler, a participant at the event, that tells a bit of the story from WordCamp Victoria 2009.

If you have been waiting to buy your tickets, you don’t want to wait any longer! We have 70 people registered for WordCamp on November 14th, and have tentatively capped the attendance at 80.

We will be visiting the location on Tuesday to see how to accommodate more people without compromising the presentations, or making things uncomfortable or crowded. But don’t delay, as we may have to hold the line at 80 people for this first event.

We are very pleased to announce that WordCamp Victoria 2009 registration is now open.

A very special thanks goes to University Canada West for generously contributing the space for WordCamp!  This contribution has allowed us to reduce the cost of the event to $40.

Speaker profiles are forthcoming!

See you on November 14th!

In order to provide the best possible event for the people who are interested in participating, I have prepared a little survey.  It’s only 9 questions.

Complete Survey

Your thorough and honest responses will go a long way toward making WordCamp Victoria 2009 a huge success!

Please only complete the survey once.  Is there a question missing on the survey you think should be there?  Please contact me or leave a comment below.