(Just another WordCamp, but a little different.)
Bengaluru hosted the maiden WordCamp on 29th July 2023, The organizers wanted it to be a slightly different event than the regular WordCamps, the organizers decided to bring the city (Bengaluru/Bangalore) to the WordCamp in our own ways. WCBLR was a pilot of the Next Generation WordPress Events, still a WordCamp but with some new ideas.
Venue:
CMR university graciously offered it’s Engineering Block building at their beautiful Lakeside Campus <https://goo.gl/maps/8XbJsVNR53xqRmW37> Pro Bono for WordCamp Bengaluru 2023. As an academic institute, it was a spacious venue with all the facilities. It was also by the side of a beautiful lake, not very far from the main city. The university also opened their kitchen and canteen for WordCamp Bengaluru. Fresh meals were catered for a minimal cost and snacks were really delectable. The meals and snacks were all local fare, we even had Bangalore famous potato stuffed buns with tea/coffee for a snack. The venue was kept very clean and the staff of the university were very supportive during the event.
Speakers dinner:
The speakers’ dinner was organized at a nice little garden restaurant near the WordCamp venue on the eve of WCBLR. The ambiance and some delicious food made the evening a memorable one. The organizers and the sponsors made a very good company for the speakers at the dinner.
The program:
Every city has a beat and we brought the Bangalore beat to WCBLR. The WCBLR day began with a beat of percussion that was so lively that some broke into a spontaneous dance, all this music and dance was to welcome a floral arrangement with the WordPress logo on it.
We planned the program of WCBLR to be slightly different. WCBLR had three panel discussions and five Workshops on the program, accompanied by 15 lightning talks.
WordCamp being a celebration of WordPress, we had panel discussions about ‘Publishing for the Open Web’ where we got to hear from the loyal users of WordPress. We also had a lively discussion about ‘Open Source brought us here, where can it take us’, Bengaluru being one of the centers of the Open Source enthusiasts we got some veteran contributors and users of the Open Source on this panel. We also had a panel about ‘Mental Health Matters’ which was a starting conversation about this important topic.
The lightning talks were received very well as many attendees felt that the short duration of 10 to 15 minutes helped them focus on the topic and the speakers felt that they had the attention of the audience for their session.
The workshops on a variety of topics offered the attendees an opportunity to learn something new as well.
One thing we are very proud of is the fantastic role carried out by the student volunteers and the emcees. The emcees were the students of CMR University and some of them are studying psychology and journalism, they were very well prepared, they had read about the speakers and the topic and spoke with confidence. The emcees enjoyed WCBLR very much and by the second session some of them were announcing proudly that they have their own blog and they use WordPress for it.
No after-party but a history walk:
WCBLR did not have any after-party, instead we organized a ‘Bangalore History Walk’ to take the attendees to walk down the memory lanes of the medieval and the early modern history of our city. We had about 20 attendees for the history walk who visited the famous landmarks and then ended the walk at the famous ‘food street’ where they enjoyed the local snacks.
The outreach:
Twitter was the only social media used to promote WordCamp Bengaluru 2023 with the hashtag #WCBLR. The hashtag got good traction and a lot of interaction. Some of the attendees posted their recap on Linkedin and that got a lot of views and interactions. The same hashtag was used on Linkedin as well.
We also had hasgeek (a local tech media platform) publish WCBLR announcement at https://hasgeek.com/wcblr/2023/. They are very popular in Bengaluru and event posts there get a lot of attention from the local tech community thus many attendees came from there.
We had about 120 confirmed first time attendees at WCBLR and the meetup after WCBLR saw increased turnout, many first timers who heard about the WordPress meetup indirectly due to the social media buzz around WCBLR.
WCBLR attendee swag was coffee tumbler set engraved with #WCBLR and add_filter(‘coffee’); which became instant favorite among the attendees. The swag bag given out is made of unbleached plain cotton manufactured by women’s collective ‘Suruchi Empowering Women’ who provide training and livelihood opportunities for women living under poverty.
We had about 330 attendees including the speakers, sponsors, volunteers, and organizers.
The sponsors area saw a lot of activity at WCBLR, we had totally 26 sponsors including the venue sponsors CMR University, all the sponsors had their own stalls.
We hope to continue organizing WordPress events in a slightly offbeat Bangalore way to enrich the attendee experience and promote learning.
Photos from WCBLR: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MSdVETy8tolRLEQRuI07qzXs1zzrabZb