Renee Johnson delivering speech at Speaker/Sponsor/Volunteer Dinner

50 Positives

50 Actions We’re Proud Of

A lot changed from the earliest conceptual stages through the Pre-Planning Phase and Planning Phase – even up until the event weekend itself. We came to most of our biggest decisions through collaborative discussion – dissecting problems, brainstorming solutions, and experimenting with possibilities until we found a workable action.

Here are some of the actions we’d do again. Not everything we wanted to do was possible – but many things were.

4 Ground-Breaking Firsts

  1. Inaugurating Sunday’s Future of WordPress single track, the first of its kind in the world
  2. Designing a coded, double-sided badge that doubled as a ticket for t-shirts and boxed lunches without revealing actual shirt sizes and lunch preferences
  3. Arranging t-shirts and lunches on tables in the Sponsor Gallery in coded U-Pick systems for attendees to match their badge ticket codes to their own t-shirts and boxed lunches, while event day Volunteers assisted
  4. Writing “A History of Los Angeles WordPress Meetup”

11 Atypical Decisions We’d Choose Again

  1. Carving out a pregnant/nursing parents space from the Green Room close to all the programming in the same building
  2. Collecting vendor estimates as a team and building our Approved Budget together
  3. Creating a quirky social media and public relations voice
  4. Conducting a blind Speaker selection with a diverse committee of WordPress specialists
  5. Paying a highly-skilled professional film crew to film and edit all our Speaker footage
  6. Reserving tables with visual signs at the front of each programming room for attendees with accessibility needs
  7. Showcasing a big, front-and-center Happiness Bar in the Sponsor Gallery
  8. Offering gluten-free, vegan, and vegetarian options at all meal, snack, and dessert times
  9. Gathering outside under cheerful umbrellas for Saturday’s picnic table lunch
  10. Gifting our guests a free instant print photo booth at our After Party
  11. Building a public archive of generic versions of some of our organizing documents to share with other WordCamp organizing teams

35 Other Actions We’re Happy We Did

  1. Organizing as much as possible ahead of time
  2. Embracing a Streamline Moderne visual theme enhanced with bolder colors and cues from nautical logistics, a marriage between historic Long Beach and the contemporary city
  3. Adopting the tagline, “WordPress: the Port to the Wider Internet”
  4. Designing our logo, our Wapu named Shippu, and our line of adorable stickers
  5. Blogging a series of posts called “Explore Long Beach” to introduce readers to our culture and local eateries
  6. Combining experienced and newer Organizers into one team
  7. Recruiting Speakers and Volunteers strategically and assertively, sometimes directly
  8. Asking Sponsors for exactly what we wanted outright
  9. Listening to what Sponsors really wanted and adjusting our package benefits to fit their reasonable requests
  10. Promoting a variety of Special Sponsorships to raise funds faster and offer more branding opportunities to Sponsors
  11. Reserving venues for our Speaker/Sponsor/Volunteer Dinner, main event, and After Party where all spaces were fully wheelchair and scooter accessible
  12. Prepping together in-person
  13. Funding an Organizer Dinner the night before everything kicked off
  14. Inviting all Micro-Sponsors to the Speaker/Sponsor/Volunteer Dinner
  15. Sourcing locally-grown succulents and locally-crafted soap as Speaker Thank You gifts
  16. Communicating with our team during the weekend at the main venue on walkie talkies
  17. Splitting the tracks on Saturday between Users and Professionals, atypical but intuitive
  18. Hiring a CART services team to write transcripts in real-time for both weekend attendees and future WordPress.tv viewers
  19. Honoring the environment by limiting our distribution of swag
  20. Limiting free t-shirt giveaways to early bird ticket buyers
  21. Opting for more expensive signage made from more reusable materials, and then donating the signs back to the printer
  22. Donating our uneaten lunches to the Long Beach Rescue Mission
  23. Working closely with our Mentor to plan our Approved Budget
  24. Shopping diligently for vendors we liked who were within budget
  25. Padding our expenses throughout the planning process in order to account for unplanned expenses and stay under budget
  26. Acknowledging when problems were happening and taking our time to understand them
  27. Finding solutions to problems or admitting when problems were beyond fixing
  28. Choosing to collaborate over working in silos or in isolation
  29. Voting, asking for feedback, and reaching consensus when decisions affected all of us
  30. Confiding in our Mentor when planning or interpersonal difficulties arose
  31. Recording all weekly meetings, some special meetings, some Mentor meetings, and our initial orientation with Central
  32. Mapping out benchmarks in a General Calendar, Content Calendar, and Content Chart
  33. Documenting details in transparent lists and charts, which helped us hold our small teams accountable and track data
  34. Expressing dissent, dissapointment, and other not completely positive feedback in a straightforward way
  35. Abandoning or overriding our own systems when we needed to
Read Our List of
16 Actions & Inactions We DON’T Recommend