WordCamp Europe 2016: The big recap | #WCEU

It’s been a month since WordCamp Europe 2016 and the buzz about Paris is growing strong. 300 tickets are already gone, so make sure to get yours!

But before we look to the future and the beautiful French capital, let’s look back at Vienna by the numbers!

WCEU in numbers

  • wapuu-vienna-mozart

    The #WCEU wapuu, designed by Scott Evans

    Regular Tickets sold: 2032

  • Microsponsorship tickets: 150
  • People attending: 1952
  • Live Streaming tickets: 1402
  • Live streaming sessions: 5150
  • Total time watching sessions via live stream: 1079.625 hours
  • Sponsors: 39
  • Speakers: 69
  • Number of countries attendees came from: 68
  • Number of countries attendees watched the live streaming from: 82
  • Number of Twitter users active on the #WCEU hashtag: 923
  • Tweets: 2727
  • Number of Twitter impressions: 6.2 million
  • Contributors during contributor day: 440
  • Nannies that took care of the WordPress kids: 6
  • Volunteers: 160
  • Organizers: 20
  • Co-founders of WordPress: 2 ☀️

Your feedback about WordCamp Europe 2016

A couple of days after the event, we asked you to fill out the WordCamp Europe 2016 survey and we’ve been enjoying the incoming feedback ever since. A huge number of you responded and what makes us really pleased is the amount of people who left feedback as open comments, suggestions, and ideas. Let’s look at what you liked and didn’t like so much.

All in all, you really really liked WordCamp Europe 2016

You gave really high ratings for overall experience (4.31 out of 5), the organisation of the event (4.32 out of 5) and our speakers (4.15 out of 5)! We are so happy you had a good time!

You were pleased with the quality of the sessions, but thought they could have been a little longer. You rated the talks you saw very high, with 72% of you sharing that you feel satisfied, fulfilled or ecstatic about them, and for 18% the talks were okay.

A lot of your comments about the schedule and the talks gravitate around the question of whether or not they should be longer, more focused on the topic or workshop-like. We are asking ourselves the same questions every year when we start planning the content. With WordCamp Europe being the first WordCamp for more than 1/3 of the people coming (38% for WCEU 2016), we need to make sure that we provide a great introduction to the community for everyone.

We try to strike a balance between providing a clear glimpse of the state of WordPress in many different areas as well as educating. We are happy that many of you got inspired during WordCamp Europe.

We need bigger breaks between sessions

We also heard you about the short breaks between sessions. We added a third venue at a very late stage of the event and we had already formed the schedule and confirmed the speakers for Tracks 1 & 2. Bigger breaks offer a better opportunity to mingle and network, so we will do our best to make the times for switching rooms between sessions more comfortable for everyone in the future.

You suggested lunch logistics improvements

We received a lot of comments about lunch on Day 1 and we understand that it could have gone better. More space, better instructions, enough food for the people with special dietary requirements. These are all things that will be taken into consideration for next year.

You loved the after party

85% of you said they really enjoyed the WordCamp Europe Ball. For the first time this year, we succeeded in providing two separate spaces for people during the after party – a party area where you could dance your night away and a lounge area where you could chill, relax and enjoy nice conversations and connecting with other people.

You gave us really good, constructive feedback around the after party, which will be taken into account for next year. We know you travel to WordCamp Europe with your family and would like to bring them to the party. We did not have the capacity for it this year, but the team is already thinking how to change that for 2017.

You are coming back!

An overwhelming 94% of you said that you would come back to WordCamp Europe next year. This is the greatest gift for the organising team. And we can’t wait to see you in Paris! (Seriously, get your tickets.)

A look back into WordCamp Europe 2016

Missing #WCEU already? Well, let’s go back for a bit, shall we?

We’re leaving you with this selection of pictures from one of our amazing photographers, Florian Ziegler.

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Until we meet again!

Love,

The WCEU organising team

Download the #WCEU coloring book and #WCEUBall wallpapers

This year the WordCamp Europe was lucky to have not one, but two talented designers volunteer their time for the event. We had the pleasure of having Scott Evans agree to join the 2016 team. He created the beautiful illustration graphics you’ve been seeing everywhere around you and designed the cute WordCamp Europe Mozart Wapuu and WCEUBall wapuu.

The amazing Sonja Leix, who’s helping WordCamp Europe for a second year in a roll, designed the stages, the beautiful #WCEUBall photo booth wall, and last but not least – our favorite piece of swag this year – the WordCamp Europe Coloring book!

We hope you got a chance to grab one from the swag tables, but if you didn’t – good news! You can now download the coloring book as a PDF!

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Download the coloring book

For everyone who’d like to keep the magic of WordCamp Europe close, Sonja’s also turned the photo booth wall designs into wallpapers you can use on your computer. Download the one you love the most or all of them!

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Download the WCEU Wallpapers

Fill out the 5 minutes WordCamp Europe Attendee Satisfaction survey

Photo by Florian Ziegler

Photo by Florian Ziegler

WordCamp Europe 2016 is over and the team is already hard at work preparing WordCamp Europe 2017 in Paris. Each year we try to make the event a little better and to do that we heavily rely on your feedback.

We’re asking you to fill out our short survey that has some questions regarding the event organization, the venue, the content, the after party and your overall experience.

Fill out the survey

Thank you!

Love,
The WordCamp Europe Org team

First photos from #WCEU

Do you miss #WCEU already?

We are lucky enough to have some amazing photographers that documented WCEU for us this year. Over the next week, we are going to collect all those pictures in our Flickr account and also link their posts for you. Until then, we’re posting a first batch fresh out of the lens for you all.

See the first photos from #WCEU

We would also like to ask you to join us in saying a big thank you to our amazing photography team – Tammie Lister, Florian Ziegler, Vladimir Petkov, Kari Leigh, Marco Pereirinha, Jonas Andrijauskas, Cristian Ungureanu, Thomas Bruehl, Giorgio Minguzzi, Mark Smallman, Eric Wayaffe, Stefan Carstocea, Kristen Symonds, Igor Zinovyev and Igor Klimer!

2016 WCEU Vienna Flickr Selection

Vladimir Petkov and Kari Leigh capture #WCEU

 

Like every year before, we had Florian Ziegler on the ground – this time as an official photographer. Florian already published his first selection of #WCEU photos.

See Florian Ziegler WordCamp Europe 2016 photo selection

WordCamp Europe organiser Luca Sartoni, who’s also an extremely talented photographer, also published a beautiful album of WordCamp Europe photos:

See Luca Sartoni’s Album WordCamp Europe 2016 on Flickr

Did you take photos at WordCamp Europe? Post a link in the comments and we’ll include it in this post.

Follow this site and our social media channels in the following days. We’re going to bring you right back to the magic of WordCamp Europe.

 

The #WCEUBall & the photo contest!

Welcome to the WordCamp Europe Ball

Friday, June 24t5, 8:30 pm Halle E

wceu16_photo-wall-rev2-E-dark


Closing remarks might be done but WordCamp Europe is far from over. Before the epic contributor day tomorrow, we have an amazing after party in store for you.

Hosted by our beautiful #WCEU 2016 venue – Halle E+G, the #WCEUBall will happen tonight and we hope you’re ready and excited about it as much as we are!

Dressing up is optional

We would love it if you dressed up and we know a lot of people will. But there is no dress code. Everyone is welcome to the party and we’ll all going to have a really good time!


Continue reading The #WCEUBall & the photo contest!

WordCamp Europe for everyone: why creating an accessible event matters

WordCamp Europe started as an attempt to bring people together—people from different countries, cultures and professional backgrounds—with one major thing in common: their love for WordPress.

As global WordCamps grow, it’s important to remember our initial goal: create a place where everyone is welcome, build friendships and make connections. WordCamps are for everyone and, as a team, we’re doing our best to make sure that despite borders, politics and life circumstances, everyone can join us and be a part of the event.

Following the great examples of WordCamp London and WordCamp US, this year we are taking WordCamp Europe a step further in terms of accessibility in an attempt to serve as an example for all the local events.


Child Care

So many WordPress babies! Isn’t that just amazing? Nothing brings us more joy than seeing your kids at WordCamps. Being a parent also shouldn’t keep you away from meeting your extended family, so this year, we’ve tried to help out.

Bring your kids and enjoy the conference! We will have the professional help of Kinderfreunde – Austria’s national association for kids and families. A team of nannies will take care of our WordPress kids for the two days of the conference.

Kinderfreunde run kindergartens and day care schools around Austria, they do holiday activities for kids all over the country. In Vienna, Kinderfreunde is one of the biggest providers of child care, caring for 10.000 children in Kindergartens.

If you already registered for child care, your kids will be on our list and you should ask at registration where our volunteers will escort you to the child care room. If you haven’t registered yet, you can do that at registration, so just let our volunteers know and they will provide all the necessary information.

Child care at WordCamp Europe is completely free thanks to all our generous sponsors.

Child care room hours:

  • Friday, June 24th: 9am – 6pm
  • Saturday, June 25th: 9am – 6pm

If you have any questions about child care, please don’t hesitate to use the contact form on the site. The amazing Eva Neumeier from our local team will be in touch with you and give you the details you need.


Live Captions

We’re extremely happy to announce we’ll provide live captions during WordCamp Europe.

Live captioning at events helps to make them accessible to all those attending with any degree of hearing loss, and also for non-native speakers of English, particularly where there is a wide range of accents among the presenters.

Screenshot 2016-06-19 09.48.17You will be able to read captions in English of everything a speaker says while they do their presentation. We’re getting professional help with live captions from the team at Global RealTime Captioning.

Global RealTime Captioning is a partnership between Julia Jacobie, and her colleague Norma MacHaye. They are two freelance real-time verbatim captioners with many years of experience who specialise in captioning conferences together as a team.

Julia and the GlobalRealTime Captioning team come highly recommended by the WordCamp London team and will cover all talks in all tracks during Friday and Saturday.

Thanks for the nudge, Claire and yes, we made it happen!

 

Breast feeding/baby room

Vienna is one of the most liberal capitals in terms of public breast feeding, but nevertheless, we will provide a room available for mothers who would like to breastfeed in private. If you’re bringing your baby with and you’d like to go into the breast feeding room, please ask our volunteers at registration about it and you will get help getting in.


Multi-faith room

If you need privacy for prayer, you will have access to a designated room in Halle E+G. Our volunteers will be able to help you out with the directions to the Multi-Faith room.


Full accessibility to Halle E+G and the Leopold Museum

Halle E+G and the Leopold Museum are fully accessible for wheelchairs. Elevators and platforms are provided for moving around the two levels of Halle E+G and there is an elevator from the square for going into the Leopold Museum.

Our Contributor day venue at the University of Vienna is also fully accessible for wheelchairs.


WordPress beyond borders

There’s something worth mentioning that we do not talk about as much as we should. During the preparation of WCEU 2016, we issued more than 20 invitation letters for visa interviews to people from all over the world. As event organisers, we do our best to help all attendees in need. This year our job was particularly challenging because, due to the refugee situation, embassies have tightened their control and created stricter requirements for the invitation processes.

Several of the nicest, kindest people we’ve had the pleasure to communicate with over the years, could not get visas to come to Austria. Some had volunteered, and for some it would have been their first WordCamp. We’re sending them our warmest regards and wish they could have been able to join us. We hope that they will be able to do it next year.

This is just a tiny reminder for those of us who are used to moving freely across most parts of the world to not take it for granted.


Live streaming

And for anyone who cannot attend in person, for the second year in a row we will be offering free live streaming for everyone who’d like to join us online and watch sessions. We’re extremely happy that we can provide the service for free and we’d like to say a huge thank you to our sponsors for making it happen. If you’re not able to make it to Vienna for any reason, you can grab a free live streaming ticket: https://2016.europe.wordcamp.org/tickets/

The first 1000 live streaming tickets are gone and we’re making sure we can provide additional tickets for everyone who’d like to join us and watch WordCamp Europe 2016 live.

The WordCamp Europe team has put a lot of time and effort into ensuring the camp is as accessible as it can be. We would love to hear your feedback and we will consider any recommendations you make regarding accessibility for the future camps.

We’re all ready to welcome you all in Vienna!

See you soon ❤️

Please give a warm welcome to Media Temple – our speakers, sponsors and volunteers dinner sponsor!

We’d like to thank our speakers, sponsors and volunteers dinner sponsor Media Temple for supporting WordCamp Europe 2016. Our speakers, organisers and volunteers are all donating their time and thanks to Media Temple we are able to organise this small social event for them before the conference.

Media Temple president, Rod Stoddard, will be present at this gathering and we look forward to thanking him in person!

logo-media-temple

From its inception in 1998, (mt) Media Temple has been on a mission to help people and businesses succeed online. Over 125,000 customers in 100 countries now rely on Media Temple’s simple tools for domain registration, web hosting, business applications, virtual servers, and other cloud services to power more than 1.5 million websites.

With 200 dedicated, U.S.-based employees, Media Temple has been repeatedly recognized as one of the fastest growing companies in North America—and one of the best places to work. Find us anytime on the web at http://mediatemple.com.

WordCamp Europe is around the corner: here’s all you need to know

We’re almost there! WordCamp Europe starts next week and we can’t be more excited to welcome you all to the beautiful city of Vienna for three days of everything WordPress! For your convenience, here’s all the important information in one post (you should have already received it in your inbox last Friday as well).

Continue reading WordCamp Europe is around the corner: here’s all you need to know

Arriving early to Vienna? Join other awesome people at one of our volunteer organised warm up events!

WordCamp Europe has always been about getting people together more than anything else. With the conference growing, it’s not that easy to make connections during the conference day, as we also have an amazing lineup of speakers coming to share their knowledge. Even with our networking activities like tribe meetups and speed networking planned, fitting everything in two days can be a bit too tight.

The #WCEUBall is designed for you to have fun or chill and relax after two days of learning, but one party is hardly enough.

Enter the #WCEU warm up events

As we know a lot of you are coming to Vienna early to explore the city and to meet friends before WordCamp Europe, we thought the days before the conference would be a great chance to meet some new people as well! A lot of you are organising informal gatherings and fun things to do, so we decided to try and centralise the information for all of them so if you’re in Vienna on Wednesday and Thursday, you can think of something fun to do and also make new friends!

Continue reading Arriving early to Vienna? Join other awesome people at one of our volunteer organised warm up events!