Experiment: WordCamp Incubator

WordCamps are locally-organized WordPress conferences that happen all over the world (and are so fun). Sometimes people don’t realize that WordCamps are organized by local volunteers rather than a central organization, and they contact us asking, “Can you bring WordCamp to my city?” When this happens, we always suggest they start with a meetup group, and think about organizing a WordCamp themselves after their group has been active for a few months. We emphasize that WordCamps are locally-organized events, not something that the central community team plans from afar. This has been successful in many areas — there are currently 241 meetup groups on our meetup.com chapter program! In some regions, though, enthusiastic volunteers have had more of a challenge getting things started. Because of this, we’re going to try an experiment this year called the WordCamp Incubator. The intention of the incubator program is to help spread WordPress to underserved areas through providing more significant organizing support for a first event. In practical terms, this experiment means we’ll be choosing three cities in 2016 where there is not an active WordPress community — but where it seems like there #wordpress #smallbusiness #entrepreneur