I am Thomas Patrick Levy. I was the lead organizer of WordCamp Los Angeles 2018. This document recounts my experience and memories of WordCamp Los Angeles 2018. The story starts in 2015 and concludes on September 23, 2018 when I was unable to give a proper closing remarks because I instead had some sort of emotional breakdown in front of the audience. Weird, right?
Through tears I said "I obviously have some emotional issues to work through, I'll distill that into a talk I'll come back and give one day" and I think this is the first step.
I’m putting it on GitHub and not on 2018.la.wordcamp.org because this is more of an exercise in personal catharsis than an actual recap of the WordCamp. Also, it feels like I’ll be tempted to delete, change, and remove things I've written here. If I version control it that history will be retained. I’ll have to delete the whole repo to redact the document. I might delete the whole document.
As of this moment I have not re-read or proofed this document. I'm just publishing it. That's it.
In 2015 my company, a WordPress-focused development agency, was failing and while I struggled along with a constant low level anxiety about money and the future of both my family and my business, my partners and I had decided to pay an amount of money which we could not afford to attend a WordCamp-like event hosted by Chris Lema in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.
At this event I met Adam Silver, who would later become the lead organizer of WordCamp Los Angeles for 2016 & 2017. Adam bothered me. He's one of those people who truly loves most other people and he genuinely enjoys having conversations with those people. These kinds of people are referred to, I think, as extroverts. If you're not an extrovert like I am not an extrovert you do not like extroverts because they talk to you and you do not want to talk to anyone. Ever.
I knew that I was flying home from Mexico to an empty house and would spend the weekend in my pajamas, alone, watching The Office (again) on Netflix. Somehow, Adam found a chink in my introvert armor and I confessed this to him. He convinced me to instead put on grown-up clothes and volunteer at WordCamp Los Angeles for the weekend. So, on Saturday morning, after spending a week at a WordPress conference in Mexico, I drove to CSULA to volunteer at WordCamp Los Angeles 2015.
At this point in my life I had launched more WordPress websites than I could count, I had built and deployed custom themes and plugins, and, while it was failing, I had been running a WordPress-focused agency for nearly 3 years but I had not once even attended a WordPress meetup. Adam may have been the first person to ever say “WordCamp” to me. I didn’t know what WordCamps were.
Despite this, I knew what to expect, I had been to tech conferences before. There’d be bad coffee, bad "breakfast" (just sugar baked on top of and into carbs), PowerPoint & dribble with the occasional outdated meme and lame joke, and a lot of boring people with boring jobs and boring lives who want to sell you their boring services, or boring product, or boring whatever.
Also, I wasn't looking forward to talking to Adam for another two days. Even in retrospect when I can trace all the dots to today, I have no good reason why I told Adam I'd come and I have even less understanding as to why I actually drove there. I could have just stayed home. I’d have never seen Adam again and at that point I’m sure I knew that there’d be no ill consequences.
I confess to the WordPress Community Events team that I have not read the entirety of the WordCamp Organizer’s Handbook so when I took the microphone off the podium to start closing remarks I was thinking “This will be cool, I can walk around a little instead of hiding behind this podium” and I did not have any idea what I was supposed to say but I knew that I could say everything that needed to be said even though I hadn’t prepared for the remarks for even a single second.
I do not know what I said and I am so glad that our A/V Wrangler, Leo Postovoit, broke down the camera before I started trying really hard to say some words.
My thought was (and please excuse the Code of Conduct violation) “Fuck you Adam Silver” not because he cried on stage at closing remarks last year, making it somehow okay for me to cry on stage as well, but because my being on stage at all is entirely his fault and responsibility. He brought me there and now there were probably 150 people staring at me waiting for me to shut up so they could head home and pack their laptop bags full of excess swag on their way out.
I looked at all these people and Bridget Willard, a long time supporter of WordCamp Los Angeles and a co-organizer and friend, was the only person I saw and the only words I could make out were “Bridgett please come thank our sponsors.”
I am aware that I am emotionally unstable. I am a work in progress and I have been working on being better all the time since I was sent to a high school for “at-risk” teenagers when I was fifteen. I have had a number of nervous, mental, and emotional breakdowns in my life. Many of them happen privately but some of them have happened publicly. They are infrequent but they occur.
If you were one of those 150 you did not witness a nervous breakdown. You witnessed a man realize that WordPress is not a content management system but a community of humans who support each other in their personal lives first and their businesses and WordPress second. You witnessed a man realize that he has not been networking for four years but making and spending time with his closest friends. You witnessed a man realize that all of these people -- some of them obnoxious extroverts and some of them not -- love him and that he loves them back.
I may also have been on the brink of collapse from stress-induced sleep deprivation.
Day one of Planning for WordCamp Los Angeles 2018: The Walk to the Car Following WordCamp Los Angeles 2017
Tear down of a WordCamp happens really quickly. As attendees leave they help out by filling their arms with all the excess swag. The sponsors give their TVs away as door prizes. The venue throws away all the cardboard boxes, break down the tables and chairs. As an organizer I just kind of stand around and move through the motions of helping clean up.
I do my part but I never work too hard. I know that my job is done and I’ve worked hard enough to earn the right to stand around a bit and not do much. I shake some hands and flash some smiles. It’s all kind of surreal and dreamy. I like to lean on the railing and look over east Los Angeles to those mountains to the north. Pretty soon I’ll be home and I won’t have to think about WordCamp for at least a few weeks. Pretty soon I’ll be on the 605 with my windows down, music real loud, hot socal highway air drying out my lips.
After WordCamp Los Angeles 2017 Adam Silver, Stephen Harvey, and myself needed to talk though. This was Adam’s last year as Lead Organizer and he had already moved to the east coast. For him, WordCamp Los Angeles was over, forever.
It was unspoken until that moment but I knew that I would be taking over as the lead for 2018. I don’t remember the exact conversation but I know that Adam asked if I’d take over and I said I would only if Stephen was on board to help rebuild the organizing team. We’d need to recruit at least 3 more as in addition to Adam’s relocation, two other 2017 organizers were also moving.
We all agreed and drove home.
I knew that I’d end up being approved but I was worried anyway. I arrogantly told myself that I didn’t care, if they don’t want to approve me there doesn’t have to be a WordCamp Los Angeles 2018. It doesn’t matter. It’s their loss, not mine. I have plenty on my plate. I don’t need a WordCamp.
I cobbled an application together. As any good WordPress dev who starts a development agency can tell you, that first sale is only made by telling lies and under charging. This is how I sold my first website and of course how I got accepted as lead organizer of WordCamp Los Angeles 2018. I had no business selling a website when I did in 2008 and I had no business applying as the lead organizer in December 2017.
Some time passed (days, weeks, I don’t know… I guess it was longer than it should have been):
Cami said “Orientation” but what I expected was an interview at the conclusion of which she would say something like “Alright, I’ll talk to the team and we’ll get back to you with our decision.”
After what seemed like a way-too-short conversation I realized that it had already determined that I would be the lead organizer. I got off the call with feelings ranging from confusion to disgust. How could they allow me to lead a WordCamp. I’m a web developer not an event planner. I’m not even a meetup organizer; according to the rules I’m not supposed to be allowed to even be a WordCamp organizer.
Thomas’s WordCamp Planning Strategy: “I have no idea what I’m doing but I at least I’m doing something”
My business partner Chris Badgett and I have been working together since 2012. I worked for him and then he worked for me and now we’re partners. We signed LLC paperwork for our company via snail-mail before we ever met in person (if that’s not WordPress what is?). We’re not polished. If you’ve met us or seen our pictures or videos it’ll be clear that we neither own suits nor understand what professionalism means. Okay, I own a suit or two but Chris really doesn’t. He borrows a suit from his twin every time he attends a wedding or funeral. Ask him about that.
We justify every mistake with “Better done than perfect” and then we fix that mistake to the best of our ability. Chris doesn’t know how to spell “Los Angeles” or “quizzes” (and our company is officially incorporated in California with our mailing address in Los Angeles county and our company’s main product is a course-building plugin with a quiz feature). If you’ve used our plugins you have encountered a bug that I have coded and shipped to production.
If you point these mistakes out to us we do not tell you that you are wrong and instead own these mistakes and amend them as quickly as possible. We are humans and we do our very best to take responsibility for all of our actions positive or negative. We learn by doing. We’re always learning. If you’re always learning and you’re always doing then you’re bound to do something wrong at least some of the time.
We say that we’d rather crash through a wall rather than walk around it. We’ll get there but there’s probably going to be a mess. Oh yea.
This is not a intentional strategy, this is something inherent in our personalities. We didn’t sit down and say “Let’s be cro-magnons and bash everything with our clubs” we just kind of are cro-magnons so we really like our clubs.
If you’re thinking that I brought anything other than this strategy to organizing WordCamp Los Angeles 2018 you are really not good at context clues. I bashed every single piece of WordCamp with a club and it all worked out somehow.
To the attendee, the speaker, the volunteer, the sponsor I do not think it seemed like WordCamp was put together using only clubs and willpower but this was the one tool I had in my toolbelt so it was the one tool that I used.
This tool worked but next time we’ll use the new tools I picked up in the last 9 months. I think these new tools will lead to less stress for myself and my co-organizers. I think that WordCamp Los Angeles 2018 was great but with a bit more finesse and the proper tools it’ll be even greater.
We assembled a team of eight people to organize WordCamp Los Angeles. We finished with eight people. No one abandoned the project. We are WordCamp Los Angeles but our team is made of individuals spread out across southern California. We brought in organizers from all over: Long Beach, Pasadena, Hollywood, Orange County… I live in the San Gabriel Valley and may technically be geographically closer to Riverside than Los Angeles.
Los Angeles is massive and while I know there’s distinct regions, when it comes to the WordCamp community in Southern California, I personally feel that we’re all one massive shared community with a few different headquarters. Riverside, OC, San Diego, I love you all equally but maybe San Diego the best but that might be because my favorite burrito of all time came from a taco shop down there.
Thank you to all of my co-organizers. We all worked incredibly hard. We all suffered, sometimes due to my irrationality and propensity to hit things with clubs.
This year we had four members of the team working with speakers. Jen Miller, who has been our blogger in previous years, agreed to step into the role of speaker wrangler for 2018. Ericka Koyama assisted Jen as our expert developer and crafted our Developer Track. Roy Sivan, while not involved in the speakers for Saturday and Sunday, single-handedly organized Beginner’s Day and wrangled all of the speakers and schedule and curriculum for our half-day workshop on Friday. Lara Schenck worked on a single session in partnership with Learn Teach Code. This session featured 16 speakers who each gave a 3-minute lightning presentations.
This all ends up with a total of 53 speakers. I won’t name them all individually but that is the largest number of speakers we’ve had at WordCamp Los Angeles in the four years I’ve been involved.
If you haven’t been a speaker wrangler before you can’t imagine what Jen’s inbox has looked like since June when we opened submissions. We started with 120+ presentation submissions from 80+ speakers and had to narrow that down to around 30 sessions.
Jen, Ericka, Roy, and Lara did all the work on the frontend organizing these speakers but the speakers get all the real credit. Without good presentations it doesn’t matter how great a wrangler you are because no one cares how the schedule was prepared if the content of the sessions isn’t engaging or helpful.
Maybe it’s just Los Angeles but I had no idea how expensive putting on an event like this would be. I believe in transparency and there’s a part of me which wants to publish the my budget and notes right here but as previously noted I haven’t read the entire handbook. I don’t know if I’m allowed to do that so I’m not going to do that exactly.
I don’t think this violates any agreements. If it does violate an agreement we all need to seriously consider changing that because, well, it’s pretty easy to pull this sum from public information freely available on the website. I’ll do the math for you:
Main Sponsorship Packages 9 Los Angeles Level sponsors at $3,000 each equals $27,000 3 Long Beach Level sponsors at $2,000 each equals $6,000 1 Santa Clarita Level sponsor at $1,000 each equals $1,000 3 Pasadena Level sponsors at $500 each equals $1,500 14 Microsponsorships at $100 each equals $1,400
Sponsorship Add-Ons 1 Beginner’s Day Sponsor at $3,000 each equals $3,000 1 After Party Sponsor at $2,000 each equals $2,000
Total Sponsorship Funds Raised: $41,900
We used all of that money and more (there’s money from regular ticket sales as well) and had 2 in-kind sponsors contribute to the event.
Stephen Harvey wrangled our sponsors and raised these funds. I “wrote” the checks which I’m not going to lie was a lot of fun. We all like spending money and I got to spend a lot of it this year.
All our sponsors deserve recognition and they’ve been recognized already. I’m not going to list them here because they’re already listed on the website.
There were a ton of boxes to move and t-shirts to organize. There were stickers and lanyards and notebooks and mugs and bracelets and sunglasses. There were nearly 500 name tags to hand out to nearly 500 people. There were 3 rooms with presentations and in each room someone needed to keep the speaker on track to make sure the sessions don’t run long and cause a cascade of scheduling conflicts throughout the day. There were nearly 500 people who had so many questions and needs and feedback and concerns and anxieties and fears. The parking structure is kind of far away and it’s easy to get lost if you’ve never been there before so someone needs to stand out there and help them from parking structure to registration. The speakers do not introduce themselves. It’s all chaos and our volunteers show up, many of you to your first WordCamp ever, with no training and your own questions and skills and you got to work.
Lara Schenck organized this group of 20+ helpful attendees. This job, Lara’s job, requires the least amount of effort before camp but at camp you’re on your feet all day and making the entire thing happen according the the plans that the rest of us have put together for you. I like to attend camps as a volunteer because I am useless without a task. I post up in the back corner of a session and disable my ears and zone in on whatever task I can find in my inbox or GitHub issue list. You can’t do this as a volunteer because if you do the camp which is always dangerously close to derailment will run off the tracks and once that happens what can you do?
That didn’t happen this year because our volunteers showed up and did the work. Thank you.
Organizing Recap: Thomas Is Not Good at Making Phone Calls, Sticking to Deadlines, and Holding People Accountable
Disclaimer: I take entire responsibility for the issues mentioned below. However, I am not entirely responsible. I am not going to name names but the names of the organizing team (and our responsibilities) are public on the website. I mean no disrespect. I am not talking shit. I am sharing my feelings as transparently as possible. I am recording details as I remember them. Let us all be aware that are memories are always deeply flawed, mine included. I am not intending to offend anyone or throw anyone under the bus about anything. This is how I remember things happening and how I feel about those things.
After Cami set me up with access to the 2018 site on the WordCamp multi-site I created a Slack channel, invited the organizers, and scheduled a weekly 30-minute check-in for us all to attend. This happened in January.
I reviewed the deadline guidelines put forth in the Organizer’s Handbook and forked my own modified version of this schedule. I put these deadlines on a Trello board and promptly never looked at it again.
As an organizing team, myself at the helm creating this culture I will discuss, hit exactly 0 of our deadlines. Stephen Harvey may be the only exception to this rule as we never had a shortage of funds when I had to pay a vendor.
I was exceedingly self conscious the first few months of these weekly calls because I had it in my head that I was trying to get everything done way too early and that I was somehow wasting my own time and more importantly the time of my co-organizers by having these weekly calls.
In the early meetings I missed a lot of deadlines and created a culture on the team where it was okay to miss a deadline. The things I had to do early on were contact essential vendors. I’ll define essential as the venue, caterer, printer (for t-shirts, name tags, and signage), and venue/caterer for our Kick-off and After Party locations.
I do not like making phone calls. I never have. I’m not in sales. I don’t mind receiving calls and I’m quite comfortable with a video call on Skype or Zoom. But the process of calling someone even for something so benign and normal as requesting prices or quotes for that person’s services crippled me with anxiety for weeks.
When I did manage to make calls I’d get quotes in my inbox and then I realized I had no idea how to proceed forward. I’d stare at line items:
10:30am delivery 20 gallons coffee Assorted Fruit Nuts Granola Bars
I’m a programmer and my brain said “how do we write a test to determine if this is enough coffee?” What do we do if we have too much coffee? Not enough? What if no one likes nuts and no one eats them?
I got an email from the woman I was working with to organize an after party. I told her 250 attendees and immediately panicked. I was a nerd my whole life and I never threw a party. What if I pay for 250 drink tickets and then only 15 people show up. Then everyone there will know that I’m still a nerd and I’ll have 250 drink tickets. I DON’T EVEN DRINK.
I didn’t know how to deal with this and I spent hours trying to goolge formulas for how to figure this stuff out and finally I cracked and called her back and said “Laura, I think 250 drink tickets is too many… what if they don’t all show up.” It turns out Laura knows exactly what’s she’s doing because this is her job. She said “That’s fine, let’s just get 150 and you can always get more at the party if you run out.” Simple. I got off the phone and cried a little bit.
The weekly meeting would roll around and I’d have these quotes in my inbox but nothing confirmed or reserved and I’d justify it or complain that someone wasn’t getting back to me quickly. It all felt honest but I realize now I was telling lies. Organizers, I was lying to you. Not because I am a dishonest person but because I was crippled and I didn’t know what to instead.
I’ve learned that all of our vendors are happy to answer questions. And saying “I don’t know, can you help me based on your past experience” is not a sign that you are weak. I felt that if I said that the vendor would see this weakness and capitalize on it, selling me something I didn’t need, exploit my ignorance, steal my money. Turns out vendors want you to be happy so that you’ll return. Laura wants us to have a crazy fun after party so that we’ll come back and spend all that money again in 2019. If she rips me off and makes me feel small I won’t do that.
What’s really crazy is that this is how I deal with my own customers. I knew all of this already but it took me feeling extremely vulnerable to realize that this is okay and expected and normal.
Let’s get back to deadlines.
I taught the team that it was okay to miss deadlines and there would not be consequences and we therefore collectively missed a lot of deadlines. I look back now and think “Maybe I’m just crazy and anal” but I’m not sure. The missed deadlines especially with regards to design assets and files, caused a tremendous amount of stress for everyone involved.
I’m still not sure exactly how to solve this problem. With each missed deadline I felt uncertain how to solve the problem and prevent future missed deadlines. We are all volunteers. You can fire a volunteer, of course, but the job still needs to be finished. I felt as if I had no leverage. And really is firing the way to fix deadline issues? I can’t time travel but I’m sure the only way to fix this issue is to have a stronger culture. Things get done on time, by everyone, period. No exceptions.
I don’t know. I’m rambling about this now because I don’t have a solution. If you have a solution you need to let me know. Thank you.
Furthermore, when deadlines were missed I generally ignored the issue and assisted in making excuses for the individual who had missed the deadline. I remember saying things like “It’s okay, we still have plenty of time” or nothing at all.
There’s a trend of social anxiety negatively affecting my ability to organize a WordCamp which I’m sure you can pick up on. I don’t like conflict and I don’t like telling someone when they’ve made a mistake, done something wrong, etc…
I know how to do a lot of the things that other members of the team were responsible for so it was really easy and natural for me to just get it done instead of having a difficult conversation and having the responsible party do the work despite it being late.
It took me until the morning of Beginner’s Day to truly express my frustration in calm and concise terms to one co-organizer. Amends were made and I think we’re all level headed folks who aren’t holding grudges (I’m not).
I know now that I need to be direct and concise and as unemotional as possible when issues arise or deadlines are missed. This is difficult for me but necessary.
All of this considered we did plan and execute what feels today to have been a successful event.
In 2017, Roy Sivan joined the WordCamp Los Angeles team as the Beginner’s Day organizer. He developed a curriculum and invited speakers to come present in an half-day workshop directed very specifically at WordCamp Beginner’s. In 2018 he wanted to organize a second Beginner’s Day and we knew we made some mistakes in 2017, he wanted to capitalize on 2017’s success and learn from its mistakes and failures.
Communication around the event was our major shortcoming in 2017. We intentionally limited attendance to 75 (I think) attendees who had to sign up on a separate contact form after purchasing a ticket. We had about 25 (again, I think) attendees show up who didn’t sign up and we let them in anyway but a lot of them were understandably frustrated with our poor communication around the workshop.
To fix this in 2018 we split our tickets into two types: “Beginner’s Day (Friday) + General Admission (Saturday & Sunday)” for $50 and “General Admission (Saturday & Sunday)” for $40. At a glance I felt this was exceedingly clear and that we’d effectively solved our communication problem! We’re so smart.
However, we sold out of the Beginner’s Day tickets really quickly and then all of this clarity disappeared with the ticket listing on the website. It doesn’t say “Sold Out” when the tickets sell out, it just disappears! We could have known this (but we didn’t) and even though I saw it happen it still didn’t really occur to me that we hadn’t exactly solved the communication problem.
So we sent some emails week of camp reminding all attendees that if they did not buy a “Beginner’s Day (Friday) + General Admission (Saturday & Sunday)” ticket they could not come on Friday. We had only four attendees show up expecting entrance. To me, we did succeed but there’s still a few pieces of learning to implement in future years. There’s also, I think, a bit of code I’m considering writing and contributing to the CampTix plugin to solve this possibly very specific problem. I’m not sure about that yet. I’m going to contact the maintainer to discuss when I find them time and motivation.
The other failure (arguably) is that there is a massive desire for this workshop. After selling out I added an FAQ about Beginner’s Day to the ticket page on the website informing attendees they could contact us to be added to a waitlist in case anyone refunds or drops their Beginner Day ticket. This waitlist reached nearly 50 attendees. That means we could, very likely, sell 150 - 200 tickets to Beginner’s Day without issue.
However, I’m not sure that a workshop should be that large. We toyed with the idea of possibly running two sessions for Beginner’s Day, a morning session and an afternoon session. This requires a larger commitment from presenters but it could certainly solve that problem.
We sold 65 Beginner’s Day Tickets. We had 56 of those attendees show up. That’s an 86% attendance rate. I think that’s pretty good. A speaker told me we should have oversold the workshop knowing that not all 65 would show up. The speaker is right. I was worried about overselling because I didn’t want people showing up and not having a seat. What if we oversell by 10 (75 tickets) and 66 people show up. We’re now out of chairs and table space.
I, again, am not sure what the correct answer is here. It’s complicated and there’s a lot to consider. I know we didn’t exactly nail this one but regardless it seems to me today that Beginner’s Day was largely successful. Everyone seemed excited about it and we recorded it all so we’ll throw it to WordPress.tv for anyone who missed out to follow along asynchronously.
I mentioned earlier that I went to a boarding school for “at-risk” teenagers. Well, I went there because I drank an abnormal amount of alcohol for a fifteen-year-old and I certainly consumed more drugs than the average teen (or adult). Through college I attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings almost daily and in 2008 (coincidentally when I lied my way into my first website sale) I stopped going to meetings. I have been sober since I was 15 years old. That’s coming up on 16 years. I’ve been sober almost half of my life and I don’t really call myself a drug addict or alcoholic anymore but I still don’t drink.
I am very open about this. If someone asks me what I’m drinking at a party I say “I don’t drink.” This is sometimes met with opposition. Unless you don’t drink you probably don’t realize that mostly everyone does drink so when someone doesn’t drink it seems really strange. Usually I’m told “I don’t drink either but we’re at a party” to which I will then have to respond “I don’t drink ever.” I place a solemn emphasis on “ever” which is meant to convey that there’s a real gravity to this statement that they may or may not be interested in pursuing. Depending on who you are I may tell you I’m an alcoholic, I may tell you that I got in a lot of trouble when I was a kid and I just stay away, I might just repeat myself.
I don’t mind going to bars when there’s a good reason to (a WordCamp after party is a good reason). Every bar serves club soda with lime even if bartenders sometimes give me a look when I use a drink ticket for one. I’m afraid spending time at a bar will lead to a relapse and I do get something of a contact buzz at bars when everyone’s getting smashed and letting down their guard. The environment is okay but not preferred. I don’t choose to hang out a bar on the weekend.
So when it comes to After Party planning my goal was inclusive. I don’t want to drink but the vast majority of after-party goers do. I want to eat and drink club soda and goof around. Additionally, we had an 11-year-old speaker, Jansen, in 2017. He could not attend the after party even though his mother and he wanted to. He was a returning speaker in 2018 and I knew we had to include him.
Let’s sidebar: JANSEN IS BRILLIANT. He’s 12, he’s adorable, but he is way smarter than you. His WordCamp presentations are above average. If someone else gave his presentation verbatim it would be still be above average. The fact that he’s 12 makes it all the more impressive. In 6 years he’ll buy Matt Mullenwig or you’ll be reliant on some product he’s created or you’ll work for him. Guaranteed. Jansen’s mother, Lisa, is brilliant too. I want an excuse to spend more time around her because the only person smarter than Jansen is, I think, Lisa or I don’t know probably Lisa’s parents. The brains on this family.
Final note: I do not drink on moral principles. I like getting drunk. I don’t drink because I was a monster as a teenager and as an adult who knows. I just stay away. It’s a personal choice. I’ll sit next to you while you drink and I swear I am not passing judgement. I’ll sit with you while you get stoned. I don’t care I just don’t do it. And man, edibles seem crazy. I wish I could munch on some of that stuff. It wasn’t around when I was 15 and I just want to know what even just the left arm of one of those THC Gummy Bears would do to me.
So all my biases considered, I think that a WordCamp After Party should be fun for every attendee and if we’re being really honest I think I’m not the only one who doesn’t need alcohol to have fun at a party. We also had an issue where our after party location in 2016 was reported as “unsafe” due to the neighborhood and parking situation.
I wanted to locate a venue that offered alcohol, had a secure, well-lit, and attached parking garage, would allow minors into the space, was relatively close to CSULA, and offered an alternative to drinking as a source of fun.
We located Blue Cow Kitchen near Angels Flight in downtown LA. About a 20 minute drive from the camp (in LA traffic), Has a parking garage, has a bar, allows minors, and serves food. We rented giant jenga’s and connect 4s as an activity for anyone (Jenga towers can get massive if you’re sober-minded). I hired a face painter because I thought it’d be funny to have adults getting Wapuu’s and cat whiskers at a party for nerds (it was).
What I didn’t realize is that even though it had a garage many people don’t like driving to Downtown LA at all. We had a lot of reports that it was difficult to find the entrance to the garage. Admittedly, it’s kind of a crazy knot of streets and overpasses down there. Both our photo booth and game delivery vendors had trouble finding the garage.
If you didn’t feel comfortable coming here or if you were one of the people who emailed me and said that the directions provided were awful and you wasted money in the wrong parking garage or anything else I saddened. I tried my best. I looked at a lot of different spaces and South Pasadena was the only other viable option but the venues I looked at there didn’t seem right for our after party.
Next year we’ll possibly check out another place. I need more feedback on this place.
I ordered way too many drink tickets. I really did. I gave out an irresponsible number of tickets towards the end of the party because, well, we couldn’t get our money back on that one so ya’ll might as well get blasted and call an Uber and deal with the fallout in the morning, right? Probably wrong. Done and done. I was having a phenomenal time because at my heart I’m still a fat nerd with only like 2 real friend and we’re all getting made fun of by you all (who are the football players and cheerleaders and popular crowd) and since I had the drink tickets you all liked me. Man, I still really am a kid and it disgusts me but that’s reality and I guess I at least have some self-awareness about it today.
The food was great. Prove me wrong.
The face painter was incredible. Did you not see my WCLAX throat tattoo complete with phoenix/butterfly wings?
The staff was awesome. A few of the bartenders got their faces’ painted too. One waiter, Grant, (if you read this Grant I love you man, you were awesome) sat down and said “Make my manager mad.” They really really did a phenomenal job. Laura, thank you, we had fun.
We haven’t perfected parking yet. We’ll try again next year.
Some numbers that may or may not be important:
Tickets for Sale: 500 Tickets Sold: 473 Sold Percentage: 94.6% Attended: 388 Attended Percentage: 82%
I don’t know what good ratios are here but I’m pretty happy with this. I would have liked to sell all 500 tickets but we were close. It amazed me how many tickets were sold in the last week. Close to 100 tickets moved from Monday - Friday. Tickets were purchased on Friday.
We released 75 early-bird tickets many many months ago. They sold out quick. We promised a special piece of swag (which ended up being a notebook) to the early birds. Close to a dozen attendees bought both an early bird and regular ticket. I think this means that, in general, since WordCamp tickets are so cheap you almost don’t have to remember you bought a ticket so it’s easy to buy a ticket twice and not realize it.
We did our best to ensure all the early birds got that piece of swag. If you were an early bird and you didn’t get your notebook it’s too late. They’re gone. I decided that I was not going to task a volunteer with chasing people around and yelling out their names to try to get them their notebook. We gave the extras away on Sunday afternoon and sent the last dozen with meetup organizers to hand out at meetups in the coming weeks.
I bought too much swag and I misestimated t-shirt size guesses. Those little silicone bracelets were fun I guess but generally worthless. Functional swag is best. We live in California (mostly) so at least the canvas bags will get a lot of use! The sunglasses are going to make it into my permanent sunglass rotation because I no longer spend money on real sunglasses because I lose them or break them so frequently.
I had a lot of fun putting it all together and I hope all the attendees and speakers liked it all.
We also lost an entire shipment of swag. I’m still fighting with FedEx over it as it was marked as delivered at the same time as the camera kits from WordPress.tv. I was not home when they were dropped off but a few hours later the camera kits were at my door but not the box of swag. Seems like a FedEx mistake to me because I can’t see someone stealing a cardboard box and leaving big expensive looking pelican cases, right? I don’t know. Hopefully I can get a refund and if I can’t the vendor said they’d redo the order for free. If the latter happens that means that I’ll be sending 500 #WCLAX2018 pins to our LA-area meetup organizers and the meetup attendees can have a stupid number of pins to do I don’t know what with.
In future years I’ll make sure to adjust my orders according to the assumption that 20% or so of the attendees won’t show up.
I have no idea how to properly estimate t-shirt sizes for the last 100 or so attendees who I had to guess a size for (because I had to send in the t-shirt order before all the tickets were sold). I know a lot of people on the far ends of the size bell curve (small and XXL, for example) didn’t get the preferred size shirt. I tried to guess well by creating some formulas but I made those formulas up based of averages of existing orders. This all assumes that the existing 300 or so attendees formed a perfect bell curve that would explain the remaining 100 or so. This is probably a flawed equation from the start which explains the lack of appropriate sizes. We need a larger “N” or maybe I should have asked the vendor or someone at WordCamp central for help.
Lara made some phone calls and we donated a box of excess shirts to a shelter. That’s good. Meetup attendees are cool (and that’s where the excess was going to go) but we had probably 100 extra shirts (I ordered 550 total shirts to try to ensure we have a shirt for everyone when guessing sizes) and well, it just felt wasteful until Lara found that shelter. Now I can say I’m a humanitarian instead of a wasteful American. Thanks Lara.
Event spaces in Los Angeles are expensive and most of them that I found didn’t have an onsite caterer. Remember my anxiety around phone calls early on? Well, finding a new venue that wasn’t CSULA meant not only getting quotes from venues but also from caterers. After a few weeks I decided to reach out to CSULA again and said “Can you give me a duplicate quote from last year” and they did and then I got that approved and called it day. Anxiety gone.
Issues we have with CSULA include: WiFi weirdness, “Institutional” Food, and somewhat outdated tech stack.
The WiFi requires each attendee to register an account providing their name, phone number, and email address and agrees to a terms of use document. Furthermore, the access is limited and will not work well on certain devices based on how they capture http traffic and redirect it to their WiFi login / registration pages. Every year we encounter some strangeness and 3 or 4 devices simply cannot get connected to the network. One attendee at Beginner’s Day could not connect even after getting assistance from CSULA Information Technology Services (but with a name like that can we really expect them to be able to help with WiFi issues?).
The food has been the same menu at CSULA since I first attended in 2015. I tried to change it this year but after reviewing the menu I was again crippled with some anxiety on how to properly create a menu for our attendees given the fact that we must accommodate a matrix of dietary preferences: meat eater, gluten-free meat eater, vegetarian, gluten-free vegetarian, and vegan, gluten-free vegan. I’m really into health and diet but I still kind of don’t really understand gluten. I know what it is but I don’t know how to make a menu gluten free and the nuances of vegan and vegetarianism elude me because of all the things that I care about deeply I do not care about veganism or vegetarianism. I’m not passing judgement on those who eat this way. I just can only care about so many things and this is something I haven’t invested my care into. I finally just decided to ignore the menu change and leave it alone. We haven’t received complaints about the food in the past but I know recurring attendees (like everyone on the org team) is tired of it. It’s good food but the same thing year after year… We must change.
Also, I somehow neglected to order decaf coffee on Saturday. I fixed that on Sunday and next year, for sure, we’ll include decaf in the initial order.
On the A/V side the projectors provided are old. We have HDMI and VGA adapters and have to provide our own dongles. Technology is advancing but the technology at CSULA is standing still. In the last year (maybe 2 now) MacBooks don’t have HDMI ports anymore. We sent a volunteer out to buy USB-C to HDMI adapters just in case (and we of course used them!). Speakers maybe should get used to carrying around their own set of adapters. I have a ton in my laptop bag at any given time and I only speak once in a while.
Parking continues to be an issue. I’m aware of 5 people who were issued tickets by CSULA. I did my absolute best to convey parking directions. I gave clear and concise directions on the website, in a blog post, and in 2 separate emails (one of those sent to all attendees at around 5am on Saturday morning. Furthermore, the physical parking passes had these same instructions printed on them. Our parking structure volunteers provided verbal instructions and I made announcements about parking during opening remarks. If you got a ticket it’s not my fault. Pay attention. Take responsibility for it. Pay your ticket and stop blaming me. I made several dozen mistakes and they’re all well documented here. Your parking ticket is NOT MY FAULT.
All these negatives aside let’s talk positives: The event staff is top notch, the location itself is nice and very Southern California ish.
The event staff at CSULA are my buddies. It’s the same crew that Adam introduced me to in 2015. They’re all still there. I’ve gotten to know the back hallways of the ballrooms and the freight elevator and the loading dock. I made a few crazy last-minute requests and they said “yes” without hesitation and realized those changes just as quickly. This is of course expected but it felt so strange and uncommon to request a change and not be met with opposition. Maybe this is because I’m a developer who is forever at odds with a PM or client...
The sponsor area is the thick of the camp. It’s a really compact space that doesn’t feel crowded except when everyone’s on line for lunch. Since the sponsors don’t get hid away in some separate room or hallway, they’re right there in the thick of the event space and that means they get to interact with a ton of attendees all camp long instead of just during the morning swag and registration rush. A few sponsors said they really liked that. It’s not that we’ve gone out of our way to set it up like that or anything, it’s really the only option given the space but it does work quite well. You’re welcome!
The presentation rooms are plenty large. It’d be better if we could place the projector against a side or back wall so attendees could enter in the rear of the room. Since the doors are on either side of the stage any attendee entering or exiting mid-session causes a disturbance. One volunteer suggested we request the hinges to all be oiled if we return next year. Another suggested we switch which doors are the “primary” doors to prevent this distraction. Both of those are possible for future years. Thanks for that feedback!
Leo wrangled in a captioner to provide real time transcriptions of presentations at WordCamp Orange County this year. It was the first I ever saw that happen. I had known about it (Cami mentioned it to me during my orientation) but I only saw it fort the first time at OC. We brought in a captioning service for all 3 rooms at WordCamp Los Angeles and I think that that was a really good idea. I am not personally aware of any hearing impaired or deaf attendees and I don't know if we needed it. However, it feels like it's something we should have advertised. It occurred to me that a potential attendee would not come to an event if they didn't know for certain there was going to be captioning. The fact that we have captioning means that we should let people know we do that way any potential attendees who might only come if they knew there would be captioning would feel encouraged to attend. Next year we'll advertise captioners.
While I’m on stage during the closing remarks realizing how much WordPress means to me I’m not crying only because I just realized this. I’m crying because I just realized all of this and I’m also exhausted, sick, hungry, and probably dehydrated and most importantly because I know something that only my wife knows: I will not be on the organizing team in 2019.
I went on stage to say thank you and to say goodbye but I couldn’t say goodbye because I’m not ready to reveal the reasons why I’m saying goodbye.
I was so confident that I could say goodbye privately. I thought I could close out WordCamp and share what I had to share with privately my co-organizers and then carry on with my life and most of the world would have no idea that anything had happened.
I was just not prepared to realize in that moment that I care so very deeply about this event, WordCamp Los Angeles, which has been so much a part of my life since 2015. I’ve had a weekly meeting about WordCamp Los Angeles almost every week since early 2016 and now I’m not going to have that anymore. That’s so strange to think about. And it’s stranger that I’m going to miss something that has mostly been a source of stress.
There’s more to this story. It’s not over yet and I’ll finish it but I’m not ready to finish it yet. I’ll report back in the next few months with details.
Have you seen the documentary about LCD Soundsystem’s farewell concert in Madison Square Garden? It ends with the house lights in the garden going on and millions of white balloons dropping on the crowd. Murphy and the rest of the band embrace each other. The crowd is on their feet clapping. The camera pans around to hundreds of fans just balling their eyes out. Even if you don’t care about LCD Soundsystem you should watch it. I dare you to watch it an not cry. I’m crying right now just remembering it. It’s this triumphant end. Everyone’s so full of joy. They all just stand there on stage kind of waving and waiting. They’re not sad at all. They’re stoked.
I’ve been so fucking mad. I’ve lost a lot of sleep. I got sick this last week probably just from stress and exhaustion. But I want you to know that I am nothing but happy with this experience and this camp. I’m saying goodbye but only for a while. I’ll see you all again. Thank you. I love you.
Here’s my side of things. Share yours. Hit me up on slack or instagram (I don’t tweet or facebook) or here in GitHub and take the official WordCamp Survey to let WordCamp Central that I’m an alright guy even though I had what appeared to be a nervous breakdown on stage: https://central.wordcamp.org/wordcamp-attendee-survey/