In our first 12 months of existence, at least one of the four of us has been to these WordCamps:
- Paris
- San Francisco
- Montréal
- Sevilla
- Lisbon
- Gdansk
- Stockholm
WordCamps are instrumental in making WordPress what it is:
a community driven project.
Designers, consultants and coders everywhere are increasingly relying on WordPress. Wysija joins thousands of others making a living thanks to today’s largest content management system.
There are many ways of participating in the community. The first thing you should do is show up at a WordCamp. It’s the only face-to-face opportunity to meet, share and party.
Go ahead, find the next WordCamp near you. Smashing Magazine has a detailed account of what to expect.
Sponsoring, just do it
We sponsor WordCamps when our budget permits. Helping dedicated volunteers make a WordCamp is our way to give back.
We’ve concluded that sponsoring doesn’t bring us much business. That’s beside the point. We make our living with WordPress and it’s free to start with.
The real deal in Gdansk
The hundred or so participants at last week’s Gdansk WordCamp were surprised to see me there. I was the first foreigner to show up at the 3 WordCamps in Poland.
This honorary title was rather pleasant. The Poles will go at length to make visitors feel welcomed. In no time, several took me under their wings for food, vodka, and some geography and history lessons.
The venue was held at the shipyard docks where the democratic movement began three decades earlier. The conference room was the movement’s museum, which was fitting. A reminder that struggles today continue elsewhere: WordPress.com is blocked in many countries (couldn’t find a list, anyone?).
Some youngsters of our group deactivated some of the interactive displays of the museum. It’s rather amusing to see hackers breaking in for the joy of the challenge. Question authority, always.
The lone organizer, Michal Zuk, gets credit for putting together a full 2 day schedule. This included great food, drinks, nice swag, and even a guided tour of the docks. “It took me over a month to organize it. It was a form of therapy“, he smiles shyly.
A thank you note to Daniel Dudzic, who translated my presentation and the bus tour. You can read his own summary of this WordCamp. It was his first!
I essentially worked throughout this WordCamp since all presentations were in Polish. The photographer, Wojtek, managed to catch me doing support in a corner.
Kim, it was great to meet you! As far as I’ve heard so far, your presentation was voted to be in the top 3. It was well made and most important of all – it was inspirational. I’ve learned a lot from it and I’ve heard some people talking about trying to go the same way after they heard how your team did it :)
Thanks for the praise! I tried to give an honest reality of what it takes to jump boat, and only do a single plugin.
It takes a lot of work, but it’s super fun. That’s the most important part.
That’s what most of us got from your presentation. The risk itself can have an enormous positive motivational effect. There are people who need it to live. Taking such a risk to build something great for other people? Wow, that’s a lot of good karma! :)
Building Wysija was more like: “If we don’t build this, someone else will. We’re all craving for a good newsletter plugin.
Might as well do it exactly the way we want it for our clients and ourselves.”
You just have to wait a year or 2 before you can make a living :-)
I was also impressed by your presentation. To sum up:
1. I liked your honest answer to one of my first questions why you were there, in WordCamp Gdansk. To promote our plugin, you said. No beating around the bush.
2. Surprisingly the presentation was not at all like product promotion! It was directed to other developers, especially the beginners in making business in WordPress plugin area and the topic was presented in the way we could learn as much as possible for ourselves.
There were lots tips and tricks (how to get more 5 point yellow stars an so on). I also liked some of the advices you gave some of us at the before party disusing other developer’s plugin, things to remember when putting it into wordpress repository:
- to give a “see it in action” link to a plugin demo at the beginning
- to put some pictures which shows how it will look like in the front end at the top of the page rather than to force the reader to scroll the page down
3. Personally, I also liked your attitude to the affiliate programs and such.
Later on I heard some people being disappointed hearing at the beginning that this (the wisyja project) “was not a successful story”. It indeed doesn’t seem to look promisingly as for the first slide. People like to be positively inspired. But in my opinion it’s only a matter of time that wisyja is a fully successful story. And I’ve appreciated your modesty and being honest with us.
Thanks Aga. Great feedback!
Hi Kim,
Your presentation seems to be great. Is there a way to get it online ?
It was recorded, but I’m not sure if it’ll go online.
I gave the same presentation in Lisbon in September, and they’re suppose to put it online. I’ll share it on our Facebook page and tweet about it when it’s on youtube.
Great ! Look forward to see it. Thx.