2017 was a great event, but we need your help to make our 2018 WordCamp even better, I am Hugo Finley, and I will be the lead organiser for WordCamp Manchester 2018. No previous experience is required to help volunteer for our events, what we do require is a commitment to help and be around until the wind up of the events in late October. Being part of the volunteer team is rewarding and fun, plus you get great experience in seeing how this kind of event is run.
But a better conference means more organisers, and fresh blood. Our goal is to finalise the organising team ready for an application to WordCamp Central, and an initial meeting on Monday 19th March.
With that in mind, I’m looking for people to help fill and support the following organising roles responsible for:
Speaker Support: run the call for speakers, support the speaker into the run up to the event, send regular updates and be a general point of contact for them.
Volunteer Support: all things volunteer, our events rely on volunteers to run, so making sure people are happy and well organised is key. We need volunteers for the main event and for the contributor day. You will need to assign volunteers, call for them (later in the year), keep them informed of what is happening. We already have a great volunteer pack that can be built on from last year.
Sponsor Support: often this is best when run by a couple of people, helping recruit and support our sponsors who again make our event possible. There was a great sponsor pack available last year, and hopefully we can get this nailed agin before we call for sponsors in May, plus you will need to be the point of contact for all things sponsor.
Communications: this is a role shared by a few members of the team, although we will have a style guide to help, we have twitter, facebook, other accounts that need managing through the year, they help us inform everyone about our event plus promote other WordCamps around the world. Also would help if you like wring the off blog post :). It will also be helpful to have help running the internal meetings between team members, up to now we have had weekly slam meetings etc.
Design Lead: this role is already filled by our very talented Andonette Wilkinson (who will hopefully lead come 2019), she may well require some help along the way for if you have an interest in design, blogging, printing, swag design, website design etc….
Swag coordinator: we have had, umbrellas, travel mugs, t-shirts, stickers (always stickers), now it is time to figure out what swag we want for our delegates, sponsors and volunteer team to help promote our Manchester WordCamp for years to come.
Venues lead: someone to coordinate our venues, catering and all things place related, we already have a good relationship with a couple of venues, but we always spend time looking for couple of other venues for our afterparty and volunteer and speaker event. I am hoping to have all our venues in place by the beginning of June.
Finances: often something a WordCamp Lead has to be involved with but I need help! You’ll also be helping find hidden expenses and making sure people stick to the budget.
Contributor Day: We need a contributor day team, they’ll be responsible for finding people to lead individual categories and teaching people how to contribute. We’re also interested in helping people set up beforehand via MWUG and the clinics they run.
AV Lead: Last year we used WordCamp’s equipment and hopefully we will do the same this year, you will need to coordinated 3 or 4 people to film the speakers and then produce the video’s into a usable formate for WordPress.tv.
If you think you can fill a role, if you’re interested in shadowing an organiser to train up for the future, or if you can take a minor role in a sub-team, let us know in the form below! We don’t have an upper limit on how many people can take these roles, but each one will have a single lead position responsible for delegating.
Remember, all meetings will be open to the public, if you’re interested in expressing an opinion without a role you’ll be able to do this and ask questions on Slack. If you have any questions about the roles listed and what’s involved, don’t hesitate to contact us via the contact form, twitter, slack, or in person.
We communicate weekly with each her through Slack on the UK Community slack we use the public #wordcamp-manchester channel. If you have any questions you can find me there or contact me through twitter etc, I will be at as many of the MWUG gatherings as I can get too throughout the year.
Weekly Slack Meetings
Starting mid-March, we’ll be holding a weekly chat in Slack on Mondays at 6PM. The first order of topic will be future timing for all involved. Normally the meetings are fairly relaxed towards the beginning but as we get closer to the event (October), as you can imagine, things begin to move a bit faster.
There are details here on how to join the UK Community slack, but if you’re having trouble track us down at MWUG or any other local user group and someone will get you up and running.
My hopes for the 2018 Manchester WordCamp are that, we continue to be an inclusive community of WordPressers, that we as organisers continue to build upon our strengths from previous years and also improve our event so that it is appealing to all who attend. I am sure with a strong team of organisers new and old we will be able to pull of a great event.
For more information on being an organiser please go and have a look at https://make.wordpress.org/community/handbook/wordcamp-organizer/welcome/
To Become an organiser please email us at wordcampmanchester@gmail.com subject line: MWC2018 Organiser
Tell us a little about yourself, what you might be interested in doing and anything else that you feel we should know. our first meeting will be on the 19th March and hopefully some of us will be able to meet up on the 21st face to face at MWUG in MadLab.