Attendees of NextGen WordCamp Bengaluru – image credit: WordPress.org

WordPress’ Community team is evolving the WordCamp format to promote adoption, training, and networking for professionals, leaving the flagship events to focus more on connection and inspiration. This change opens the door for more creative concepts around the events’ new mission:

WordPress events spark innovation and adoption by way of accessible training and networking for users, builders, designers, and extenders. We celebrate community by accelerating 21st-century skills, professional opportunities, and partnerships for WordPressers of today and tomorrow.

A group of eight pilot events were confirmed in June, and two recent “NextGen” WordPress events have already happened, including a community-building workshop in Japan, and WordCamp Bengaluru, a one-day event featuring the local culture and a walking tour of the city.

The Community team has compiled a list of more than three dozen concepts to inspire NextGen event organizers. The list spans a wide range of ideas, such as college campus based groups, sponsor networking days, show and tell night, job fairs, events for agencies, WordPress retreats, and many more.

Anyone who is interested to host one of these new event types is invited to fill out a form that the Community team has created to capture ideas for future events – either before the end of 2023, or during the first half of 2024. Organizers will be asked to identify a category for their proposed event from among the following:

• WP expertise level (beginners, intermediate, advanced)
• Focused activity (training, recruiting, networking, contributing, conferencing, etc)
• Job status (students, fresh graduates, job seekers, freelancers, business owners, etc)
• Identity-based (women, castes, BIPOC, Latinx, LGBTQI+, tribes, age, etc)
• Content topic focused (designers, block development, SEO, etc)

Although the form is presented as a survey, it’s more of an interest form, which is why it collects the respondent’s contact information. Respondents who indicate they are willing to have a discussion about their ideas may be contacted by the Community team.