All Things WordCamp US 2023

Robert: Hello and welcome to what I’m calling a special edition of Do The Woo. This is Robert Jacobi with my co-host Zach Stepek, and we’ll be talking to the most awesome volunteers for WorkCamp US 2023, Julia Golomb, Aaron Campbell and Kevin Cristiano. What do you got for me, Zach?

Zach: Not much. Just busy integrating into life at Convesio, so that’s been fun, and getting ready to take a whole bunch of photos at a whole bunch of concerts over the next two months.

Robert: And maybe at WordCamp US, as well.

Zach: I will be at WordCamp US, yes. I will definitely be there. It’s going to be a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to it and I’m looking forward to learning more about why it’s going to be awesome today.

Aaron: Are you going to be able to make all of us at WordCamp US look as awesome as the people in the concert photos you take?

Zach: I did photograph 2019 and there are quite a few photos that were pretty cool from that year. I am considering volunteering for the photography team again this year, so-

Aaron: That’s awesome. Nice.

Robert: Well, let’s go through our guests from WorkCamp US. I’m just going to go in screen order. Julia, tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and obviously what your role is on the organizing, volunteering team for US.

Julia: All right. Well, thanks for having us on Do The Woo. My name is Julia Golomb and I am a sponsored contributor to the WordPress community team and so I’m working with WordCamp organizers and meetup organizers all over the world and I am one of what we’re referring to as the lead sextet, one of the six lead organizers for WordCamp US 2023, which is in DC in less than two weeks.

And I’ll add that Kevin, Aaron and I are also organizing the community summit, which is immediately preceding WordCamp US. So that’s a bit about me. I’m based in the US. I split my time between New Hampshire and the Bay Area of California.

Robert: So, New Hampshire in the Summer, Bay Area in the winter?

Julia: You got it.

Robert: That was too easy. Mr. Aaron Campbell, what kind of trouble do you cause for WorkCamp?

Aaron: Yeah, all kinds of it. Just ask anyone on this team. But my main focus is this year are on the summit and bringing some continuity from last year’s team to this year’s team. I do in fact have my fingers just a little bit in everything, but everybody else is in control of most things. I’m just offering advice mostly.

Robert: Then we’re going to ask for advice shortly, don’t worry.

Aaron: Fair enough.

Robert: Thanks, Aaron. And, Kevin?

Kevin: Hi. Thanks for having us. I’m Kevin Cristiano. I’m from the Philadelphia area and I’ve worked on WorkCamp US since its start, with a break during the pandemic and then back now. That’s about it about me.

Robert: So, you pretty much know nothing about running and organizing WordCamp US?

Kevin: No, I look to Julia and Aaron for everything.

Robert: Awesome. Zach, you want to kick it off with some fun, intriguing questions?

Zach: Sure. What’s the theme for this year? I know every year we kind of have a theme for what kind of presentations we’re looking for, what kind of speakers we’re looking for. What are the overarching themes for this year?

Julia: I will jump on this question. There is a really cool opportunity this year with the location of WordCamp US, which is in DC. It’s in National Harbor, Maryland, which is basically Washington DC, and we’re really highlighting WordPress in public sector for this year’s WordCamp, so we have some very exciting talks related to WordPress in the public sector. One is freshly announced this very moment and that is a keynote delivered by the good folks at NASA who have just migrated their NASA site onto WordPress.

So they’ll be sharing about their experience in that process and how much they love working with WordPress and all that they’re learning. And then they’ll have a breakout workshop following the keynote. There’s also a talk related to the whitehouse.gov website and we expect that there’ll be a number of attendees who are perhaps attending a WordCamp for the first time and who are working in the public sector but, because of the location, they’re drawn to attend this WordCamp.

Robert: So is the whitehouse.gov, are we going to get a current reformer president to show up and just say, “I really love WordPress”?

Julia: Can neither confirm nor deny that.

Aaron: I can say that, on the NASA one, I’m pretty excited about the little breakout session that they have planned for after the talk. I mean, the talk is going to be a super exciting way to kick off the event, but afterwards, the breakout session, they’re going to give a tour of the site, let us see the code, explore the backend, get to really see the stuff that NASA has done with WordPress over the last little bit. I’m personally excited to see that.

Robert: Yeah, I think there are a couple of space geeks on this Do The Woo. I know I’m personally thrilled about it, as well.

Zach: Yeah, it’s going to be a good time. I’m looking forward to that one. And it’s funny because my career started as a cold fusion developer, which was very deep in the public sector, and so seeing WordPress now moving more and more into public sector work has been awesome.

Robert: Can we dive into a little bit about the summit, since that’s very much tied to WorkCamp US and what people might… I know there was an application process, so not everyone’s going to be running into it, but what might come out of the community summit?

Aaron: Hopefully, all kinds of ideas and, ideally, direction and clarity for the project, for the both short-term and foreseeable future. The summit’s not a place where we’re going to make a ton of decisions, but it’s a place where we’re going to hopefully have some of those harder conversations that just need everybody from so many teams to get together in one place and talk it through. It was a challenging process to try to get representatives of every team in WordPress, every different way that WordPress is used, from blogging to enterprise, and still keep the number of attendees small enough that everybody can have a say and everybody can talk to everybody else, but I’m excited to see it come off, for sure.

Robert: And then that’ll lead right into Contributor Day. So it’s like, really, seven days of WordPress.

Aaron: I hope that, not only does it lead straight into Contributor Day, but that there’s all kinds of exciting discussions and stuff that got kicked off at the summit and then are really discussed much more in depth, worked on and all that kind of stuff, at Contributor Day, the very next day, so that’s exciting to me.

Zach: Well, and I’ve noticed that on Friday there’s actually a session on contributing. So if you’re not participating in Contributor Day, there’s a session on how you pledge to contribute to WordPress.

So, if you’re at all interested in contributing and you’re listening to this, make sure you go to that session so that you can learn all about how the contributors work together to make every part of WordPress better. That includes a number of teams that do everything from training to working on core to hosting. There’s a performance team, a ton of teams with various foci around the WordPress community.

Julia: Yes, and I am excited to highlight that, on Contributor Day, we are beginning with an hour-long orientation for brand-new contributors to the WordPress open source project. So if you have not contributed to WordPress before, this is an amazing opportunity to show up an hour before all the returning contributors arrive and participate in an orientation, learn about what contribution in WordPress means and looks like and how you can plug in in a way that draws on your own skills and experience and perspective.

Robert: That’s fantastic. And I’m hoping, with how you mentioned before, maybe getting a whole bunch of new attendees that some of them are seeing Contributor Day on the schedule and applying for that to be involved. Speaking of new folks, there are surprisingly still tickets left.

Aaron: Yeah, as of this recording, there’s about 60 tickets available, so if you haven’t got yours yet, hurry over and get it.

Robert: Let me ask Kevin this, how will this work camp be maybe slightly different than every single other one you’ve contributed to?

Kevin: That’s a great question. I think a lot of what we’ve done this year is really focused on the community summit to contributing. So, as it’s already been mentioned, we’re leveraging the community summit to drive Contributor Day and we’re hoping to drive the content from Contributor Day, as well. It’s all about contributing, getting involved in WordPress. The public sector talks that were highlighted earlier, as Aaron mentioned, the workshop that follows and how to really dig into what happens is just ways to do that. We’re also, for Contributor Day, for WordCamp US, this is the first time we’re doing it the day before because we actually have the ability to do that this year. Venues can be challenging in scheduling and this year we were able to make that work out and we’ve also been able to use space a little bit in our favor.

At Contributor Days, some groups need to go off and work together, and we have the space for that. We’ve provided for more space than WordCamp US has been able to in the past. I’m really excited about the new onboarding orientation session that Julia mentioned, and then being able to have breakout rooms and breakout areas for people to really dig in and get. As far as when we get to the WordCamp itself, if we’re talking about how are we different, each year, we try to elevate the content up again to really appeal to what we should be highlighting in WordPress today. And I look at what the programming team has done and I really think they’ve done that. Those are how I think it’s different or what makes this WordCamp US unique.

Robert: Very cool. I love the idea of the breakout rooms, because I’ve been in many a Contributor Day where it’s just, for lack of a better term, an auditorium, when everyone’s on top of each other.

Julia: I refer to it as the mosh pit.

Robert: Yes. And it gets quite loud and people are excited about new stuff and then it’s like, “Wait, I’m excited, too. I got to think, though.”

Zach: I think the last time we had a significant amount of space just to meet up with people was probably Nashville just because of the size of that venue, so it’s going to be nice to get back to that.

Aaron: This is going to be a little bit more broke up than Nashville, which in some ways is even cooler because you really will be able to have some actual rooms rather than just get really far away from everybody else. But it is the same kind of idea and it’s super exciting to have.

Zach: I’m just looking through the schedule and, for those of you who haven’t seen it, the full schedule is available. They are announcing speakers, still, but the full schedule is here. The speaker posts are really just to highlight the people that are speaking. And that’s always cool to see. There seems to be a great level of diversity this year throughout all of the speakers, which is awesome because we’ve seen that improve every year and it’s really telling that the team is working so hard to make sure that underrepresented groups are represented.

Aaron: Huge shout-out to the programming team for pulling that off. Not only did they get amazing representation, they put in so much effort to really take that kind of vision, like Julia and Kevin laid out, and go and find what was needed to fill it. So often, our selection process for these events turns into something that’s very passive because, by nature, we’re all volunteers. We only have a certain amount of time. So we take the applications that come in, we accept the best of them. But this year the team really did dig in a lot and seek out the right people. And I think it really comes through in the schedule. It looks amazing. To me, it’s one of the most exciting schedules that I’ve seen at one of our WordCamp events in, I don’t know, a long, long time.

Robert: Yeah. I think everyone’s nodding their head in full agreement. Seeing the speaker announcements and session announcements and the actual schedule, it’s like, “Okay, yeah, this is definitely moving.” Because it’ll be terrible if I don’t mention it, but I guess it’s the first time that WordCamp US is not having an after-party. Oh, it’s having a social.

Aaron: We’re having a social. You can only party so hard at the Smithsonian, I guess. But the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, that’s another thing that I’m super excited about. That is going to be an awesome venue for us to all gather together and hang out after WordCamp US, for sure.

Zach: It doesn’t hurt that that’s also the location of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s office, evidently, is at the Smithsonian. So maybe he’ll crash our party. I mean, social.

Julia: That would be great.

Aaron: That would be amazing. I was already excited because I found out that the Hope Diamond is in one of the exhibits that we have privately for our event. I didn’t even realize the whole Neil deGrasse Tyson’s there thing.

Robert: Social media pressure on Neil…

Aaron: Who’s going to start the campaign?

Zach: Oh, we’ll start it right after the episode.

Robert: We’ll make Bob be the first person to reach out. Because you guys do a lot to put this together, what’s it like with WordCamp US sponsorships and hotel bookings and all that nitty-gritty that people, if they’re just pure attendees, don’t realize what goes into it?

Kevin: There’s a lot that goes into it. If we look at WordCamp US compared to a local WordCamp, and some of our local WordCamps get really large. We’re in an exhibit hall, so all of the things change, which gives a lot of opportunities to the sponsors because they get a lot more space, they get a lot more opportunities to do things. But from the organizing team, all that comes with rules, cost and challenges, and we’ve been navigating them. We’re trying to make it as smooth as possible for the sponsors. Like all WordCamps, we don’t always succeed, but we do do our best and I think they’ll have a tremendous experience. I didn’t count up, but we have an exhibit hall full of sponsors. It’s going to be 45 to 50 is my last count of what I’ve got set up. And you’ll be able to see all of the major WordPress companies there.

You’re going to be able to talk to representatives, you’re going to be able to learn a lot, and they get to connect with the attendees. What’s also exciting this year is that the exhibit hall we’re in is so large that it holds, not only the exhibit hall that’s as big as it was in Nashville, St. Louis, and San Diego, but it also has the dining on one end.

So you’re going to be able to go down there, get coffee, have lunch, so that everyone will be able to get to the exhibit hall, see the exhibitors, pick up all the amazing swag, interact and learn things. That’s been a big focus for us because, as you know, WordCamp tickets are $50 and there’s no way that these events cost $50. So we have to thank and shout out to all our sponsors because they make this possible. We couldn’t do what we’re doing without the support of our sponsors.

Robert: That’s for sure, and it’s great to see. Pretty much, I’m going through the sponsors’ page now, pretty much as everyone should, so you could see who you can connect with. But right off the bat, we have every hosting company, so I’m not even going to go through all that. But there’s significant, I would say, more software and service firms that are also taking part. It’s not like a WordPress hosting show.

Kevin: Well, WordPress has evolved. A lot of these companies who are, I can’t even call them plugin companies anymore. They’re creating apps. We’re creating WordPress. They’re enabling users to do things with their sites themselves that they couldn’t do before and now they’re going to be there to highlight it.

Robert: Yeah, I love it. I think it’s great.

Julia: One more thing related to the behind-the-scenes organizing. There are 10 different organizing teams that make WordCamp US possible. We’ve been working with all of these different teams and they range from attendee experience who are making sure that the meals accommodate all different allergies and dietary needs. That’s not all they do. They also are sending visa letters and many, many other things to make sure that WordCamp US attendees have the best possible experience. There’s the contributors team, which is focusing on Contributor Day. There’s a team that’s managing all of the design for signage and for the website and the web team that’s managing everything that goes up on the WordCamp US site.

There’s the photos team and they’re making sure that WordCamp US is documented beautifully. PR comms is managing messaging both on social and on the website. And then there’s programming which has put together this incredible schedule of speakers. The sponsors team, which Kevin has been working really closely with, and the volunteers team who are coordinating a team of, I think, 60 volunteers over the course of WordCamp US. And then also, new this year, we have an accessibility team and this is really, really important.

The accessibility team is working cross-functionally. They’re working with all of those other teams that I just named to ensure that accessibility is embedded in WordCamp US from the start, from the very beginning, and baked into everything that all these different teams are working on. That’s super exciting for this year, as well, and I think it will make for a really great attendee experience.

Robert: So, how many folks are then involved in putting this together?

Julia: There are about, I think, a little more than 40 people on the organizing team.

Robert: And then the 60 day-of volunteers.

Julia: Yes. 100 volunteers and organizers.

Robert: That’s amazing. I mean, I guess this year is fully baked, but are people going to be able to find out at Contributor Day, and other ways, how they might be able to volunteer for future WorkCamp USs?

Julia: Yep. That would probably be something that they could learn at the community team table, but also staying tuned. I don’t know. Kevin and Aaron, what are the best ways for folks to stay tuned for the call for… Every year, WordCamp US issues a call for organizers. It’s usually issued via the WordCamp US website for that year. So it would be WordCamp US 2024 site, if people check for updates there. And then also on the WordCamp US socials, and in making WordPress Slack, as well. Anything, Kevin and Aaron, that you would add to that?

Aaron: To be fair, the difference between organizing and volunteering, I guess, is a little bit like organizing is a much longer-term commitment, usually, for making the event happen. You may just be volunteering at the event to help it come off day-of. So that’ll be a much later call than the organizing one, but they will all come through the main website.

Robert: I’m pretty sure that organizing is almost a year-long process.

Aaron: It has been this time, that’s for sure.

Zach: For a lot of the people that do, yes. It is a full-year commitment every year they’re involved. I just want to quickly shout out that we do have another organizer that’s from my hometown of Rockford, Illinois, who works on the photography team, Gail Wallace, and her exposure to the WordPress community started in the group that Andrew and I ran in Rockford. Then she went out to WordCamp Chicago and went out to US that same year and it all has turned into her becoming an organizer, which is amazing to see.

Julia: That is amazing. And we’re grateful that you have brought us Gail.

Zach: Yeah, she’s great. She’s so great. And her experience in the private sector probably was actually pretty helpful in a number of ways, too, because when she first started coming to our local meetup, she was working for Rockford College on their website, so it was pretty cool.

Aaron: I think it’s pretty awesome that that’s the kind of way that this community itself is powered. When we talk about WordCamps and WordPress, just both as a whole, as all of our events and as our project, and then we realized that it’s all just us and everybody else that we’re getting excited about it along the way. And someone like Zach being excited about it creates someone like Gail being excited about it. And that’s what keeps us all rolling along.

Zach: It’s unique to open source communities especially, but specifically the WordPress community, I feel, grows because of passion more than anything else. I’ve been in a lot of communities and this one is different, this one is special.

Julia: I think that’s true. I don’t know the number of organizers of meetups and WordCamps who I’ve talked with who have said that WordPress changed their lives and they are inspired to give back by organizing WordCamps and meetups. They want to offer to other people what they received that pulled them into the community. And that, for me, is a huge motivation in my own organizing, as well.

Zach: Absolutely. That’s part of why, when I started a company in 2017, we sponsored right away because the company wouldn’t have existed without this community. And so giving back to that was really important to me right away in our first year of operation. It’s led to all of the cool things that I’ve been able to do in this space. Just, it all started with me speaking at a local WordCamp in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I believe Dustin Filippini was a lead organizer on that one that year. And it just snowballed from there into the involvement level that I have now, and it wouldn’t have happened without a WordCamp.

Robert: I think that’s a story for many people to tell.

Zach: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Robert: So, sort of teasing, organizing and volunteering for next year, any hints on whether it’ll be a twofer in DC or we just have to wait till-

Julia: I can say with almost certainty that it will not be in DC next year, but we don’t know where the next WordCamp will be.

Robert: And if you did, you’d have to kill us. Got it.

Julia: Yeah, exactly.

Robert: So, I guess structurally, that two-year cycle is probably out the window?

Kevin: I think so. When we started, we thought that it would save us time from organizers and money and it didn’t really work out as planned. The second year in the city had a certain economy of scale that you were familiar with the vendors and the people, but if you got a venue where there were some issues, we were stuck there a second year. And attendees, from the feedback that we had, some were like, “Well, I went last year, so I don’t want to go this year. I’ve already been to that city.”

That was kind of the big one for me because we wanted them to come every year because we think the content warrants it, the content and the people and everything. So, to me, moving it around gives more cities the opportunity to host, it gives our attendees more opportunity to see more cities and connect in that. So nothing’s ever done in WordPress, things will change, but I expect to see a new city every year now.

Zach: Well, and now, as we’ve pushed earlier and earlier into the year, we’ve opened up a number of cities that simply wouldn’t have been an option in a November/December timeframe, areas that have colder climates later in the year, and as we continue pushing earlier and closer to the late summer, early-fall timeframe, that does open up a lot of the country that just, at the previous November/December timeframe, wasn’t available.

Aaron: And that’s partially because we now have three flagship events a year, and so we’re trying to make space for everybody. We used to just try to alternate, be five or six months away from Europe, and now we’re trying to be more like three to four months away from Europe and Asia. And so it has kind of shifted us. But you’re right, that might be in our favor for new locales. Moving a little north with the event is now possible.

Robert: We just need one more flagship so we could have a massive event every three months.

Aaron: As long as I don’t have to plan that one, too. I love going to the events, but the planning a fourth one, that sounds challenging.

Robert: Anything else that we may have missed that attendees should know about what to expect, the fun, the hard work, the everything, I guess?

Kevin: Well, for the fun, I mean one of the things I’m excited about is the venue. It’s an absolutely amazing venue. The Gaylord National Harbor is a gorgeous venue, sprawling. We have a good amount of space and there’s so much to do right there. And, people, if they need to have meetings to go to different places, there are tons of places to get that done. I really like that we’re in one location from the community summit through to the camp and that we can leverage that space and people will become familiar with it. Our location allows easy access to DC and all sorts of fun things to do. I know that some of our sponsors are planning events. I haven’t actually looked into what they are, but, given where it is, I think some of those are going to be amazing. That’s something I just wanted to highlight is the venue.

Robert: Looking at a number of them, I’m just going to do a shout-out for WordCamp US Pride party. That seems like going to be an ongoing thing, even though I know it’s not necessarily a WordCamp official event. It’s obviously well-supported by the community.

Aaron: And that one’s going to be at the venue at a really cool… They’ve got a cool themed bar thing there that that’s going to be at. I’m excited for that one.

Robert: Yeah. So that’ll be Friday the 25th.

Aaron: I think that the venue, not only being beautiful and in a fantastic place, but I love how it brings the same kind of feeling that we had last year in San Diego to here, but able to scale big enough to fit the 2,000 people that we’re going to have this year. There’s so much to do there, but that also means that everyone’s going to be there most of the time. And I love just walking around and running into other WordPressers and the fact that we’re going to have 2,000 of us that are all going to be going to restaurants and coffee shops and everything right there in the venue is going to be super cool. It’s really going to fuel that kismet meeting kind of thing that happens at WordCamps.

Robert: So the hallway track will really start from breakfast all the way until sleep.

Aaron: So many hallway tracks all over the place. Yes, there’s going to be the coffee shop track and the… Yeah, exactly.

Kevin: And what I really like, just because of the kind of person I am, the coffee shop there opens, I think it’s either 6:00 or 6:30 AM. So if you’re an early riser and you’re up, you can get coffee, which is not always true, and I find that as a nice plus.

Robert: That is good to know. I’m a 5:00 AM waker.

Aaron: Yeah. No, I rolled my eyes at that because I know it’s true, but also I’m like, I don’t understand it.

Zach: Yeah, me neither. There is something else that’s unique on the schedule this year that I wanted to highlight, and that is that there are workshops happening simultaneously throughout the days, which I thought was really cool. There’s longer-form content available. If you want to really dive deep into some of these subjects, like the headless block editor or modern WordPress development or using AI to deliver an authentic content-creation process. These sessions sound deep and they sound like they’re going to be pretty amazing from the standpoint of just a deep dive into these subjects because you have enough time to do that.

Aaron: We’re all nodding along and realizing that we’re on video with each other, but this is an audio podcast. So yes, I think that that’s amazing that we have experimented a little bit with mixing the content a little more. We did this, well, I don’t even remember how many years ago. Pre-pandemic, we had a workshop track one of the years, and it was so cool to have some of those really deep dives. This time we’ve been able to intersperse it some, which is really cool because it feels a little bit less like a separate thing, more integrated into the overall schedule, some of these deep dives.

Robert: And there’s like four different types of things you can be… I mean, obviously there’s going to be a keynote. There’s going to be more typical sessions, lightning talks, and then of course the workshops we were just discussing.

Aaron: We did highlight one of the keynotes because we talked about NASA, which is going to be our kickoff keynote. We do have two other keynotes, as well. Matt Mullenweg is going to be talking about the WordPress Advantage and Josepha Haden Chomphosy is going to be speaking on the future of WordPress. So we have three really exciting keynotes that I think people are not going to want to miss.

Julia: We also did not mention the name, the title of the NASA keynote, which is For All User Kind. I’m very pleased with that.

Robert: I don’t think anyone’s going to miss it. It’s the first one on the first day, so Friday at 9:15 Eastern.

Julia: The description begins with, “Rockets aren’t the only thing we launch.”

Robert: Oh, touche.

Zach: Well, and make sure that, if you’re attending, you get through registration and attend opening remarks and everything. It’s really just a very cool way to bring yourself into the experience of the WordCamp, being in opening remarks and then sticking around at the end to just enjoy the community at the end of the day on Saturday. I’m staying through some-

Aaron: Speaking of the registration, making sure that you get through in time to see the amazing NASA keynote. Quick logistical call-out on that one, registration will be open during Contributor Day, the day before, as well. So get there, participate in Contributor Day, get registered so that you can just hang out and chat with people and not worry about making that keynote.

Robert: Yeah, that definitely makes life easier. WordCamp Europe this year did that, as well, so you can cruise through to the keynotes. Any final thoughts, besides just go show up and have a wonderful growing experience?

Julia: We’re super excited. We’re super excited to see you. And also, find your local WordCamp, whether or not you can make it to one of the flagships in your region. Find the WordCamp in your area and connect with your local WordPress community. If there is not a WordCamp in your area, organize one. You can head on over to make.wordpress.org/community and check that page out and, from there, learn how to apply to organize local WordPress meetup or WordCamp.

Robert: And I assume, if you can’t make it, all the sessions will be available on WordPress TV, as well?

Julia: They’re going to be live-streamed and they’ll also be recorded and posted to WordPress TV.

Aaron: For the Contributor Day, there is a separate signup. We’re trying to get as good of a headcount for all the various teams. The teams put a lot of time and effort into trying to plan what’s going to be happening that day, so the more info that we can give them on how many people they’re going to have, that would be super great.

Zach: Well, I want to call out one other thing, and that is that there are micro sponsorships available, still. And if you’re an attendee who’s looking for a way to financially contribute to making WordCamp happen, micro sponsorships are a great way to do that. If you love the content and you love the fact that WordCamp US provides so much for such a small price point and you just feel that need to bring your support to that next level, the micro sponsorship is the way to go.

Aaron: That is a great call-out. We talked earlier about how the sponsors make it possible for us to do an event and only charge $50 per person when the actual cost per person is significantly higher. Those micro sponsorships are you paying your own way and saying, “Thank you. I want to contribute by making sure that I’m covering all my own expenses,” which is huge. We’re still super grateful to our sponsors for everything that they do to make this possible. And our micros sponsors stepping up to do that is amazing, as well.

Robert: Excellent. Hashtag WCUS everywhere?

Zach: Well, I know that I’m looking forward to being there. Robert, I know you are, as well. We’ve talked about it quite a bit. Can’t wait to see everybody and see the community. It’s like a once-a-year family reunion for this group and it’s something I look forward to every year, and I’m happy that we’re almost there.

Julia: Hooray, we can’t wait. We’re super excited.

Aaron: Less than two weeks.

Robert: Excellent. Thank you so much, Julia. Aaron and Kevin I really appreciate your insights into what it takes to put on WordCamp US and all the opportunities for engagement and sponsors and attendees and speakers and lions and tigers and bears. It’s going to be great.

Zach: And elephants.

Aaron: PHP call-out.

Robert: And Zach’s elephants. Thank you, all.