The Art of WordCamp Networking

Marcus:
Well, hey everyone. Welcome to another BizChat on Do the Woo. My name is Marcus Burnette, and I’m a community marketer with GoDaddy. I’m here today, as always, with my wonderful co-host from Barn2 Plugins, Katie Keith, and we’ve roped in the man behind the curtain himself, Bob Dunn. How are you both doing today?

Katie:
Yeah, I’m good, thanks. Good to talk to you, and very exciting to have Bob on as well.

BobWP:
They let me out of my cage, so it’s great to be here.

Marcus:
Got to join us every once in a while. Well, we’re going to be chatting about the WordCamp experience with us coming up and how to make the most of your time and money as a business, whether you’re attending, sponsoring, or maybe even watching from afar. We can talk about that as well. I was going to say, maybe to start, we’ll assume for the purposes of this conversation that people know what a WordCamp is and have decided to bring their business. So we’ll kind of start with that baseline and talk a little bit about just maximizing the time, maximizing the spend, and all of that. How does that sound to you all?

Katie:
Yeah, that sounds good. Should be interesting.

Marcus:
Yep. Awesome. I guess I’ll just kick it off for all of us to chat about WordCamp as a concept, as a group of sessions, and there are sponsors and there are parties and all of that stuff. How do you balance what to attend, especially when it comes to sessions? There are a lot to choose from, with multiple tracks. How do you pick and choose what makes the most sense to attend at a WordCamp?

Katie:
Yeah, it’s easy to feel quite torn in many different directions. At the big WordCamps, you’ve got multiple tracks running alongside each other, and then, of course, all the time there is the hallway track as well. So you need to look at the schedule and think of those maybe four different things—three tracks plus the general networking. Oh, and the sponsor hall, so you could argue that’s five. Which of those do you do at any given moment? And then, in addition, you’ve got all the parties. I remember when I started going to WordCamps, it was really just like the after party, but now I think every WordCamp I go to, there are more side events being organized of all different scales by many different companies of different sizes, and a lot of those are open to everybody to register. And I think, in WordCamp Europe this year, there were probably three or four parties running in the same building simultaneously on the first night of the conference. So it was like going between different parties and ethical dilemmas of not being able to attend one after taking a place by registering. So it is a fine juggling act.

BobWP:
Yeah. I think, especially for anybody new, it is finding that right balance and not totally being worn out by the end of day one or something. It’s a bit challenging, and you probably want some downtime too, so I think that’s important. Some of us fill up our cards—or dance cards, per se—and we’re going from one place to another. I think the sessions are really nice in the sense that not only are they great educationally, but for people that need a little bit of downtime to get out of the social atmosphere, they can just maybe sit and relax. A session is great because you can sit there, you can enjoy, you can learn. So there’s a lot of stuff. Unfortunately, I don’t make most of the sessions, but I do fill up the side events. I fill up the card on that. I try not to overlap too much where I disappoint somebody if I’m taking a spot. I don’t want to be doing that, but yeah, it’s a hard thing to really… Sometimes it’s that experience the first time. You’ve got to see how it goes, and from there on, you start to get what works for you and what doesn’t.

Marcus:
Yeah. A lot of advice I’ve heard from people is that the sessions will almost always end up online for you to watch later, so skip them and go network. Do you think that is solid advice? Do you think there’s a worthwhile reason to look at the schedule and find sessions that you probably should attend? You don’t have the opportunity to ask questions of a speaker necessarily if you’re watching it later, where you might be able to ask questions during the session. Do you think it’s worth it? I guess the question is, is that good advice, or should people still look at the schedule and find time to at least attend a few sessions?

Katie:
Yeah, I feel a bit torn because I recently was a speaker for the first time, but generally, sessions are not an important part of a WordCamp for me. They cover things that you can access at any time of the year, either by reading blog posts or eBooks or real books or listening to podcasts like this. There’s information, the same as what you get in talks, wherever you look these days. It’s really excellent how much the WordPress community produces that you can learn from. And then, as you said, Marcus, you can watch things later. There is sort of something to be said for going in person, but I feel that’s a missed opportunity, and I love what Bob said about it being a kind of break. I go to sessions for an introvert break, and I might learn something, but yeah, that’s track six. I said there were four or five tracks, and the introvert track is the other one, which might be a wellness room. For me, it’s often just going back to my hotel room for half an hour for that reason. Actually, I like to stay at the venue if it’s a hotel where possible because you can just go if you need a bit of a break and then come back down into the thick of it. But I find that the networking, both with people I already know and people I haven’t met yet, is the most valuable part of attending a WordCamp, and the sessions, therefore, aren’t as important unless I need a break.

BobWP:
I think that it’s, again, what you’re going there for. And I think maybe saying it in the way of that they are online, so being aware that they’re online if something happens, if you cannot make it, or you get into a conversation you don’t want to end. That’s a great alternative because you do have that option. But like Katie said, I think there’s also some people too that they like to immerse themselves in the actual room, listening to it versus doing it online. So I think it’s a recommendation more than a suggestion like, “Hey, you can go there, but if you can’t make every session, they are online.” And like you said, everybody’s going to make their choice. Sometimes I feel really bad when somebody asks me, “Oh, did you come and see my session?” And then you fall back, “Oh, well, I will catch up online.”

Katie:
I do go to sessions if it’s somebody I know because I’m supporting them. And it’s sort of different motivation, isn’t it?

Marcus:
Yeah, that makes sense. But it also becomes harder and harder as you get to know more and more people.

Katie:
True, true. We do know a lot of speakers by now.

Marcus:
Yeah. And you mentioned that you recently were able to be a speaker. One of my questions I had for you, and I’ll ask Bob too because he’s been a speaker, do you feel like there’s a strong business case for applying to speak? Did you feel like, I guess, did you feel like that was worthwhile for your business? Did you do that because you wanted to have that as an accolade, as something that you’ve done under your belt? Personally, I guess just, and then talking about whether or not people are even attending sessions, is there a good business case for applying and being accepted to speak and being a speaker at a WordCamp event?

Katie:
Well, it’s interesting because I didn’t particularly want to be a speaker, so I do the WP Product Talk podcast with Matt Cromwell and two other people, but Matt particularly invited me to apply with him, and I kind of just said yes without really thinking about it or whether I actually wanted to. I just thought, “Yeah, that would help promote the podcast. Let’s go for it.” And then we were accepted, and I was like, “Oh, I’ve never spoken to a big group. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with this,” but I wasn’t going to drop out or anything. So I did lots of practicing, and it went really well. But reflecting on it afterward, actually, I realized that it was valuable to the business to be a speaker, and particularly in comparison with sponsoring. And I know I upset a few people, which I regret afterward because I tweeted or something that having sponsored the previous year and then being a speaker the following year, I felt that my company had similar exposure from the two things. Also, there were six of my team members walking around in the bright Barn2 T-shirts, and that plus being a speaker and I was on a discussion panel. I tweeted that I felt maybe Barn2 had as much exposure from that as sponsoring. And then lots of people quite rightly got upset that we need to be encouraging people to sponsor and not saying it’s not necessary. So I would say they are different ways of achieving exposure for your company. Sponsoring is one way, which undeniably does that. But yes, being a speaker does help you get exposure, particularly if you can think of a topic to talk about, which is in some way not directly promotional but is

relevant to what you do. Because I was talking about how to build a product company, which has nothing to do with the plugins that I sell. So if you can think of something a bit more relevant—if you sell WooCommerce extensions, your talk can be about WooCommerce to help you position yourself as an expert in that field—particularly then I think that could possibly help with sales. Maybe not in the short term, but in the long term, people would recognize you and your company more and be more likely to become a customer. So I would say that there is a business benefit of being a speaker.

Marcus:
Yeah, I’d argue that talking about building a product company is relevant in the sense that I like to know who I’m buying products from, and so knowing you and your company better would be good for business overall. And we’ll talk about the sponsorship piece in a moment, but I want to give Bob a chance too. Bob, I know your business is a little bit different. You’re not a product company or an agency, although you’ve done both of those things too, I believe. Do you feel like there’s a business case to speaking? Is it just exposure, or is it part of the long-term game—the long game of hoping that people recognize you and want to purchase from you down the line? Or is there maybe a more direct business case for it?

BobWP:
Yeah, I think that… I wish I could remember my first time speaking. I need to go to a site that will tell me that, which we’re all familiar with—Marcus’s site. But yeah, so it was early. I don’t know if it’s 2011, 12, 13 when I did it, and yeah, I forced myself to do it because, at that point, I wasn’t really into speaking to large groups. I tried to do it at a few other conferences too, but it was personal branding for me. I was doing a lot of training back then, blogging—that was it—basically a lot of training. And for me, it was a good way to brand myself because, obviously, what I talked about was what I talked about in my tutorials or my videos or whatever. So it was certainly something I did for a few years. Then there came a point where I didn’t really necessarily feel like I didn’t want to brand myself or continue to brand myself, but I just got to the point where I thought, “I think I’m done speaking at WordCamps.” And I think that decision partly came too because I’d done it for a few years and so many people apply to those, and I thought, “Why am I continuing to take up the space there?” And so I kind of stepped back, and I prefer not speaking now. I enjoy going to WordCamps, but I would encourage anybody to do it and see how it works for you too, personally. It’s not always the easiest thing for a lot of people to do—to get up and stand in front of a crowd like that. But I’ve talked to many people who have been very stressed. I’ll just divert to a little short story. Years ago, I was at a WordCamp, a local WordCamp. There was a guy sitting on the floor, and I’m not going to mention him, but he’s very known in the WordPress space. But he was sitting on the floor by himself, and I asked him what was wrong. He looked a little stressed. He said, “I’m speaking for the very first time, and I don’t think I should have done this.” So I sat down on the floor next to him. We just started talking. I said, “People are pretty forgiving,” and this was quite a few years ago, but I think they still are. I said, “Go in there, do your thing.” And eventually, he did. I don’t know if I really made him feel any better about it, but afterward, somebody did come up to me and, without even asking them, they said, “Hey, the guy was a little nervous, but boy, the information was great. He did a really good job.” So I went back and told him. I thought he should hear that, and he did smile. He said, “Wow, that’s great to know.” But yeah, it’s something you’ve got to… For a lot of people, you make yourself do it, but I think it’s, again, it really depends on the person and if that’s what you’re comfortable with and if you feel you really want to build that brand, whether it’s your company’s brand or your personal brand.

Marcus:
Yeah, if your profile is up to date fully, your first talk was in 2011 at WordCamp Seattle, so, oh wow, been a little bit, but you’ve spoken plenty of times since then. Yeah, I spoke as well last year, I think it was, at WordCamp Phoenix, and I appreciated, I guess, the exposure. I appreciated the way that it opened up opportunities for people to ask you questions. I think that was more beneficial than most anything else was. Now you’re a name on the sheet and a face that people have seen that, for better or for worse, makes you an expert in at least the topic that you were talking about, but also by the nature of it, a WordPress expert in the WordPress expert circle. And so it gives opportunities for you to have people approach you and ask questions and say, “I want to learn more about X, Y, Z.” And if you’re a business, that opens up doors for you to talk about, like Katie was saying, if your talk was about something related to your business, there’s obviously an open door there to then talk about some of the products or services that you sell as well—to say, “Hey, I understand that problem. I’ve come across it lots of times. We’ve actually built a product that helps with that problem. Let me tell you about it.” And the sales process kind of comes to you a little bit in that regard, and I think that’s helpful as well. It is something that you have to apply and be accepted for. So let’s talk about the other direction, which is sponsorship, which you pay into as a business. You can also pay to be a sponsor. That guarantees you a spot in the sponsor hall, whatever that may look like. It’s a little different based on the size of the conference, but that gets you guaranteed access to attendees to talk a little bit about what you do. I don’t want to open the controversy box again with Katie there on whether you should or shouldn’t, but maybe we can talk a little bit about the business case for sponsoring a little bit and what do you get? I know that Katie, you’ve sponsored in the past. Bob, I know that you’ve sponsored in the past. I’m part of the GoDaddy team that sponsors globally all of the WordCamps, so maybe we can chat just a little bit about the business case for sponsoring WordCamp events. We’ll start with you, Katie.

Katie:
I think we can all agree, and this is well-documented now, that sponsoring does not generate enough direct sales in the short term to cover the cost of sponsorship. However, there are still other benefits, particularly if you have the kind of marketing strategy and accompanying budget where you are going for general brand awareness within the WordPress community, which, for example, hosting companies—that’s very important that they’re seen to be big players, support the community, and so on. Being there has a symbolic importance, as well as directly getting people to know your brand over time. So I think there are benefits, but you shouldn’t sponsor a WordCamp if you think it’s going to generate more sales than it costs straight away and that you’ll be able to measure that. Last year, when I sponsored for the first time, I did a sale—a 50% off sale—and gave everybody leaflets with coupon codes, and we made literally zero sales from that. And I know because nobody used that coupon; I can track that. So it is not a direct ROI, but people must be more familiar with our brand. Hundreds and hundreds of people talked to us over the two days. We did product demos. Existing customers asked questions which might have helped to boost their loyalty over time and their likelihood of being retained and renewing. There are lots of indirect benefits, but you’re never going to measure them.

BobWP:
Do the Woo sponsored, and actually several people came up to me and asked me, “Why are you sponsoring?” They couldn’t quite understand it because I am not selling a product. I’m basically saying, “Hey, come and listen to our shows.” And I thought about it long and hard. I had a little experience with being able to take over a booth at WordCamp US last year. So then, after that experience, I decided to try WordCamp Asia and WordCamp Europe. And one thing is, yeah, your expectations—you’ve got to understand what to expect and can this bring enough value to you for brand awareness? And that was one big part of it, to make people aware of the podcasts. I’d also… It’s easy to say, “Hey, go spend whatever amount of money out there you need to spend to be a sponsor.” But I also had my sponsors. I talked to them about me sponsoring at least a couple of the flagship sponsorships, so I got that money through my sponsorships where I could sponsor, which is kind of meta. But anyway, it was incredibly valuable for me because of not just being a podcast but being what the podcast stands for within the community. I mean, it became more of a community table. I know that Katie was able to spend some time at it, and people would just come up and talk about things. They don’t always need to talk about a podcast show. Katie was catching people she maybe hadn’t seen yet because we were in a very nice location, especially at WordCamp Europe, where people were passing by. And I had several

people later on say, “Hey, I was going to stop by and say hi, but there were so many people around your booth that I just thought, well, maybe I can catch you another time.” And they said, “We just saw you constantly busy,” and it wasn’t necessarily, again, selling or talking about the podcast endlessly, but when somebody would be able to come up and say, “Hey, what’s your podcast about?” I had all these stickers out for the different shows, and so I’d get talking to them. I’d say, “Well, what do you do?” I’d give them the sticker of the show that I thought fit them because they maybe wouldn’t want to listen to them all. So it was a very good investment for me and a good investment for the growth. I think Katie said something like, “If you can find the right strategy and you find the value and the value equals what you have to spend,” especially in the case of Katie or GoDaddy. I mean, I set myself up, and I was basically it, and then some of the hosts were there. But you’ve got a team that you’ve got to fly there or whatever. You’ve got a team that you’ve got to put in the hotels, feed, all this stuff. So there’s a lot of added expense besides just that dollar amount you’re looking at for the sponsorship. So it’s a good value if you know what you’re getting into.

Marcus:
For something like WordCamp US, I don’t even want to talk about the amount of money that GoDaddy spends to sponsor and have team members and all of that there. And the ROI is impossible to either track long-term or make up in immediate sales. WordCamps are generally not sales events. We aren’t salesy. When people come up to the booth, we’re happy to talk about the things that we’re doing with WordPress and GoDaddy and share as much information as people are interested in listening to, but it’s not a sales event. We all kind of know that, and so making that up is nearly impossible. That being said, and we could probably do an entire episode—or I think maybe we even have done an episode—about why or why not to sponsor, there’s another part to sponsoring WordCamp in the sense that one of the big reasons that we’re global sponsors and continue to be large sponsors at flagship events is just to show the community that we’re here and invested in the community. There’s clearly an investment cost there that isn’t recouped in sales. That is just us saying, “We want to see this project, this ecosystem, this community succeed. We’re going to put our dollars behind it and show up and show up big and have lots of people come with us to meet the community and be part of the community and contribute, to be part of Contributor Day and all of that stuff.” That being said, I also wonder kind of the flip side that I always ask myself and ask people when we start to talk about whether we should or shouldn’t be at any particular WordCamp is: is there a cost to not being at a WordCamp? We’ve clearly discussed not financial, but kind of like a reputation cost. Does showing up one year and not showing up the next year look like, “Oh no, I don’t know what’s going on with that company. They must not be doing well. They decided not to sponsor. Were they not able to sponsor? Are they pulling back from the community?” That kind of thing. I wonder what you both think about that, if there are thoughts of what the cost is to not being a sponsor, especially, I guess, if you’ve been a sponsor before. I guess if you’ve never been a sponsor, then are you irrelevant already is the first question. And if you were a sponsor and then you aren’t a sponsor in the future, is there a level of people thinking that you’re on your way to irrelevance? I don’t know. I think there’s a psychological piece to it too, and I wonder what you all think about that, whether there’s a cost of not being a sponsor or not being there at all. Katie, I know that you weren’t a sponsor, but you still showed up and were there and were a speaker and had a team there, and they were walking around in their shirts, so clearly not irrelevant, clearly there to support the community. But I wonder if there’s a cost to not showing up.

Katie:
I think it depends on your line of work. I think the main types that can be hurt by not sponsoring are hosting companies because it’s almost like an arms race to show who’s the biggest and has the biggest booth. Does the type of booth fit with people’s perceptions of your scale of company? And it can go both ways, so you kind of do need to choose wisely both whether to just not be sponsoring and, if you are, is it going to make you look good or bad basically. Whereas I think there’s nothing wrong with a small booth if you are a small company. Like at Barn2, I feel it fits our reputation or whatever. I don’t think, as far as I know, any eyebrows will be raised by having the small booth. Same with Do the Woo—it’s a community booth; you’re not a product company, Bob. So I think it makes sense for you to have that level, but the big companies need to think about that.

BobWP:
That’s interesting because I’ve thought of it, but I’ve never thought of it in the question that Marcus said because it is perception. And I guess where that perception comes from is probably more for the core community too, is the people that see you all the time and know about you all the time as opposed to maybe new people in WordPress.

Marcus:
Yeah, it’s interesting for sure, and as someone who is largely in charge of running a big booth for a hosting company at flagship events and stuff, it’s definitely something that we do think about. What is the perception? What is the perception in the giveaways that we’re giving away? I mean, there’s definitely the perception aspect to all of it. The design of the booth has to be on par with a large brand or whatever. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes that’s bad. Sometimes we want to look more corporate than we are. Sometimes we want to look less corporate than we are—more approachable, less approachable—and there’s just a lot that goes into it.

BobWP:
It’s interesting. That could actually flow over into the perception of side events too. Why is this person doing this huge side event and this hosting company is having a smaller whatever? Is that another perceived idea that, oh, they’re kind of cutting back because of whatever? Speaking of side events, I’m curious, and this kind of gets away a little bit from the sponsorship, but I was talking to Katie a little bit about it: do either of you ever strategically plan side events? Is it just, “Hey, I am going to sign up for this one, this one; I’m going to do this,” and just party or meet people and have fun, or is there some other little method to your madness?

Marcus:
Yeah, in my case, I’m on the clock at camps basically from the time that my plane touches down to when I get back to the airport and head out. And so the side events, for me, are just as much hallway track and networking as any other part of the event, but it is definitely far more casual and easier to jump into conversations. The networking doesn’t necessarily mean we’re talking business, but I am getting to know people, creating those relationships and forming friendships with people that I’ve seen at a few camps and deepening relationships with people that I’ve seen for the first time or people that I’ve talked to online a bunch of times and we finally get to meet up in person. So a part of it is trying to figure out where are some of the people that I want to have conversations with going? What are their plans, where are they headed? Some of it is knowing some of the other side event organizers and them asking me specifically, “Hey, I’d love for you to drop by.” And then I try to make an attempt to make it to those events. There comes a time where there’s so many of them that they sort of overlap or even are in the same building, and then you’re playing that classic TV show where you’re trying to be in two or three places at once. So you’re zipping out the back door to drop down to another party for 30 minutes, and then you’re coming back up, and you’re like, “I just went to the bathroom real quick,” and trying to keep conversations going and stuff. As far as strategy-wise goes, I’m there at those to basically just deepen relationships and talk to people and have a good time. And obviously, the benefits of that spill out past the WordCamp event, where I can have conversations back online with folks but know them a little bit better and their personalities and all of that and have better conversations and stuff. As far as time management strategies, that’s so difficult because you have to map out where each of the events are and what time they’re happening and when they start and when they end and how far one is from the other. And I don’t have energy for all of that, but I try to make sure that I’m getting to the events, especially if someone has specifically asked me, like, “Hey, I’m going to be at this event, and I’d like to chat with you for some time. Are you going to be there? Would you make it there?” And then I’ll try to make it there, and I’ll have a conversation with those folks.

Katie:
Yeah, I think with the side events, my strategy has definitely relaxed over the years. When I first started going to WordCamp, I would always make a point of wearing the T-shirt to all the side events. Even costume things like the after parties would often say, “Wear a costume.” I was like, “Nope, I want to be in my Barn2 T-shirt, and I want it to say on

the front and the back what my company is because then people are more likely to come up to me if they know who we are.” And I think if you are trying to raise awareness and you don’t know that many people, that is a good strategy. I don’t particularly do that anymore at the side events because I’m all networked out by then after the daytime when I was wearing the T-shirt. And I know enough people that there will be people to talk to all evening without needing to advertise my company, and people know me more anyway from the podcast and Twitter and what photos and whatever. So I don’t do that, but I would recommend it if you’re just starting out. And also, the parties vary in terms of how loud they are, and really it’s best to view them as networking events. So the after party… Everybody constantly feeds back that they need a quiet room, but they’re often very bad at that. They were fine this year at WordCamp US; it was in a museum again like last year’s. But the WordCamp Europe after party was too loud this year, for example, despite feedback saying that they needed quieter areas. So if you just want to talk to people and network, find the quieter parties, which you can do by thinking about the location. Is it a nightclub, or is it in a restaurant or a cocktail bar or something that’s going to be quieter? So that’s good. And I heard an interesting tip, which I’ve never implemented, which is that if you’ve got multiple team members, send different team members to different side events so that your team has representation across more of the community. I think that’s kind of a shame because one of the big benefits of WordCamps that we haven’t talked about is bringing your team together. It may be that you don’t have company retreats; we don’t have company retreats. We just bring each team member to their local flagship WordCamp, and that’s a really good bonding experience for people. And so that’s another reason to go to WordCamp. I’m not sure I’d want to separate them out at a side event, but I can see the business benefit in terms of marketing of doing so.

BobWP:
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, at least I thought I’m like Marcus—if somebody says, “Are you going to be at this event? I’d love to talk,” I truly try to make an effort to be there. And I’m a little bit more lax on, as long as I’m not, like I said before, overlapping and not showing up. I sign up for quite a few of them because I also find that often the opportunity comes to meet somebody that I haven’t met yet at WordCamp—maybe catching up or someone I don’t know at all—just happened to run into them, say, “I’m going to this event because I know more people at it or because of the brand or whatever.” I find myself signing up for just about any event that comes my way that I have time for because what else am I going to be doing—sitting in my room or something? So I might as well be out meeting people. So yeah, I don’t necessarily have much of a strategy. I do find that I do end up leaving if I can’t hear what somebody’s saying. I think one party in Athens—I don’t know where it was—I damaged my hearing even more than it already is, but it’s hard to communicate for some of us in those situations, and I will likely make my way to another party if it becomes a point where I just cannot have a conversation at all. But yeah, I think it’s going to all depend on what works for you and what is right for you and some of that stuff. I’ve had people actually say to me that they went to a side event and they found out it was almost too overwhelming, even more so than the WordCamps. There was just too much socializing, and they were ready for some downtime and stuff. So you’ve just got to kind of play it by ear and decide what works for you.

Marcus:
Yeah. My last side event question was going to be, we sort of all agree that there are good networking opportunities. Do you tend to talk shop at those or not? Or does it depend? Are you looking to just hang out and get to know people who they are a little bit better? Are you offended if people come up to you and ask to talk shop? How do you handle those conversations?

Katie:
I go with the flow. I’m happy to do either and to allow people to lead. Sometimes I’ll be meeting new people, and you may end up talking shop because you’ve done perhaps some collaboration with them in the past online and you’ve not met in person, or you might use it as a chance to get to know each other personally, which helps to strengthen your professional relationship. Or at other side events, I end up speaking with people I already know well and already know everything about their businesses. So we would be talking about other things then. So I think, unless you have a really clear strategy, which is fine, you can go with the flow and see what happens.

BobWP:
Whatever way the wind blows, however it works. Although it was very ironic that the first three flagships I went to after we moved to Portugal, 90% of the people who walked up to me, the first question out of their mouth was, “How is Portugal?” So I repeated that story numerous times for three different flagship WordCamps—at least probably, yeah, maybe hundreds of times and stuff. So I didn’t talk shop a lot because people didn’t care about that. All they wanted to know was how the move and how Portugal went.

Katie:
That’s what happens if you’re famous and have an interesting story.

BobWP:
Yeah. I know we could go on and on. Is there a little tip or strategy that you’ve found works, that doesn’t kind of fall into the norm, or something that just helps people who are going and trying to navigate whether it’s their first time or they’re within their first few WordCamps that they’re still trying to find out the right thing to do?

Marcus:
Yeah, so I’ll take it from the introvert’s perspective because, as weird as it is for me to have a job where I go to WordCamps and talk to people, I am more introverted by nature. So what I do—what I find is extremely helpful—is I’ll get wherever the camp is, at least kind of the day before everything starts happening, and give myself a few hours to just leave on my own and go explore the city, go explore just outside the city. If there’s a WordCamp US in Portland this year, there are great places to go hiking and see some stuff outdoors as well. Just get away from everyone else for a couple of hours because the entire event is going to be very “peopley.” You’re going to be non-stop talking to people from the time that registration starts to the time that the side event after party or whatever ends. And so you’re talking at least a day, but in many cases, multiple days worth of just being around, being surrounded by people and talking to people constantly. And so I generally try to just get away for a couple of hours by myself. I’ll grab either my camera or just have my phone on me and just go out away and take pictures and walk around and just enjoy the silence, I guess, for a little bit. And then that really prepares me to be in a headspace to talk to people for many hours at a time. And so I highly recommend doing that for anyone who’s mildly introverted, I guess, just to give yourself some time to be on your own before you get into being around everyone else for that long of a time.

Katie:
Well, that definitely applies to the majority of people who attend WordCamps as well, probably unlike conferences in some other industries. But that is definitely the case with WordCamp attendees as a whole. So my advice would be to do with networking. If you don’t already know people at a WordCamp, you need to understand it’s the sort of place you can just go up to somebody and talk to them. It doesn’t matter what you say—just, “Oh, hey, I’m so-and-so, what do you do?” People are open to that. And I’d say this even as a woman in a male-dominated industry. People don’t think it’s strange if you just go up to people and talk to them. They also don’t act inappropriately. It’s just everybody is friendly, accepts that it’s a networking event, and you can do that. So even if you are quite shy and you’ve never been to a WordCamp before, do that because I think you could listen to Marcus and say, “Well, I don’t know anyone. I’m not going to spend all day talking.” Actually, you should just go into the sponsor hall and go up to the sponsors. You may get into conversations with people near the sponsor booths as well. That’s a good place for networking if you don’t already know people. So do end up talking to people and try and remember them. I’m really bad at this. You talk to so many people, and then you’re probably going to have some kind of contact through collaborations or link exchanges or whatever kind of partnership work you do with other people—or hiring them or being hired by them or any of these things. At some point in the future, they may well remember you and you don’t remember them. And that happens to me all the time. And so try and write down who you’ve talked to or something and keep that because you never know when you need a bit of help with the memory. Overwhelming.

BobWP:
Yeah, good to take a picture of a selfie or take a picture of them. Then you can zoom in on their name tag if it’s not flipped over, and you can see their name at least.

Katie:
Good advice.

BobWP:
Yeah. Yeah, I’ve done that a few times. And a little bit of piggyback on the networking. What I always tell people is visit all the vendors, all the sponsors, and it’s kind of two-part. One is, they’re not going to be, like Marcus said, none of them are like these huge high-pressure sales pitches you may have experienced at other conferences that you’ve gone to. They do like to talk, and you never know what will happen in a conversation. That’s just what Katie was saying—going up and talking to people. You never know what kind of connection you’re going to make, what may happen down the road, what kind of friendship you might build. So make sure and do that. And another thing I learned early on to do is as you’re looking at the sponsor list, if there’s a sponsor that you’re not familiar with, there is a new name, and you’re like, “Especially some of the smaller sponsors will be that way,” and you think, “Oh, is this somebody I should know about?” Go and check out their website. And if it’s somebody that you think would be worth getting to know better, or maybe it’s a product or a service that you’re thinking you’d really find valuable, learn a little bit about their business—just enough to be able to walk up to them and not say, “Hey, what do you do?” Say, “Hey, I checked out your site, and I noticed you do these couple of things, and I’m kind of interested in that one part of it.” And probably a lot of sponsors will go, “Wow, this person actually took the time,” and the conversation’s going to go a lot more smoothly. And you don’t want to do that with every sponsor—do the research—but there might be some that maybe you want to become an affiliate, maybe you want to… Something you have in your mind, you might segue into a conversation knowing a little bit about them better than just asking, “What do you do?”

Katie:
Yeah, that’s good advice. And linked to that, we haven’t mentioned the attendee list that you can read through—a list of the people who are going beforehand. It’s a long list. There are thousands of people on it, but if you are just starting out and you don’t know who you want to meet with, it’s a really good idea, I think, to spend half an hour reading through it and just seeing what names jump out at you. It might be individuals’ names that, I don’t know, you follow on Twitter or have had some kind of contact with or seen in a podcast or doing a talk at a previous WordCamp. Anything to make you recognize them and think maybe you want to reach out beforehand and arrange to connect with them. Or alternatively, you might recognize their company name and think, actually, yeah, I could get some business benefit from having an in-person connection with someone from that company. So the attendee list is another way to do that as well as the sponsors. So that’s been great. I think we’ve covered a lot of different angles of how to get the most out of a WordCamp, whether you are sponsoring, speaking, or just attending. So I hope everybody has a great time at WordCamp US, and we’ll all be there. And yeah, I hope it’s useful.