Norway’s biggest WordPress conference of the year is now over and we are all full of good memories! We hope everyone made it home with their awesome #WCNO tote bags with goodies inside! Missing WCNO already, well no fear – watch this amazing recap
We are so happy that 182 people joined us for this years event. We had a good mix of locals and travels this year – which we always love. Saturday’s Tech and Inspiration stages were packed full of eager listeners on the edge of their seats ready to learn something new. Through out the day there was a buzz in the common area where people were meeting new friends and talking about what they liked in the talk they just heard.
We were an impressive bunch this year managing to drink well over 500 cups of coffee and eating around 400 sandwiches (we made sure to donate the leftovers to charity)! We partied late into the night at the afterparty and some even got their dance on! Sunday – do to lack of snow – we had to get creative with our original plans of speed sledding. We took a lovely tour of the Oslo Opera house and had a lazy afternoon at Dubliner (cosy restaurant), where most enjoyed a hangover burger.
Why WordCamp’s Matter
Tech conferences are not just for the ‘geeky’ – that term in its own has been redefined over the last years, but that is a post for another time. Tech is in all of our lives and in a huge part of our economy. Out of our wonderful 182 attendees we had first time WordPressers, hard core developers, project managers, business developers, designers, entrepreneurs and so many other types of professions.
WordCamp’s are Educational
WordCamp’s are such a valuable event if you are interested in WordPress – especially so if working with WordPress contributes to your salary. This year alone we had 6 excellent tech talks about new areas within WordPress, safety in WordPress, and better ways of doing things in WordPress. These are very valuable things to learn from others who have been there. This is why WordPress meetup’s are so important too – it is very valuable to learn from what someone else did right or wrong.
WordCamp’s are Inspirational
Want to get excited about WordPress – look no farther then the the Inspiration stage! WordCamp’s are a great place to show off cool and exciting projects made with WordPress. It is always so impressive to see how someone made ‘this one aspect’ of WordPress work so well for them. The inspiration and tech stages have some overlap, of course – which makes choosing which talk to hear tricky some times – but seeing the WordPress API in action on the Inspiration stage this year was very inspiring. I like to think of the inspiration stage as more of a presentation of cool work done or case studies, if you will.
WordCamp is good for your job
The number of careers started from networking at a WordCamp is unknown in number but not in impact. If you are serious about getting into WordPress as a way to contribute to you salary – either in your current job or to switch jobs – your local WordCamp is the most important event for you. WordCamp’s have many relevant sponsors – you can easily learn about a new WP product, plugin or service just from looking at the sponsors banner. Generally these sponsors are also scouting for good talent!
WordCamp is good for business
Do you run / help run a business? If so, WordCamps are crawling with exceptional talent. WordCamps are attended by a large range of developers, graphic designer, interaction designers, project managers, office managers, and everything in between senior level or beginner. This is a great talent pool to search for the perfect fit for your company. WordCamps are also great to learn about new products/services that can help you save money and time – weather that is from a WordCamp Sponsor or from one of the talks where a tip was shared. And finally, WordCamps are great for new clients. Some people come to WordCamps looking for that person or company who can help them with their product/ idea – and that could be you!
WordCamp is good for community
WordPress people are great – I know I am bias, but WordPress is such an accepting community. This could be because WordPress is such an international community and there is a strong focus on the Code of Conduct at events. There is a general ‘leave no (wo)man behind’ attitude. WordCamp is to be open to anyone – not matter age, race, programming language, preferred OS, religion, sexual orientation, disability or ethnicity. This is at the core of WordCamps – come one, come all, you will be loved!
People – generally from around the world – gather themselves over a weekend to celebrate WordPress. Speakers, volunteers nor organisers are not being paid – they are donating their time because WordPress has made their lives better and they love the community – that alone is a testament to how good this community is. Some people say the best part of WordCamp is not the talks – while they are great – but the friends that are made for life through a common interest.
Some WordCamps have a contributor day – we have found that the attendees at WCNO have preferred to explore Norway and spend more time getting to know each other. This also allows for us to have a more accepting community (ie. if you are new/interested in WP, you can hang out instead of feeling unable to contribute.)
Want to re-live WCNO 2016
Well then you are in luck! We have recorded this year’s talks and they are available in our awesome → WordCamp Norway 2016 playlist ←.
In addition to the talks, we have collected some images for you as well:
Thanks from the Organisers: Christian, Scott, Arnstein, Line and Fonda
There is always room for improvement – we are very happy to hear your likes and dislikes. Please let us know – because if you do not, we can not make it better! We are already looking forward to next years even and full of ideas on how to make it bigger, better and more effective.
We would once again like to say thank to our lovely volunteers, sponsors and speakers!
Thanks to everyone for the images!
