Farewell, 2018 WordCamp Denver!

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Now that we’ve all had a chance to recover from the weekend, it’s time for a recap and farewell. The University of Denver welcomed over 250 attendees on Saturday for camp and over 80 on Sunday for workshops. Over half the attendees were first-time campers (!)

This year’s official camp swag kept up the theme from previous years of being quintessential outdoorsy, ready-for-anything Colorado – colorful water bottles and wrist sweat bands!

Programming Highlights

Nobody Wants a Website. They Want Results with Dwayne McDaniel

Making the case for accessibility with Christine Laikind

How to Profit from 365 Days of Live Streaming with Phylecia Jones

How to Get Started with Podcasting in WordPress with Jeff Gamet

Mastering the Client Consultation with Nathan Ingram

Townhall: How to Run a Business and Not Go Crazy with D’nelle Dowis, Erin Flynn, Maddy Osman, and Nathan Ingram

Keynote from Angela Bowman

Why Community is More Important than Networking
WordCamp Denver ended on a high note with a keynote from one of our Colorado favorites: Angela Bowman. Angela’s keynote focused on bringing together the WordPress community, drawing from her own experience organizing 3 local WordPress meetups! She managed to get most of our attendees to stay until the very last minute, even despite some technical difficulties that knocked out her slides!

Sunday Workshops

Sunday Workshop programming was back again this year. It’s so popular, we’re already discussing how to expand the workshop programming in 2019!

Shout-out to our amazing team

Organizers

The organizing team tends to be the most invisible during camp, since everyone is busy keeping the camp wheels well-greased. Led by the always-energetic and inspiring Gordon Seirup, the organizing team worked for months to make camp happen.

Volunteers

The days of camp would never run smoothly without a huge team of volunteers keeping things running smoothly. We are so grateful to each and every volunteer this year! A conference of this size is tricky to pull off without a hitch, but you all helped WordCamp Denver 2018 run well and on-time.  We so value your contribution, and we’d love to have your support again next year.

Our Captioners

Many thanks to White Coat Captioning who helped us make the day more accessible for everyone.

Best Hallway Track Ever!

The “hallway track” was predictably one of the best places to be during the day on Saturday. This year, in addition to the Happiness Bar and sponsor booths, the hallway featured a green screen and a special guest!

Happiness Bar

Each year, the WordCamp Denver community pitches in to staff a help desk dubbed the “Happiness Bar,” where folks can stop to ask for help with anything ranging from technical questions about their site, troubleshooting frustrating dashboard issues, advice on how to grow your site, and instruction on basic WordPress usage.

Sponsors

We can never thank our sponsors enough – they’re the fuel that powers our engine!

Wiggle Booth

We’re ever so grateful to Gravity View, who provided the entire infrastructure for the Wiggle Booth – a camera + lights + green screen set-up where attendees danced to the WordPress Wiggle, celebrating the WordPress community.

Saul the Giant Sticker Ball

We were incredibly lucky to get a visit from Sticker Giant’s most famous team member – Saul. Saul is a Guinness World Record Holder, and he’s a Colorado native!

After Party Highlights

from our fearless leader, Gordon Seirup

Lifelong friends were made. We stuffed our faces with chips, salsa, guac and queso. We doused our thirst with beers and kambucha brewed right behind the bar. We met, mingled, and caught up.

Some say the best part of WordCamp is the “hallway track”. I’m a big fan of the Afterparty myself. Either way, it’s about community. Personal relationships as well as trading expertise. I met Chris and Robert, both of whom I’ll be keeping up with long-term. And I got to catch up with old friends I otherwise only “see” online.

HUGE thanks to Illegal Pete’s for the epic DIY nacho spread, and to Fermaentra for the beer, kambucha, and making us as comfortable as if we were hanging out in our own living room.

If you missed it, you missed out. But there’s always next year! See you at WCDEN’19…

See ya next year!

Heaps of thanks to everyone, from attendees to sponsors to volunteers to vendors, who made this year possible. If the energy of this year’s camp inspired you to do more, whether that’s volunteering, speaking, sponsoring, or organizing, reach out now to the organizing team via email and let us know you want to be involved. It’s never to early to think about next year!

Many thanks to Dave Warfel @davewarfel – we used his photo of the kickoff as the featured image for this post.