As it was pre-announced some months ago, we’re very happy to say that the WordCamp Incubator Program is back!

The WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Incubator program was born in 2016 as an experiment and it was described as:

The intention of the incubator program is to help spread WordPress to underserved areas through providing more significant organizing support for a first event. In practical terms, this experiment means we’ll be choosing three cities in 2016 where there is not an active WordPress community — but where it seems like there is a lot of potential and where there are some people excited to become organizers — and will help to organize their first WordCamp. These WordCamps will be small, one-day, one-track events geared toward the goal of generating interest and getting people involved in creating an ongoing local community.

You can read about the sucess of this first phase in this report. Based on our experiences in Denpasar (Indonesia), Harare (Zimbawe) and Medellín (Colombia), we’re very excited to open the:

Call for Incubator cities

So, where should the next incubators be? If you have always wanted a WordCamp in your city but haven’t been able to get a community started, this is a great opportunity. We will be taking applications for the next weeks, then will get in touch with everyone who applied to discuss the possibilities. We will announce the  cities chosen by the end of March.

To apply, fill in the application by March 15, 2018. You don’t need to have any specific information handy, it’s just a form to let us know you’re interested. You can apply to nominate your city even if you don’t want to be the main organizer, but for this experiment  we will need local liaisons and volunteers, so please only nominate cities where you live or work so that we have at least one local connection to begin.

Call for Incubator co-leads

This challenging job will be an exciting opportunity for experienced WordCamp organizers that particularly enjoy the “start up” phase of the community, and who have successfully transitioned out of active leadership in their local community. (This is frequently “start a community from scratch” work, and the communities have to be self-sufficient at for the project to be effective).

As mentioned in the pre-announcement post, this role is very time-intensive, requiring consistent and frequent interaction with the local team. Not everyone can commit 250 hours in a year to a volunteer role. But if you’re willing to become an Incubator co-lead and are committed to it, please apply here filling in the application by March 31, 2018.

Thanks, and good luck!

#2018, #announcement, #incubator, #wordcamp