Call for Speakers Is Now Open

We are excited to announce this year’s call for speakers! Our call for speakers is open as of Monday, March 16, 2020. You have 5 weeks to submit your creative talk ideas. The deadline to submit is Friday, April 17, 2020 at 11:59 pm CT (UTC -5) / 4:59am Saturday (UTC).

As always, we get 100’s of session submissions each year. Over 500 submissions were received in each 2018 and 2019. It’s truly a challenge to have to decline so many quality applications with the limited number of speaking engagements that are available. Right now we are focusing on traditional full-length and lightning talks, but in the coming months, we are hoping to be able to offer more programming opportunities, which will allow us to bring in more, diverse speakers.

Things to Consider When Applying As a Speaker

As you are thinking about what ideas you want to submit as a speaker at WordCamp US, we wanted to alert you to a few key things to consider.

Session Limits

We are limiting the number of sessions you can submit this year to three. We know this might feel limiting, however, we are doing this for a variety of reasons. The main reason is time. We want to dedicate the time each submission deserves to truly review and consider how it can fit within our programming. If we limit the amount each person can submit, it allows speakers to submit their best-of-the-best ideas and for the organizing team to be able to spend more time on each submission.

Session Recommendations

We recommend a different way to think about your submissions. We know that the WordPress community is filled with so many diverse, interesting people, and it would be a fault on our part if we didn’t take advantage of that! So hear us out, this is what we are suggesting.

Full length, WordPress focused

Your first submission could be WordPress-focused, with a goal to teach someone something they didn’t know when they came to WordCamp US. We want to create programming in such a way that attendees will walk away raving about how much they learned at WordCamp US. With this type of feedback, we can ensure that WordPress-focused companies can see the value of sending more employees to WordCamp US in the future. These submissions should be submitted as regular session length talks.

Lightning length, skills mastery focused

Your second and/or third submission could be creative and different than what you might normally submit to a WordCamp. We are all unique and we all do things a little differently. Share with us something that you have mastered in your life. It could be WordPress related or it could be completely off-the-topic of WordPress, but the skills you learned could be applied to the WordPress world. For example, one of our team members enjoys shooting archery, and although she would love to teach folks how to shoot, she could instead teach people about the tactics of being a successful archer. Things like taking your time, ensuring 100% accuracy, and considering your hurdles like wind and distance. Although these are specific examples for archery, these examples can relate to solving other real life problems, and problems we face in WordPress. These submissions should be submitted as a lightning session length talks.

Now remember, these are just suggestions. You have three submission slots and you can submit whatever you would like with them, but we wanted to ensure that you knew what we are hoping to see in our submissions this year.

In addition, this year we are encouraging speakers to include at least one talk that could be deliverable via video – either live or prerecorded.

WCUS Programming Office Hours

Because ensuring that we have a diverse group of speakers and a variety of great topics is important, we are going to be hosting Office Hours during the open Call for Speakers timeline to ensure that we can answer your questions and help eliminate any barriers you may have to be able to submit. 

Office hours will take place in WordPress slack in the #WCUS channel. There is a helpful guide to joining the WordPress Slack for those that haven’t already.

If interested, please mark your calendars with one of the following blocks of time:

• Thursday, March 26th, 11am – 12pm (UTC -5) / 4pm – 5pm (UTC)
• Saturday, April 11th, 3pm – 4pm (UTC -5) / 8pm – 9pm (UTC)

More Than Just Sessions

As we mentioned above, there is much more to come in terms of programming at WordCamp US this year, but know that we are considering a variety of extended programming opportunities. We are open to your suggestions on anything new you would like to see. In the comments section below, please kindly tell us something that you wish WordCamp US would offer this year.