New Guidelines for Virtual Events in 2020

During the current global health emergency, we strongly encourage you to consider virtual events instead of in-person. For more information on organizing virtual events, please refer to this page.

Just like all in-person events, anyone involved in an official role for your 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., MeetupMeetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area., do_action, or any other WordPress community event is representing WordPress. For virtual events, we have the same expectations for those organizers, speakers, sponsors, and volunteers. 

In order to facilitate successful community events during this global emergency, we have adapted some of our existing community guidelines to promote virtual community events for 2020. 

  1. Regional/country WordCamps, Meetups, do_action events. We strongly believe that there is much value in local, in-person events, and intend to maintain this guideline when we can all meet in person again safely. During this time, however, we will approve country/regional events as long as the major meetup groups are involved in the organizing process.
  2. Skip the budget review portion of the WordCamp planning process. Virtual WordCamps won’t cost organizers any money, so we won’t need budget reviews! WordCamp CentralWordCamp Central Website for all WordCamp activities globally. https://central.wordcamp.org includes a list of upcoming and past camp with links to each. will be providing Crowdcast accounts to WordCamps, and since virtual WordCamps will be offering free tickets, there is no income either. 
  3. Shorter planning periods for community events. A virtual event tends to be faster to organize. Organizers can propose the date of their event, allowing for enough time between orientation and the event to find speakers, volunteers, and market the event.

We hope to go back to in-person gatherings with original guidelines for planning community events as soon as we can, as our in-person program has proven to empower more community leaders across a large number of local communities and to reach more people within those areas.

Learn more about how to apply for a virtual event!