Over the weekend, more than 500 WordPress enthusiasts gathered in Manhattan to attend WordCamp NYC. The event took place at the United Nations HQ as part of the Open Camps initiative. Not only was it amazing to attend a WordPress event at the UN, but the WordCamp was also a huge success. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.
Open Camps
WordCamp NYC was part of Open Camps, which took place from July 8 through July 17 at the United Nations.
WCNYC is part of #OpenCamps this year! Mingle with the Python, React, Node, etc. communities today! https://t.co/6YqNUU0JtP #wcnyc
— WordCamp NYC (@WordCampNYC) July 16, 2016
Open Camps is the world’s largest mission-driven open source conference, which, in collaboration with the United Nations’s Open Source Innovation Initiative, aims to make technology more accessible through open source governance, community, and collaboration.
The nine-day initiative boasted more than 6,000 attendees, who collectively attended more than 25 open-source conferences, including Drupal NYC Camp, Angular Camp, and React Camp.
Torque Turns Three
This month, Torque celebrates its third birthday — that’s three years of plugins, themes, tutorials, and WordPress news. We kicked off the birthday festivities at WordCamp NYC by enjoying Torque cupcakes with the WordPress community.
Earlier this week, we continued the celebrations by launching our birthday WordCamp US 2016 sponsorship giveaway. Applicants should share a few paragraphs about how WordPress has impacted their lives for a chance to win a trip to WordCamp US 2016, courtesy of Torque.
Sessions
There were two tracks — developers and users — each of which boasted an impressive collection of speakers, which totaled more than 35 sessions combined.
The event kicked off with an excellent presentation by designer and web strategist Sonja Leix on imposter syndrome. She demonstrated the ubiquity of this syndrome when she asked the audience if anyone has ever felt like a fraud and the majority of attendees raised their hands.
When @sonjaleix, talking about Imposter Syndrome, asked #WCNYC crowd how many ever felt like a fraud, 80 percent of hands went up. #NotAlone
— Anne Buchanan (@annebuchanan) July 16, 2016
Leix shared her experience with imposter syndrome and how through the WordPress community she was able to overcome it. She accredits this to the inclusivity and friendliness of the community. To overcome imposter syndrome, Leix recommends getting involved with the WordPress community by attending your local WordCamp or Meetup groups and talking to folks who may be experiencing similar issues.
Mikel King presented on developers block, emphasizing how challenging it can be to defeat. King recommends that to overcome this you must stop what you’re currently doing and direct your time to something that has nothing to do with the project you were working on. He notes the significance in this is to find something process-oriented to completely distract your mind.
Jenny Wong gave an amazing presentation on contributing to WordPress core.
“No matter what your skillset is, there is a home for you in the WordPress project,” she said.
Wong walked through the various ways to get involved with the project: Core, accessibility, design, mobile, polygots, support, themes, documentation, community, plugins, training, marketing, meta, TV, and flow. Whether you’re a marketer, designer, writer, or someone who is interested in organizing a meetup or WordCamp, there is a place for you to help out in WordPress.
There were several other amazing sessions, which will be posted on WordPress.tv in the near future. For now, you can enjoy some of the interviews with presenters that we shot at WordCamp NYC.
Did you go to WordCamp NYC?
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