WordCamp US: Friends, Rosie The Wapuu, and Contributor Day

By Bridget Willard | December 10, 2017

When is a WordCamp more than just a camp? When it promotes your Meetup’s logo, when you see great friends, and have an epic Contributor Day.

I would be remiss in mentioning two things as an aside: Bluehost sending Jessalyn Tucker to WCUS and The Gutenberg situation.

You can read Jessalyn’s blog here and her dad’s blog here. Thank you, Bluehost!

The big news is the Gutenberg “editor” (it is way more than just an editor) will be coming out with 5.0 in April (I’ve been saying this since June so I felt a bit vindicated in my analysis).

If you want to keep informed on it, I’d start with following Morten and Kevin’s tweets. It is iterating (changing) quickly.

Table of Contents hide
1 Friends
2 Rosie the Wapuu
3 Contributor Day
4 Special Thank You

Friends

WordCamp is a celebration of the WordPress community. If you’re not making friends, come find me. We’ll be friends.

A regional camp like WordCamp US brings friends together from all over the US and the World. It was great to catch up.

Clearly, I did not take enough selfies. 😉

Rosie the Wapuu

Yes. Rosie the Wapuu was everywhere. She is not the “Lady Wapuu,” she’s the unofficial mascot for WomenWhoWP.org.

You can order your own swag thanks to James Tryon and Wapu.us here.

She’s more than a mascot, she represents a traditionally underrepresented minority in tech: women. We didn’t think she’d be part of a global movement, but it is trending that way.

You may recognize Julia from the WSJ article that had her photo.

Contributor Day

Contributor Day was the real reason for me to attend this camp; it’s an all volunteer work day for Making WordPress. Though some people are “sponsored volunteers,” we are volunteers nonetheless. WordPress is created by you for you.

I’m honored to be a Marketing Team Rep and this CD was smooth, efficient, and fun. We had over 20 new people contributing. I couldn’t have done it without Dwayne McDaniel of Pantheon. He even gave out I Make.WordPress.org stickers. It was epic.

Special Thank You

Thanks to Give for paying for my airfare and Jen Miller for sponsoring my meals and lodging. With the recent change in my career, I wouldn’t have had enough time to save for the trip.

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5 Comments

  1. Sherie on December 11, 2017 at 10:57 am

    Great wrap-up Bridget!! Love seeing all those happy faces! It was such a great time, still trying to process and distill all my thoughts into a post, hehe. Loved spending time handing out with you and Jen at the WomenWhoWP table on Sunday (and dinner with everyone on Sun night was the best) – missing you!

    Reply
  2. Cheryl on December 11, 2017 at 11:16 am

    Awesome post, Bridget! 🙂 It was a great WordCamp, but they’re always over too quickly… I’m going to echo Sherie and say that we had so much fun with you & Jen at the Community Bazaar (and pretty much the whole time we hung out), and getting to meet Jason and Jessalyn was awesome. Loved seeing Rosie all over the place too – yay for WomenWhoWP! <3

    Reply
    • Bridget Willard on December 11, 2017 at 11:35 am

      For sure. The sad thing about WordCamps is when you have to leave your friends. Thank you so much.

      Reply
      • Cheryl on December 11, 2017 at 11:38 am

        Very much agreed!! (((hugs))) Love you, friend.

        Reply

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