#WPDEVMAG talked to one of the organizers of the WordCamp Košice 2019, Marek Daňko, and he introduced us with this excellent event, in the same time giving us a wider picture of the WordPress community and trends in Slovakia. Marek Daňko is the project manager at WordPress agency, Webikon. He is actively organizing WordPress Meetups and WordCamp in Košice. Enjoy!
Please, introduce us with WordCamp Košice!?
The WordCamp Košice 2019 is the second season of WordCamp in our city. After Bratislava and Žilina, Košice is the third Slovak city where WordCamp has been held.
Since our Slovak community is very active and we were given more than positive feedback last year, it was more than pleasure for us to take the challenge to organize the event once again this year. As we were last year, we are doing our best now to prepare a rewarding and unforgettable event.
8 speakers and 3 workshops are scheduled and a large variety of topics such as dev, marketing, UX, SEO will be covered. That’s why we expect every attendee to be satisfied.
How many visitors do you expect this year!?
With 150 visitors last year, all the tickets we sold out. This year, we raised the number of seats to 200. Now, one week before the event, we must sell less than 15% of all tickets to be sold out again.
How many people are in the organization team of the WordCamp Košice!?
There are 4 people who are responsible to organize the whole event. 8 additional people in the role of volunteers are at our disposal at the event.
Our inspiration comes mainly from our colleagues from Bratislava, Brno and Praha. One of the inspiring principles we adopted from Brno was the environment-friendly usage of non-plastic and disposable materials.
As for the management of the event each of us was assigned with tasks which were evaluated after 3 weeks of hard work. These “ status calls “ gave us a good basis for the subsequent planning of the following steps until the event was fully planned and prepared.
Amongst the tools we use, Slack, Google Meet and Google Drive and those we always rely on.
What’s your opinion on WordPress Global Community Sponsorship Program!? Do you have the support of local agencies and companies!?
A huge part of the budget was provided by global sponsors, however, local companies from this business recognized the importance and impact of our event and supported us very generously.
I think that this Global Sponsorship Program is a perfect way to support local communities all around the world.
Tell us more about WC Košice program? Is there anything you will like to highlight as the especially interesting part of this year program?
Yes, it is hard to prepare a balanced program for all basic users, marketers, and developers. I think there will be interesting topics for each group of visitors.
One topic I would like to highlight is “Sex, drugs and rock&roll”. It will be about branding and brand building.
I have to mention that during the WordCamp, there will be WPTranslationDay. Thus we scheduled a session about WordPress translations to support the event.
Please, give us your opinion on the actual development of the WordPress platform? How do you see the impact of Gutenberg on the WordPress ecosystem?
Honestly, I don’t have much experience with Gutenberg, yet. Therefore I think this direction of content building is interesting and it might be much better to users than the classic WYSIWYG editor.
What would be your message (or advice) to the organizers of WordCamps all over the world?
If you mean the advice on how to organize a WordCamp, I would say “Go for it!”. It is a really valuable experience and if you have a good team it could be fun too. Positive feedback after the event is really priceless and gives you back twice all invested energy.