Website: https://events.wordpress.org/jakarta/2024/web-challenge/
Top Participants: https://events.wordpress.org/jakarta/2024/web-challenge/top-participants/
Event Recap Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=giz3TYOkrQI&t=10s
Organizer Recap: https://events.wordpress.org/jakarta/2024/web-challenge/web-challenge-2024-recap/
Jakarta WordPress Web Challenge took place on January 27, 2024. The team discussed having a small WordCamp in 2023, but after the NextGen project was launched in May, we began brainstorming about a new idea in July 2023. @rioburhan, who brought up the original idea, submitted his idea in August, and we started planning the event in October 2023.
The event aims to create a space for WordPress developers to learn from each other. It is a web competition, but the event offers a variety of activities such as:
- Web pitching by the finalists
- Web showcase/exhibition for the top 20 websites
- Workshop for beginners
- Talk show
- Sponsors exhibition
- Community booth
Lessons Learned
- We started with 3 organizers at the beginning of the event, but we onboarded a few more organizers closer to the event, realizing the amount of work we needed to cover. The more activities, the more details need to be managed.
- Using government facilities required us to anticipate some bureaucracy and have a plan B.
- We used a platform called Mayar. We learned how to create and manage the coupon code for all the participants so we could use the Event Dashboard (Tickets –> Attendees) to confirm attendance.
- We invited sponsors to become more involved as emcees, moderators, and workshop co-facilitators, and to provide prizes such as hosting and licenses.
- Almost 55% of the participants were first-timers.
- We tried to reach out to non-WordPress communities and had folks from PHP Indonesia and the Laravel community.
- We had a great event without a welcome dinner, after-party, and the need to produce swag.
- We aimed to provide the Transparency Report within 2 weeks and slightly missed our target. It was relatively easy as we collected all the receipts/invoices and updated our budget along the planning process.