This post summarizes the 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. program for 2017. WordCamps in 2016 was also recently posted if you’d like to take a look!
In 2017, over 41,000 WordPress enthusiasts came together at 128 different WordCamps to spend a day or three talking about WordPress, the free and open sourceOpen Source Open Source denotes software for which the original source code is made freely available and may be redistributed and modified. Open Source **must be** delivered via a licensing model, see GPL. software that now powers 29% of the internet!
WordCamps were held in 48 different countries in 2017, with events in 6 continents: Africa, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America.
As you can see in the chart below, the number of WordCamps continues to steadily increase.
| 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | |
| Total number of WordCamps Year-over-year growth |
128 11% |
115 29% |
89 11% |
80 13% |
71 6% |
| WordCamps in the US Year-over-year growth |
49 2% |
48 14% |
42 -2% |
43 39% |
31 -9% |
| WordCamps outside the US Year-over-year growth |
79 18% |
67 43% |
47 27% |
37 -8% |
40 21% |
| Total number of unique speakers Year-over-year growth |
2,346 13% |
2,056 23% |
1,677 0% |
1,676 43% |
1,176 34% |
| Total number of unique sessions Year-over-year growth |
3,085 16% |
2,635 23% |
2,135 -9% |
2,355 50% |
1,565 62% |
| Total number of unique sponsors Year-over-year growth |
1,118 6% |
1,036 16% |
891 -1% |
896 72% |
522 5% |
| Total number of WordCamp tickets sold (rounded to the nearest 500) Year-over-year growth |
over 41,500 12% |
over 32,500 16% |
over 21,000 5% |
over 20,000 8% |
over 19,000 8% |
Detailed data and information for 2017 is below if you choose to read more!
WordCamp Organizers in 2017
- Number of unique organizers: 990
- Number of first time organizers: 641
WordCamp Speakers in 2017
- Total number of unique speakers: 2,346
- Number of first time speakers: 1,384
- 30% Women Speakers (up from 28% in 2016)
WordCamp Sessions in 2017
- Total number of unique sessions: 3,085
WordCamp Sponsors in 2017
- Total number of unique sponsors: 1,118
- Number of first-time sponsors: 726
WordCamp Attendees in 2017
- Total number of WordCamp tickets sold: 41,432
- WordCamp Europe tickets sold: 2,475 (3500 with live stream tickets)
- WordCamp US tickets sold: 1,644 (2618 with live stream tickets)
- Average number of tickets sold per WordCamp: 252.1
Trends and analysis
Average number of attendees = 252.1: This is an increase from the past few years in which the average was demonstrating a downward trend. This is probably due to the increase in tickets sold for flagship events.
What else did the Community team do in 2017?
- Launched credit card payments for sponsors.
- Transitioned the Community Team from SupportPress to Help Scout.
- Launched the Events Widget Plugin, which was merged to core in 4.8.
- Launched a new Mentor Tool, the Planning Checklist.
- Launched the Deputy Training module.
- A new WordCamp base theme by the WordCamp Europe team, “CampSite 2017”, was released. (#, #)
Questions?
If there’s a figure above that you’d like to learn more about, or an observation you’d like to share based on the data here, please respond with a comment!