FWIW, the conversation on the WordCamp UK mailing list seems to have moved swiftly on to getting next year’s event going, with a very open attitude to the naming, and the general idea that facilitating regional WordPress meet-ups is the best way of testing the water for the viability of regional WordCamps.

As it stands we only have one active regional user group in the UK.

My sense of when the mood in the room turned was when the trademark card was played.

There also seemed to be a ‘rule’ that it has to be no more than an anuual event. Why?

Many thanks for getting involved in this discussion.

I think it would be great to have 6 viable [by viable I mean at least 100 attendees] (none London) WordCamps around the UK, and I welcome the day when this happens. When it does WordCampUK would naturally cease to be appropriate as WordCamp Edinburgh would de facto be WordCamp Scotland and any in London would de facto be WordCamp England if not WordCamp UK. Unfortunately we’re not there yet. (BTW Manningtree is a town that is smaller then WCNYC was)

On the Automattic / WordPress Foundation subject from my point of view whilst senior people in the Foundation are paid by Automattic and not the Foundation they can never be seen to be independent especially when the question about is this in WordPress’s best interest or that of Automattic’s is raised. Whilst Automattic’s generous funding is really appreciated and without it WordPress wouldn’t be where it is today the only real way I see to resolve this is for the upper echelons of the Foundation to be paid by the foundation and not to work for Auttomattic. This I see as a good sign as means WordPress is growing up. (BTW How could I go about joining the Foundation?).

On a side note it was an impressive donation that New York managed to give the foundation. Maybe the various WordCamps should aim to give a Tithe (10%) of the ticket sales and sponsorship to the foundation?

In my previous comment I did say apparently as it appeared to came across as news to the Core Group (a name I really don’t like). I apologise if I was wrong here and I really wasn’t trying to insinuate anything.

The crowd at this years WordCamp are awesome, and without many of them there and some who couldn’t make it there probably wouldn’t have been one. Your comments at the wrap up meeting were really welcome by one and all. Unfortunately when you indicated to a group, who are volunteers and does this out of passion and not for gain, that you would be prepared to enforce the WordCamp trademark if we dissented (and let’s be honest Trade Marks can only be enforced through the courts) you are going to get a vehement response. I’m sure you didn’t mean it to be quite so dictatorial but in light of Matt’s comments to Chris Pearson and the apparent method by which the Capital_P_dangit function was added and reasoning behind it things need to be taken a little gingerly at the moment and I hope that this is only blip. As an aside there had been a smaller meeting of the organisers earlier in the day unfortunately you didn’t appear to be around at the time to join that discussion, which might have been a more appropriate venue.

Now moving forward, you indicated that one of the programs of the foundation was to provided registration services for events which I think is a great idea and in light of this might I suggest that the Foundation applies to be part of the safe harbor program (http://www.export.gov/safeharbor/) to ensure that there aren’t any data privacy issues for EU and Swiss based WordCamps using the system.

Thanks

John

If there are enough people in numerous localities to make such an event worthwhile… and if the organisers realise how much work is involved… and if they have the time… and if they can attract sufficient finance, in terms of ticket price and/or sponsorship… and if they’re prepared for the legal and financial hurdles which will come further down the line… then that’s great.

In 2008, there certainly wasn’t enough interest to sustain more than one WordCamp in the UK. Is there enough now? Maybe. I’ve got no idea.

But if other people do think the country is now ready for more, I’ll personally be delighted to see them give it a go… and delighted to see them succeed.

I have to say I wasn’t aware of the WordCamp “keep it local” policy until I checked wordcamp.org writing this. I back this attitude completely. As someone born in an English backwater, and having spent some of the best years of my life in Leeds, being a Londoner now for 10 years hasn’t blinded me to the damaging dominance that London often has in England. I think there’s been an unspoken(?) assumption among WordCamp UK people that the approach to the event, jumping from one non-London location to another, was in part to fight London’s vortex-like gravity.

I agree with Simon Dickson, and I can’t imagine anyone at WordCamp UK would disagree: if the UK can genuinely support multiple WordCamps, that’s fantastic. I think we’re just worried about it not quite being time, and about WordCamp London becoming exactly the kind of hierarchy-creator that you’re concerned that WordCamp UK is.

I hope you understand these concerns of ours are coming from exactly the same place in our hearts—where we’re so enthusiastic about WordPress and its friendly, progressive vibe—as your concern is. It seems there’s a bit of debate to be had about exactly how this concern can be properly applied to this strange island of ours :-)

I apologize if I came across in some kind of imperialistic way (which is kind of funny if you think about it); Simon asked me to pop in to “a meeting about next year’s WC,” and I had no idea he meant it was the full attendee crowd at closing remarks, nor had I (as I said there) planned to make any kind of statements or rules about WordCamps in the UK at that time.

The sentiment I was trying to communicate (clearly, not very well!) is that WordCamps are local in nature, and the UK WordPress community has grown bigger than one event, despite some people’s denials. People have gotten in touch from Brighton, Sheffield, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Bristol, and a few other cities, asking about the possibilities of having a WordCamp in their cities. Note: they get in touch with wordcamp.org, not Automattic. I just happen to span both. As Simon Dickson said on Twitter, “If the UK can support multiple #wordcampuk events instead of just 1, it’s a sign of success. Framed that way it’s an uncontroversial point.”

Having one event that is branded the “national” event when there will be more an more people getting involved in organizing individual WordCamps is clearly setting up a hierarchy. I do not believe, nor did I mean to imply, that any of the current UK organizers intended this maliciously, officiously, or in any way self-promotingly. “WordCamp UK” as a label could still have a useful function, I was just trying to convey that wordcamp.org would be supporting additional events in the UK, so we should talk about the naming conventions to make sure no one gets confused about the nature of these events. As I stated at the time, I’d intended for it to be a casual conversation with Tony and his organizing crew leading to a mutually agreed-upon outcome once we had appropriate infrastructure in place for 2011, not a big public debate where it suddenly became open season on me. Seriously, you guys had me practically crying when I left. Which is a major bummer, because until that point, I’d thought the WordCamp UK crowd was awesome.

Thank you to the people who approached me after the event at the Waldorf and said after thinking about it they understood and didn’t feel threatened. My job is to support the broadest definition of the WordPress community. I hate it that sometimes the “old guard” –whether it be WordCamp organizers or core developers — feel that moving forward to address the needs of all takes something away from them individually. It’s never my intention to hurt anyone, or to squash community development. Every community has growing pains and we are no different. I’ll post officially about the WordCamp guidelines sometime next week, if anyone is interested.

The fact that people went direct to Automattic/Jane doesn’t surprise me and highlights that we need to continually improve our communication methods, maybe a Forum would be worth having? It was the fact that Jane/Automattic didn’t appear to refer then back to the UK community. Although I have a feeling that as likely as not the half dozen in question were merely asking if they could run WordCamp Larkhall or similar, because I’m sure that had they asked for any help from the UK it would have been gladly given.

On the note of Local meetups, yep envious of Manchester, I’m looking into if it would be worth having a quarterly meetup maybe WordUp Home Counties?

I don’t want to be down on those people who emailed Automattic, either. Evidently for some reason they didn’t feel they could chip in to take part in WordCamp UK. Maybe we could have something, like an obvious little “call to action” type link, on the WordCamp UK site, to invite newbies, encourage them to take part?

Or, if they’re not really newbies but are just objecting to there only being one UK WordCamp, which is maybe a little further than they want to travel (I’m assuming this is people from Scotland or Cornwall), making it absolutely clear to them that they should just go for it and do a WordCamp in their city, and that it’ll be great to see them if they do make a UK one. I don’t see a clash. If I lived in Edinburgh and definitely went along to the UK event for its unique aspects, I would be just as psyched to go to the local one, too.

I envy Manchester—us backwater Londoners haven’t even got a WordPress meetup together yet!