Open source conference planning

For the 4th year in a row, I’m one of the organisers for WordCamp Cape Town. We’ve got a pretty awesome team, and one of the things I really appreciate is that we try out a lot of new approaches.

Open planning

One of those approaches I’m particularly proud of is that we don’t just plan a conference about open source software (WordPress), but that we also do it in an open source way. Since last year, we’ve started using a public WordPress blog for a lot of our discussions. Just about any topic will be shared there; budgets, speakers, venue, etc.

We also have our weekly meetings in a public channel, anyone can sign up for the WordPress South Africa Slack, and follow the public #wcct-planning where we have our meetings. And not just follow, since it’s public, anyone can also contribute to the organisation or give input.

Open source

By approaching our conference planning this way, we aren’t just talking about open source, we’re planning it in an open source way as well. Anyone can “fork” our ideas and discussions and apply it to their own conference. Anyone can submit a pull request (or idea) to the conference planning.

It took some getting used to last year, but I can already see the difference this year; it’s become much more of a habit to discuss things publicly.

Interested to join or plan your own conference this way? Have a look at what we’re doing!