WordCamp Lagos 2019, I would say went smoothly, I am happy to report there was no reported violation of our code of conduct. Once again, I would like to apologise to our Muslim brothers and sisters for this event that took place during your fasting period. We are deeply sorry.

Planning for WCLOS19 this time around was a lot easier than last year, I think this made me more relaxed than usual and we slacked in some aspects. However, attendees sparkled, speakers shined and impacted on participants and the children all rocked this year, they thoroughly had a great time and that made me happy.

Preparing the team

The first thing I did when I knew I was leading 2018 was to select an organising team from within the community, i automatically selected members who were knowledgeable and passionate about WordPress and who had showed up at every meet and indicated interest in planning for the WordCamp. If you are part of the WordCamp Lagos 2018 organising and volunteering team and you are reading this, thank you very much for everything you did. I appreciate all your hard work and I hope next year’s WordCamp will be bigger and better.

Planning

For this year, we decided to put out a call for organisers, and we selected the team based on those who responded to the call, with a few additions of people who are great at their fields. All the meetings this time around was done via a WhatsApp group. As usual, time flew and once again people waited until the last minute to purchase tickets. We however noticed when compared to last year, the adoption of buying tickets online was way better, might be because we took steps to enlighten people about Paystack (the payment platform we used), and because Paystack also have added more ways to make payments asides a bank card, or maybe participants trusted our website 🤔We want to thank the Paystack crew for always turning out to support the Lagos WordPress community, we appreciate you folks a lot.

WordCamp

I’m happy to report that the general consensus from folks I have spoken to (and the surveys that went out afterwards) was that WordCamp Lagos 2019 was a success. We had our colleagues and friends from Benin Republic (the country, not the state) join us this year again, as well as from different states across Nigeria.

Ayantero, Lagos City’s first Wapuu also stole the show in its beautiful regalia at the event.

The survey sent out few days ago indicated so far that we did okay, we are still expecting responses from more people. We have already started to make plans to improve on or rectify some of the mistakes we made. If there is one lesson we have learnt from this WordCamp, it’s never to stop the publicity, even though the WordCamp is over, we must build up the momentum that will lead up to next years’ event.

Almost all speaker slides links are up already, please click here to view or download, we will keep adding until they are complete. Videos will be uploaded and available on WordPress.TV as soon as possible, stay subscribed for updates.

Budget

Thanks to Tunbosun who had built a camptix plugin for our event last year, this means future WordCamps in Nigeria will not have to worry about collecting payments on their WordCamp site. Last year, while filing my taxes, the WordCamp funds i had processed through my account gave me a lot of issues, i learnt the hard way, but Kudos to Paystack for adding the option of a startup business to their service, this means individuals with very small businesses we sometimes called side hustles could open a Paystack account and use their personal bank account for transactions, although with a limit, still works better than having to use a company’s corporate bank account. So i created an additional savings account on my GTB account solely tagged for WordCamp Lagos use so i could easily account for what came in.

This year, we had a lot of in-kind sponsors and about the same number of other sponsors like last year. Asides from the political season we were in at that period, i believe we also made the mistake of being too relaxed because people bought tickets late last year and we were unable to decide the number to cater to, and for this year we capped our numbers at 400 and planned for that.

The speakers gift by the way stole the day as everyone wanted one. The inspiration to make this gift was a last minute idea brought to life.

The final budget can be viewed here!

At the end of the day, we had our event, we made an impact, and WCLOS is here to stay. We implore you to keep your eyes peeled to our twitter handle where we will be churning out updates and nuggets from our awesome speakers throughout the rest of the year.

Wrap up

WordCamps, will always be a great place to meet new WordPress folks, catch up with old friends and celebrate the local community. Thank you to all sponsors, speakers, volunteers, attendees and organisers that made WCLOS19 possible. 2020 will definitely be more awesome.

I am aware planning for WordCamp Lagos 2020 has begun in the background will be taking a better and different approach, be rest assured it will not be a three day event next year. A few partners have indicated their support for next year’s programme so we must all equally keep the fire burning in their hearts by not going to sleep.

To all the people who volunteered their time this year, the organising team, speakers, volunteers and attendees who helped make WCLOS19 happen, We thank you again. If you are reading this and you want to be a part of 2020, please visit the https://wpnigeria.org site or click here to join the WordCamp Nigeria Workspace on Slack, there is a channel for Lagos in there.

Finally, to those of you who may be reading this internationally, if you have the means we cordially invite you down to Lagos for WordCamp next year. We promise to make it more memorable 😉

To see pictures taken at the event by our volunteer photographers, Please Click here to view the photo album!

Hope to see you next year! 🙂