Tickets for WordCamp US 2023 went on sale this morning and quickly sold out within a few hours, leaving many hoping for another opportunity in the next round. WCUS, WordPress’ flagship event in the Western Hemisphere, is happening August 24-26, 2023, at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland.
Tickets cost $50 and include access to 40 speaker presentations in the main event, workshops, networking meetups, lunch each day, snacks and beverages, the WordFest party, a t-shirt, and a surprise gift. Contributor Day tickets are separate and will be available soon.
WCUS organizers have confirmed that there will be additional rounds of tickets released in the future. Those who missed this opportunity can follow @WordCampUS on Twitter to be notified of the next ticket release.
Despite the high demand for tickets, the event’s August dates prevent some from attending, including families sending their kids to school and European community members who may still be on summer holidays.
WCUS will also be hosting a Community Summit this year. Applications for attendees are still open and contributors are also welcome to submit topics for the event.
WordCamp US has updated its website with a design inspired by the colors and mood of the local area’s springtime cherry blossom blooms. Organizers are also updating the programming this year with a call for outside voices. The hurdles placed on potential speakers in previous years were not inclusive of those who haven’t been speaking at local WordPress events and this tends to lead to a stale pool of speakers.
WCUS organizers are trying something new this year in order to enrich the community with more diverse voices:
We are targeting experienced, seasoned, professional speakers at the top of their industries who are not currently active members of our unique community to speak at this year’s WCUS program. There are WordPress agency owners who have never been to a local meetup; plugin developers who don’t know what a WordCamp is, and there are scholars and academics who have never heard of Matt Mullenweg.
WCUS organizers may do a bit of recruiting to make this happen. They are collecting suggestions for speakers and programming topics in order to invite industry-leading speakers from outside the WordPress community. This will not replace the traditional call for speakers, which should be forthcoming.
Do we know if sessions will be live-streamed during the event or recordings posted after? I don’t think I want to get into a chase for such scarce tickets—I’m not fond of crowds at the best of times, and who knows what the COVID-19 situation will be?
(Sorry if I seem to be coming off rather curmudgeonly lately. Not intentional.)