There are a variety of WordPress events that take place around the world where users learn WordPress in person. Some are WordCamps, meetups, and others are WordPress specific but don’t use the WordCamp branding. Until now, there has not been an easy way to see all WordPress events on one page. ManageWP.org has launched a WordPress Events Hub which displays WordCamps, meetups, and non-WordCamps on the same page using a map overlay.
Vladimir Prelovac, Founder and CEO of ManageWP.com, explains why he created the site:
I was travelling the US last year and wanted to see what WordPress events I could attend along the route and there was no elegant solution to this problem. WordCamp Central lists only WordCamps without a map showing their location. There are also numerous meetups as well as non-WordCamp conferences like LoopConf, CaboPress, ThemeConf that are not listed anywhere. So I decided to build it.
Only registered users to ManageWP.org are able to create new events. On the event creation screen, there are fields to add an event’s address, name, type, date, URL, Twitter account, and Twitter hashtag. You can also add speakers as well. I found creating a WordPress meetup a little confusing since I had to set a start and end date.
I think the event type should be the second field underneath the event’s name. I’d also like to see a set of fields or options added that are specific to the type of event being held. For example, if it’s a meetup, there’s no reason to have an end date. Instead, the end date should be replaced with an option to set a time.
There should also be a way to configure repeating events, similar to how Meetup.com does it. This way, I don’t have to remember to edit the event’s details every month. Events are not moderated, allowing submissions to appear immediately on the map.
As the number of WordPress events across the world increases, it’s nice to have a resource that unites them on one map. In future iterations, it would be cool if users could create an itinerary. The itinerary would be saved to the user’s account and would be sharable through a URL. This way, users could get together and plan a road trip together.
Prelovac is keeping a close eye on the comments of this post, so after you check out the events hub, please leave your feedback in the comments.
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Great initiative Vladimir! Since I moved from Israel to NYC on August 2014, the way I was notified about events is twitter / blogs. Unfortunately I can’t follow everything and many of the events are far away from me. Having a crowdsourced centralized map is valuable and for sure will help me to be more involved. Thanks!
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Hey there! If you haven’t already found it, there is a monthly WordPress meetup in NYC: http://meetup.com/WordPressNYC
They also have a community site at http://wpnyc.org/
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Hi Andy
We auto-crawl meetup.com and insert events with at least 6 people that RSVPd (otheriwse we would have thousands of events but not all are really that live).
If the event is new the organizer can email us at hi@managewp.org and we’ll give them access to create a new event.
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Hi Vladimir, thanks for the initiative. You mentioned auto-crawl, but i can’t see any meetups from Belgium which are on meetup.com.
In Belgium we have 2 active meetup groups:
http://www.meetup.com/Antwerp-WordPress-Meetup/
http://www.meetup.com/wp-bru/
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Initially we got only meetups that have 10 people RSVPd. We are dropping this limit to 6 now. The problem was there are literally thousands of meetups otherwise and the map was overwhelmed.
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@Andy I’m already hooked to the NYC meetup :)
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This is a great resource and though as you said, some UI changes may help, overall I love the concept. My biggest question is more around criteria. For example, meetups. Looking through what is there so far, it appears that it doesn’t have to be an official WordPress meetup under the umbrella the umbrella of WordPress as the organizer. For example, I have my own WordPress BobWP meetup where I do my free workshops. I also am a co-organizer of a Seattle WooCommerce meetup. Do those two qualify?
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Yeah, there’s no criteria other than it being a WordPress specific event or having to do with WordPress.
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Very cool, will need to go and drop some in :)
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Hi Bob
Yes it definitively does not not be an ‘official’ event – it just needs to be related to WordPress.
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“Only registered users to ManageWP.org are able to create new events. ” Seriously? Why create a bar to adding our meetup?
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Hi Patrick
This means managewp.org users which is basically login with your Twitter, Facebook or Google account. This simple ‘bar’ is in order to prevent spam submissions (its either this or captchas)
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This is great – very handy tool to have :)
I agree with Jeff that it’s a bit weird that you have to specify an end date even if the event is only a one day affair. Perhaps add a bit of JS that automatically sets the end date to the same as the start date by default? That would streamline things a little bit, but otherwise it’s a simple tool to use.
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Maybe a checkbox with the “single day” label that enables and disables the end date field
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Yeah, that’s definitely something that’s missing. We’ll be adding it in the future, and most of the code is actually already written, but I’ve had a couple higher priority projects come up and haven’t had time to circle back to it yet. You can follow the progress on Meta #816.
Also, we haven’t officially announced it yet, but the JSON API was opened up on WordCamp.org last week, so you could pull in WordCamps automatically. We’ve customized the output to only whitelist certain data, so I’m gathering feedback about what people what to access before making the announcement. Let me know if you’d like to try integrating the data automatically.
The Events page on make/Community already pulls in WordCamps and official WP meetups, but the WordCamps aren’t being listed correctly yet because the API doesn’t support filtering by date yet.
That page is really just a prototype though, it’ll ultimately be superseded by the Community Hub project, which will provide a map of worldwide events, and a lot more.
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