WordCamp Europe 2023 in Athens attracted more than 2,500 attendees from 94 countries, made possible by 112 organizers and 250 volunteers. The event is now looking forward to 2024, which will be hosted by the Italian WordPress community in Torino, Italy, June 13-15. This modern city is located at the foot of the Alps in northwestern Italy and has more than 2,000 years of history to explore.
WCEU 2024 is calling for organizers who will serve on one of a dozen teams that have been operating for the past few years, including attendee services, budget, design, sales and sponsors, communications, and more.
Those selected to organize will begin planning WCEU in September 2023 and will work with a distributed team on a weekly basis until June 2024.
During the 2023 event’s speaker announcements, the WCEU organizing team was criticized for the second year in a row regarding its commitment to diversity. The previous year organizers were called out for the lack of diversity on the organizing team and this year the complaint was a lack of diversity in the speaker selection.
WCEU 2023 organizers published a transparent account of the various selection processes used for organizers, speakers, media partners, and others involved in the event. The article states that organizers are shortlisted based on their skills, with an effort “to keep gender parity high whilst also selecting people from all available European WordPress communities.” It also states that applicants’ experience and enthusiasm are chief among selection factors but organizers also reach out to encourage underrepresented groups to apply:
During the selection process we don’t have anything that resembles a “positive discrimination” policy, whereby we choose people based on their race, color, background, gender, sexual identity, or any other attribute; we solely chose people based on their stated experience and enthusiasm to be part of the team…
Acknowledging that diversity within the Organizing team is important, we reach out to community groups and members before and during the application process, encouraging people to apply where we have historically seen underrepresentation.
The article concludes with a statement of willingness to modify this selection process if the organization is not able to achieve a diverse lineup:
WordCamp Europe is an iterative event; each year learns from the last and 2024 will be no different. We cannot take for granted that achieving diversity one year guarantees it the next. As a flagship WordCamp event we may need to positively discriminate to achieve gender parity, or fair representation of communities.
The call for 2024 organizers does not identify any changes that have been made to the selection process. Prospective organizers will need to fill out the application form highlighting their skills, experience, and desired role.
