Each WordCamp varies. Some are unconference style, with no pre-planned sessions or speakers, while others are carefully scheduled with only organizer-selected speakers on the roster. The rest fall somewhere in-between, often mixing formats over the course of the event.
WordCamps are meant to foster local community activity. If all the speakers are shipped in from out of town, that means that local experts (or people who could become experts) don’t get the exposure that comes from speaking at a WordCamp — both in the local community and in the broader community via the videos posted to WordPress.tv after the event.
We received a total of 54 speaker applications for WordCamp Zürich 2019. Of these, 8 were lightning talks, with the remaining 46 in long-form format. We allowed applicants to choose the language for their talk during the submission process. 17 were open to presenting in English or German, with 30 choosing English and only 7 choosing German.
We received 26 applications from people living in Switzerland and 28 from people living abroad. We wanted to see a diverse group of speakers, but unfortunately only received 9 applications from women.
The speaker selection process started with a blind voting round, during which all of the organisers could vote on the top 20 talks – based on the title and the description of each talk. We decided that we wanted 6 lightning talk slots filled, and looked into filling these first from the applications. Next, we looked at the ranking of the long-form talks and selected the speakers accordingly. Last but not least, we selected 2 backup speakers, in case someone might not be able to make it at the last minute.
If you want to learn more about our speakers, you can read our announcement of the first group of WordCamp Zurich speakers.