WordCamp LAX prides itself on a diverse group of talented speakers covering a wide variety of topics.
Whether you’re a first-time speaker or have had many opportunities to share with the WordPress community, everyone is encouraged to participate. It’s our aim to provide engaging topics for WordPress users of all skill levels and specialties, including bloggers, designers, developers, agencies, and freelancers. So, whether you are a core developer or a casual user, we’ll celebrate all things WordPress.
Remember: You don’t have to submit an entire talk in your application, just an idea and some details.
We would love for you to apply to speak!
Benefits
While speakers aren’t paid, their talks and bios are posted online indefinitely. And they’re invited to participate in exclusive events and opportunities.
- Your 15 or 45 minute talk will be hosted on wordpress.tv indefinitely, livestreamed on YouTube and featured on WCLAX social media accounts. Present something you’re an expert on to hundreds of people, companies and non-profits live that will be viewed by hundreds, possibly thousands, afterwards.
- Invitations to be featured on select sponsor podcasts and blogs.
- Bio featured on the WCLAX speaker page and blog.
- Talk highlights featured during our event Live Show.
- Make friends and connections at a private virtual rehearsal a few weeks before.
- Invitation to an interactive game night for organizers, volunteers and speakers only.
- “Thank You” gift.
Who
Los Angeles’ eleventh WordPress conference seeks to represent the local community and their needs, so we’ll favor local Los Angeles County and Southern California speakers over out-of-town speakers.
If you haven’t spoken before, we encourage you to join and ask to speak at your local Meetup for practice!
What
Make sure your presentation isn’t a sales pitch. WordCamps are educational events, not marketing opportunities.
When deciding what to talk about, ask yourself:
What are you really excited about?
What do you know that other people would benefit from knowing?
What do you do abnormally well? Why?
What are people talking about right now? Do you have an interesting insight into it?
We are looking for speakers who can present on topics such as:
- WordPress for beginners
- Accessibility
- Analytics
- Branding
- Business / Management / Entrepreneurship
- Community
- Creative Use Cases
- Design
- Development
- E-commerce
- Ed tech
- Email marketing
- Future of WP as a CMS
- Headless WordPress
- Legal/CCPA/GDPR
- Mental Health / Wellness
- Podcasting
- Search Engine Optimization
- Security
- Social media
- Video creation
- Website content creation
Remember: You don’t have to submit an entire talk in your application, just an idea and some details.
We have 2 formats available:
- Lightning talks (15 minutes)
- Full-length talks (40 minutes + 5 Minutes for Questions & Answers)
Keep in mind that you can pitch multiple talks and offer to do a talk in different formats.
When
Speaker applications open Wednesday, June 24th and close Sunday, August 16.
Where
August 17, 2020: Speaker applications are now closed!
Why
Presenting on a topic will help you better understand the topic. Speaking at WordCamps is a great way to become even better at what you do. And of course, presenting is also a great way to connect with the greater WordPress community.
How
When you pitch your talk, be sure you focus your title and description on the audience, not the people selecting the talks. Do NOT include your name in the talk description, there is a separate field for that. If your talk is selected, we publish the title and description that you submitted on the website for everyone to see, so don’t add special notes to the organizers (we’ll have a special field for that).
Make it clear what people will learn and why it is important. Be detailed, but succinct. A lack of detail can leave us wondering what exactly your talk is about. Really long descriptions make the review process more arduous and are less likely to be read in their entirety.
Be clear in your description about exactly why you are qualified to speak on a topic. Again, you don’t have to be an expert, but we are more likely to select your talk if we get the sense that you know what you’re talking about.
Remember: You don’t have to submit an entire talk in your application, just an idea and some details.
Blind Reviews
Are the reviews really blind?
A “blind review” means that any personally-identifying information is stripped from the talk submission, giving reviewers a chance to honestly assess the quality of the submission without the bias of knowing who submitted it. Do NOT include your name in the talk description.
Naturally, talks are submitted with names. One of the organizers is responsible for exporting all of this data into a spreadsheet and removing the speaker names and locations. Before sharing the spreadsheet with the speaker selection committee, the organizer also carefully removes any “rogue” references to speakers or locales mentioned in the talk description or notes.
While it’s inevitable that a reviewer who’s been around the WordPress community for a while might recognize a topic or description and associate it with a speaker, every effort will be made to ensure the talk selection process is about the quality of the content, not the identity of the speaker.
The WCLAX Difference
What is the WCLAX 2020 team doing to create a better virtual WordPress event experience?
Great question. We’re a very experimental team and we’ve got a lot of chutzpah. We know a virtual WordCamp isn’t the same thing as an in-person one, so we’re brainstorming within our team and with outside experts, experimenting with a variety of solutions and doing everything we can to thoughtfully and creatively boost opportunities for organic, authentic human connection.
And not only are we experimenting with format and delivery, we’ve launched our mini Live Show that runs from late July through late October and every hour during the event itself.
Our Live Show includes
- Schedule reminders and event announcements
- Speaker talk highlights
- Sponsor interviews
- “60 Second Tricks of the Trade”
- Local WordPress community highlights
What if an emergency (this is 2020, after all) comes up?
We’re asking all our speakers to submit pre-recorded talks and slides a few weeks before the event. An at-home recording using the technology you have is fine. In the event of an emergency, your pre-recorded talk will still be broadcast at the original time and live indefinitely on wordpress.tv, YouTube and all our social channels.
If you’d like help recording your talk, our virtual event partner Blaze Streaming Media offers optional recording services for a fee.
See you in October! We’re looking forward to hearing what you have to share!