Every WordCamp program has a slide deck called something like “An Introduction to the Settings API.” It’s fine. It’s competent. It’ll be on WordPress.tv by Friday, where four people will watch it, two of them related to the speaker.
No shade — we’ve all given that talk. But here’s the thing we rarely say out loud: WordPress is what got us in the building. It isn’t actually what we have in common. What we have in common is that we make things, we answer to people who don’t understand what we do, we all have a folder named final_FINAL_v3, and we’d all rather spend a day with interesting humans than watch one more deck. WordPress is the doorway. It is not the room.
Nobody remembers the talks anyway. They remember the hallway chat that turned into a business. They remember the session that got a little unhinged. They remember realizing the person next to them — a writer, a shop owner, a designer, a student who’s never seen a line of PHP — was having the exact same week they were.
So here are eight formats built on that. Some came from the developer corner and got pried open so anyone can play; some never touched code at all. Every one had to pass a single test: could a non-developer walk in, join in, and leave glad they came? If not, it’s not here.
And this is allowed, by the way. WordPress’s own Creative WordPress Events program exists to nudge organizers past the lecture track, and it’ll even help fund the experiment. You’re not going rogue. You’re using the program as intended.
1. Teach Me Something That Isn’t WordPress
The pitch: Five-minute lightning talks, one rule — the topic can’t be WordPress, web tech, or your job.
Sourdough. How to read a tide chart. Three knots everyone should know. Why your cat does that. Gunpei Yokoi’s lateral-thinking philosophy and why constraints make better products. One person’s frankly alarming expertise on a regional snack food.
How it runs. Open sign-ups, a hard five-minute cap, a timer the room can see. Bundle five or six into a session. Slides optional, enthusiasm mandatory.
Why it works. It turns a roomful of job titles back into a roomful of people. The developer and the copywriter stop being “the technical one” and “the words one” and become “the guy who’s weirdly into tide charts” and “the woman who can explain knots.” That’s the connection the whole event runs on. It’s also the gentlest possible first time on stage — nobody’s an impostor about their own hobby. People quote these for years.
2. Show Us Your Setup
The pitch: Part confession, part swap meet. People show their real workspace, and everyone exhales when they see everyone else is also holding it together with tape.
How it runs. A few volunteers walk through the truth: the 47 open tabs, the chaos notes app, the plugin list they’re embarrassed by, the backup folder named final_FINAL_v3. Photos or a live share. The host asks what everyone’s thinking: “wait, you use what for that?”
Why it works. Everyone has a workflow they’re a little ashamed of, which is exactly what makes this so even-handed — the developer’s terminal and the writer’s color-coded doc turn out to be equally fascinating, and neither outranks the other. It’s where the actually-useful tips surface, and it quietly retires the myth that everyone else has it figured out. (Spoiler: nobody has it figured out.)
3. Petty Grievances Open Mic
The pitch: Two minutes at the mic for one small professional annoyance. No solutions allowed. Pure catharsis.
“Make the logo bigger.” The plugin that renamed its menu item and broke your muscle memory. The Slack message that should’ve been an email. The form that wipes your card number if you fumble one field.
How it runs. A mic, a two-minute limit, one ironclad rule: you may only complain, never fix. Someone offers a solution, the bell rings. The host keeps it fast and light.
Why it works. Nothing bonds a room faster than learning your weirdly specific pain is completely universal. The no-solutions rule is the whole trick — it stops the fixers from turning it into a support thread and keeps everyone level, because every single person, whatever their job, has a “make the logo bigger” story. Catharsis as a team sport. Run it before a break so the laughing spills into the hallway.
4. Adopt a Project: A Matchmaking Show
The pitch: It’s a dating show. The contestants are orphaned projects looking for a champion. The suitors are the whole room.
The plugin directory is a quiet animal shelter — but so is everywhere else. A loved newsletter gone dark. A half-finished podcast. A community garden’s site frozen in 2019. A nonprofit that just needs anyone. A blog with great bones and no writer.
How it runs. Lift it straight from dating TV. The host introduces each “eligible” project like a bachelor leaving the limo — what it is, what it needs, its charming quirks and red flags (“loyal audience, hasn’t posted since the pandemic, possibly haunted”). Then the suitors pitch — and here’s the move: they’re not all developers. A writer adopts the blog. A designer adopts the sad logo. A marketer adopts the launch nobody planned. The questions play for laughs but they’re real: Can you commit? What’s your first move? Here for love, or for the install count?
The project “chooses,” and the match gets a public handoff — an oversized novelty key, a photo, and an actual follow-up plan so it outlives the applause.
Why it works. Abandoned projects are everywhere, not just in code, and this turns that quiet sadness into the most fun session of the day while doing real matchmaking. Widening “project” past plugins is what opens the table: the writer and the designer aren’t spectators to a dev event anymore, they’re the ones with the skills a given project needs. Every match is something that was dying and now isn’t. Line up a few real orphans in advance so the handoffs actually happen.
5. The Human Library, but Weirder
The pitch: Borrow a person for fifteen minutes. Then make the catalog far stranger than “expert in X.”
WordCamps already run a Human Library — you “borrow” an experienced contributor for a one-on-one instead of sitting through a lecture. Great idea. The shelf is usually too narrow.
How it runs. Same mechanic: a library of people, fifteen-minute chats, sign up to borrow a “book.” But stock the shelf with range — someone who changed careers at 40, someone running a business in their second language, someone who failed in public and lived, someone whose job you genuinely can’t picture, someone fifteen years in, someone who showed up yesterday.
Why it works. The richest things people know — how to start over, how to survive a public flop, how to navigate an industry that wasn’t built for you — never make it into slides. They only move in conversation. Widening the catalog is what makes the session diverse by design instead of by good intentions, and it hands people who’d never call themselves experts a reason to sit on the other side of the table. Fifteen minutes keeps it a conversation, not a performance.
6. Bad Ideas Brainstorm
The pitch: A real problem goes up. Teams race to invent the worst possible solutions. Good ideas sneak in through the back.
How it runs. Put a genuine problem on the board — “get more people to our local meetup,” “get clients to send content on time.” Short window, worst solutions win. Schedule the meetup for 4am. Require a blood oath. Bribe people with raffle tickets nobody wants. Teams read their lists, the room votes on the most catastrophic, and the host quietly flags the two or three that are secretly good if you flip them over.
Why it works. Aiming for terrible removes the fear of being wrong — the exact fear that keeps non-experts silent in a normal brainstorm. When bad is the goal, the student and the shop owner shout as loud as the consultant, because there’s no wrong answer. And awful ideas hide good ones in negative: “make registration impossible” flips into “our registration is too clunky.” Real hijinks, real action items, zero technical knowledge required.
7. The Swap Meet
The pitch: Skill-bartering, speed round. Everyone has something to trade. Nobody’s expertise outranks anyone else’s.
“I’ll teach you to write a subject line people actually open if you show me how to crop a photo without butchering it.” “I’ll explain SEO in plain English if you give me one keyboard shortcut that changes my life.”
How it runs. Speed dating for skills. Two rings of tables, a bell, five minutes a turn — you teach your small thing, they teach theirs, rotate. A wall board of “can teach / want to learn” lets matches form on purpose.
Why it works. This is the whole thesis in one room: everyone has something worth teaching, and the developer’s knowledge isn’t worth more than the copywriter’s or the photographer’s — just different. The barter makes that literal and equal. It’s also the best way to spread the small skills that never justify a full talk but quietly lift everyone’s work. Run it late, once people are warm enough to talk to strangers.
8. Hallway Track, On Stage
The pitch: Everyone says the hallway conversations are the best part. So put one on stage and stop pretending otherwise.
How it runs. No slides, no speaker. A moderator, comfy chairs, roaming mics, snacks on stage to seal the bit, and a topic anyone can answer — “how do you handle a client who doesn’t get what you do,” “the tool you’d take to a desert island,” “what you wish you’d known on day one.” The moderator opens it and then gets out of the way.
Why it works. The hallway-track joke is funny because it’s true — the unscheduled talk beats the scheduled one almost every time. This harvests it instead of fighting it. A no-expertise topic means the whole room can play, which is the point, and it surfaces the war stories and disagreements that polished talks sand off. Pick a moderator who’s comfortable with a silence and good at gently rescuing the mic from the one person trying to give a TED talk.
A note for organizers
These aren’t here to replace the schedule — they’re here to break it up and widen the door. The lecture track earns its place; someone who needs the Settings API explained deserves a clear explanation of the Settings API. But a program made only of that quietly tells everyone who isn’t a developer that the room isn’t really for them. They usually believe it, and they usually don’t come back.
So mix it up. Drop a weird one after lunch when the room goes quiet. Lead with the no-code formats — Teach Me Something That Isn’t WordPress, the Grievances mic, the Swap Meet — because those are what pull in the designers, writers, marketers, students, and small-business owners who make a community bigger than its software. They’re also how you get people on stage who’d never submit a normal talk, which is how you change who gets to speak at all. And if you want cover for any of it, the Creative WordPress Events program was built for exactly this.
WordPress is the doorway. Once everyone’s inside, the best thing you can do is throw a party worth staying for.
Be weird. The session nobody remembers is the safe one.