My Experience as a WordCamp Lead Organizer

How it All Started

That 2019 year’s beginning was a little messy and I had some health issues as well.

I never thought about myself as a conference organizer but Gennady Kovshenin suggested me to do so and we’ve submitted the form.

One day a friend of my invited me to explore Pavlovsk Park and on the way there I received an approval!

Pavlovsk park saint petersburg — That was a beautiful day and a nice walk in huge Pavlosvk park. One more thing – I receive a WordCamp application approval!

Now I had a goal for 2019 – organize WordCamp Saint Petersburg and don’t screw up.

Wapuu – A Conference Mascot

Now sure why but the first thing in my todo list was to create a conference mascot.

This Wapuu was inspired by the russian history, by the emperor Peter the Great, founder of Saint Petersburg! Wapuu was created by my team specially for the event.

I also added this Wapuu to wapuu archives here and here.

Misha Rudrastyh – Lead Organizer of WordCamp Saint Petersburg 2019 — We decided to have two versions on this Wapuu – with and without armor.

Wapuu stickers at WordCamp Saint Petersburg 2019 — Wapuu Stickers

Finding the Venue

That was an interesting one. The thing is that the guys in Saint Petersburg WordPress Community never care about the place where the event is going and only care about the money. I decided to change that.

My last year trip to WordCamp Oslo taught me that venue is everything!

I year before that I met Katya – she is the organizer of hundreds IT and Startup events in Saint Petersburg. When I have free time, I help her on her events as a volunteer. And this time I was volunteering on Startup Weekend event in a brand new coworking in Saint Petersburg which was located just in the heart of Petrogradskaya district.

That was when the miracles begin to happen – this coworking was building their own place for conferences and events and it was going to be ready just by the date of our WordCamp!

WordCamp Saint Petersburg 2019 attendees

Pizza for lunch at WordCamp Saint Petersburg 2019

Anton from Misha Rudrastyh team with his talk about WooCommerce payment gateways

I think it also worth mentioning that I was surprised by the Anton’s speech – the developer from my team. His talk about WooCommerce payment gateways had a huge success! I am proud of him because I remember days when he learnt payment gateways from my tutorial.

The Long Story Short…

I go through life with a belief – “Do it at your best, or don’t do at all”, so I spent enourmous amount of time on this WordCamp. And I am so happy that the WordCamp was a success!

And of course I am so grateful for eveyone who helped me on this way.

Misha Rudrastyh

I develop websites since 2008, so it is total of 13 years of experience, oh my gosh. Most of all I love love love to create websites with WordPress and Gutenberg, some ideas and thoughts I share throughout my blog.

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